A Post/ABC survey taken after the release of the Senate’s torture report has generated results which–displayed in tabular format--have been making the rounds on social media.
The question was whether the torture tactics had been justified. Responses were broken down by religious affiliation; significant majorities of Protestants and Catholics said yes. Only among the “nones”–those claiming no religious affiliation–did a majority of respondents disavow torture.
Apparently, a lot of those pious “Christians” –the ones who whine about the (wholly manufactured) “War on Christmas,” who self-righteously refuse to pay for the “sinful” birth-control of their female employees, who insist on their right to impose their beliefs on others in a multitude of ways–see no conflict between their scripture and the torture of other human beings.
Shades of the Inquisition…
If this survey is accurate, it would seem to rebut the assumption that secular Americans cannot be moral, because they “lack God.” In fact, it raises an interesting question: what sort of God do these torture apologists worship?
I’ve been reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and the Golden Age of Journalism,” and on page after page, I’ve been confronted not just with how much has changed, but how much hasn’t.
The entire book (and one thing you can say about Doris Kearns Goodwin is that she leaves virtually nothing out–the book is a monster) is a window onto an era of progressive Republicanism.The book details Roosevelt’s fight against powerful corporations and “trusts” (monopolies), his passion to protect the environment, his concern for American workers and his devotion to the common good. It also details the extent to which Taft agreed with him about the need to constrain commercial overreach and protect working Americans, and of course, the personal foibles that led the once exceptionally close friends to part company for so many years.
We have seen progress: Roosevelt was criticized for even inviting a black person to the White House. Now, a black President lives there (although that fact seems to have driven a significant number of contemporary Americans insane.) Thanks primarily to unions, we have the 8-hour workday Roosevelt supported, although millions of Americans work longer hours than that at more than one job. Teddy’s Democratic cousin Franklin would secure passage of social security and other social safety net legislation for which Teddy advocated. But the theme that runs through the book is an unhappily familiar one: the wide and persistent gulf in resources and political influence between the rich and everyone else.
One thing that has most definitely changed since the Gilded Age and its aftermath is the practice of journalism. The book covers the age of Lincoln Steffens and Ida Tarbell, of McClure’s Magazine, of muckraking and genuine investigative reporting. Journalists were given the time and resources to delve deeply and write extensively about what their research uncovered. And it mattered.
Perhaps the most striking change since the era of Roosevelt and Taft is in the philosophy of the Republican party. Reading Roosevelt’s speeches and letters, reviewing the positions taken by Taft, it’s impossible not to be struck by the gap between the party’s priorities then and now. Both Roosevelt and Taft would have immediately recognized today’s plutocrats and oligarchs, but they would have been astonished by the anti-intellectualism, the rejection of science and environmentalism, and the faux religiosity of today’s GOP.
Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft would have been appalled by Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Louie Gohmert, and the other buffoons who have unaccountably found a congenial home in what–despite its faults– used to be one of America’s great political parties.
I probably wouldn’t have followed the hostage-taking incident in Sydney, Australia so closely, but my middle son is currently visiting the city. (Knowing his mother–and being a good son–he called even before I’d heard the news reports, telling me “don’t freak out, I’m nowhere near where this is occurring.”)
We now know that this horrific episode, which cost two innocent people their lives, was not a terrorist act, at least in the political sense; it was a solitary crime comitted by a mentally-deranged individual. Still, as Reuters reported, the perpetrator’s move to force hostages to display an Islamic flag ” immediately raised hackles in some quarters.”
A man shouting anti-Islamic abuse near the cafe during the standoff was moved on by police, while Muslim community leaders reported women wearing the hijab had been spat on.
Then something heartwarming happened:
Inspired by the Twitter hashtag “I’ll ride with you”, some commuters heading into the city for work on Tuesday gave their support to Muslims who might feel vulnerable amid concerns about a blowback after the hostage drama.
The hashtag was trending around the world, popping up across Asia, Europe, Africa and North America as it featured in more than 300,000 tweets. Actor Russell Crowe, who grew up in Sydney and keeps a home here, added his star power to the campaign.
Sydney is home to around half of Australia’s 500,000 Muslims.
The hashtag began trending on Twitter ahead of the evening commute on Monday, sparked by a Facebook post by Sydney woman Rachael Jacobs who described her encounter with a Muslim woman who took off her head covering: “I ran after her at the train station. I said ‘put it back on. I’ll walk with you’.”
That prompted other Sydneysiders to take to Twitter, detailing their bus and train routes home and offering to ride with anybody who felt uncomfortable, using the hashtag “Illwalkwithyou”.
On Tuesday morning, Jacobs said she was overwhelmed with the campaign she had inadvertently started: “Mine was a small gesture because of sadness that someone would ever feel unwelcome because of beliefs.”
I’d like to believe that something similarly spontaneous and reassuring could happen in the United States–that enough of us would put aside the stereotyping and suspicion of people with whom we don’t share beliefs or skin color or other tribal markers, to see each other simply as humans to whom we should offer reassurance and support.
I’d like to believe that, but given the animus permeating today’s environment, I’m not sure I do.
Yesterday, I took Senator Lindsay Graham to task for his sexist response to a speech by Elizabeth Warren. Whether you agree with her positions or not, Sen. Warren is indisputably one of the most thoughtful and informed members of Congress.
But then there are people like Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann. If those are the sorts of women with whom Senator Graham regularly interacts and upon whom he bases his judgments, perhaps I was too hard on him.
Let me share a portion of Bachmann’s “farewell” speech (a farewell for which all sentient beings are profoundly grateful).
“And as I look about this chamber, we are ringed with the silhouettes of lawgivers throughout history,”
“And yet only one lawgiver has the distinction of not having a silhouette, but having the full face be revealed by the artist. That lawgiver is Moses. Moses is directly above the double doors that lead into the centermost part of this chamber, and in the face of Moses, his eyes look straight upon not only our nation’s motto, ‘In God We Trust,’ but Moses’ face looks full on into the face of the Speaker of the House. Daily, the Speaker of the House as he stands up in his authority and in his podium recognizes that he is a man under authority, just as Moses was a man under authority.”
“Because you see, Mr. Speaker, Moses is given for the full honor of the greatest lawgiver in this chamber, because he was chosen by the God that we trust to be entrusted with the basis of all law. The ‘basis of all law’ as was written by Blackstone, the famous English jurist, was the Ten Commandments, that were given by none other than the God we trust on Mount Sinai,”
“We know those laws, those laws are the fundamental laws of mankind, and here in the United States, the Ten Commandments that God gave to Moses is the very foundation of the law that has given happiness and the rise of the greatest prosperity that any nation has known before.”
“Mr. Speaker, it could be no coincidence that this nation, knowing and enjoying the heights of such great happiness and such great prosperity, that it could be built upon that foundation of the Ten Commandments and of the law given by the God in whom we trust.”
Bachmann never did understand the difference between the Bill of Rights and (her version of) the Ten Commandments. Science and medicine–not to mention logic– likewise eluded her.
Defeating sexism clearly requires more than the elevation of more women into positions of authority. It isn’t a numbers game; quality counts. That said, no one suggests that Louie Gohmert is a representative example of all men….
It has been abundantly clear for a long time now (and painfully obvious since Barack Obama’s election) that we still have a huge racism problem in this country. My friends in the LGBT community can attest that–despite enormous progress on gay rights–they still face plenty of homophobia. What has been less remarked–but is no less true–is that we women haven’t exactly “overcome,” either.
Juanita Jean–proprietor of the World’s Most Dangerous Beauty Shop–got right to the point, after Senator Lindsay Graham dismissed Elizabeth Warren’s objections to the omnibus funding bill by saying
“You’re tired, you’re frustrated, you’re upset about a provision in the bill you don’t like…..”
You’re tired and upset? Oh yeah, that’s the only reason we women fight for anything – we’re tired and upset. The only thing he forgot is that it must be that time of the month.
Oh, but he wasn’t finished.
“If you follow the lead of the senator of Massachusetts and bring this bill down … people are not going to believe you are mature enough to run the place,” Graham said on the Senate floor. “Don’t follow her lead. She’s the problem.”
The only thing absent from this offensively patronizing putdown is any response to her substantive arguments. Because, evidently, when a “girl” has objections to the content of a piece of legislation, the only rebuttal needed is a none-too-subtle reminder of her gender.
If Warren’s objections were wrongheaded, if there were sound responses available to those objections, surely a critique that included those responses would have been appropriate.
Evidently, however, arguments made by women don’t merit serious consideration. After all, how could we girls match the great job that’s being done by all those straight white men?
