Divisions in American Left Yield Trump: The Case of Bill Maher and Response of Some Liberals to Discussion of This Case

It's clear to me following the last federal election in the U.S. that the American left is divided in a way that powerfully contributes to the dysfunction that has produced a Trump presidency and a Republican majority in Congress. Bernie bros vs. Hillary supporters. Libertarian-leaning Democrats vs. socialist-leaning and progressive ones. Those who see "identity politics" and "political correctness" as the bane of the Democratic party, and those of us who cannot imagine a Democratic party without a commitment to identity politics — because identity politics touches on the concreteness of those who are "actually" poor and marginalized in our society; it names the reasons many of us are shoved to the margins and struggle economically.

Robert Leonard on Why Rural America Voted for Trump: A Critique of the Argument

Robert Leonard's recent op-ed piece in New York Times on why rural America voted Trump is receiving a lot of attention as a cogent new statement in the growing body of literature upbraiding American liberals for their failure to understand the thinking and mores of heartland citizens who voted for Trump. This literature inevitably proceeds from the assumption that liberals live for the most part in "elite" enclaves on the two coasts of the nation, and have done too little to inform themselves about what people think and feel in flyover country — hence their abasement in the 2016 elections.

Commentary on President Obama's Performance in Budget Deliberations: Protecting the Powerful Over the Poor

And, in case my previous posting about Rick Perry's Response rally has given the impression that I consider President Obama a solution to the problem I discuss there, and not part of the problem--not every bit as much a puppet whose strings are being pulled by the same corporatist taskmasters who pull Perry's strings--I'd like to recommend my friend Wendell Griffen's assessment of Obama's performance in the budget negotiations at Ethics Daily.

A.J. Jacobs's Year of Living Biblically: On the Future of Religion in a World of Growing Fundamentalism

When I blogged about A.J. Jacobs’s The Year of Living Biblically last week, I noted that I might have some concluding remarks about this book, once I’d finished it.  My remarks last week looked at the fairly common phenomenon of liberal-tolerant secular folks who have little to do with formal religion, but who nonetheless want a strong, viable presence of religion in their societies as a check against moral decline.  A strong, viable presence of religion somewhere, preferably at a remove from themselves . . . .

Today, I’d like to say something more appreciative about Jacobs’s decision to “live biblically” for a year, and what he learned as he undertook that experiment.  As he notes, though he was raised a non-practicing Jew, and though he tends to agnosticism, his year of living biblically revolutionized his understanding of how religion influences many people, at a practical level, on a daily basis.  Jacobs gained a sympathetic understanding of religion by practicing Judaeo-Christian biblical literalism for a year.

Living Biblically: A.J. Jacobs and the Lincoln-Halter Race in Arkansas

A few days back, when blogged about the I-believe-everything-approach to Catholic orthodoxy, a reader of this blog (and friend of mine), Brad Caviness, logged in to recommend that I read A.J. Jacobs’s book The Year of Living Biblically (NY: Simon & Schuster, 2007).  I’ve now obtained a copy (my local library helpfully provided me with a LARGE PRINT EDITION that I had not requested, SO I GET THE POINT OF EACH SENTENCE IMMEDIATELY).  Jacobs’s book is a fascinating read from a number of standpoints, and I may well comment on it further when I’ve finished it (I’m about three-quarters way through the book now).

I’m learning a tremendous amount from this book, particularly about Judaism, but about various streams of Christianity as well, since Jacobs’s quest as he wrote this book was to follow as scrupulously as possible every commandment in the bible—both the Jewish and Christian scriptures—over the course of a year.  And then to write about the experience, if he lived through it.

The Rise of Religious Fascism and the Cool Pragmatism of Generation Jones: Three Perspectives on the Current Political Scene

Three recent articles catch my eye as as valuable contributions to dialogue about matters religious and political. I’m mentioning them in a single posting because, in key respects, their themes overlap.  The articles complement each other.

The first is Chris Hedges’ recent impassioned argument at Truth Dig that we need to pay close attention to the inroads the Christian right is now making in American politics.  Hedges warns us that we dismiss and ridicule this movement at our peril.  Its goal is a theocratic takeover of American government.  And it could easily effect that takeover soon, Hedges thinks.

The Abuse Crisis and the Gaying of the Priesthood: My Take on Liberal Catholic Analysis of the Issue

Last Friday, I blogged about Tom Roberts’ National Catholic Reporter commentary on the new interview process for Catholic seminaries in the U.S.  That process seeks to identify (and in many cases weed out) gay candidates for the priesthood.  As I talked through two areas in which Roberts’ commentary elicits my discomfort, I noted that, in my view, there’s an unacknowledged belief in the thinking of many Catholic liberals that the abuse crisis is really all about gay priests. 

I also noted that I suspect this unacknowledged belief is actually as prevalent, if not more prevalent, among liberal Catholics in the U.S. as among conservative ones.  It’s hard to bring to the surface for productive analysis, since it is usually talked about only sotto voce, among liberal Catholics talking to other liberal Catholics.  It is not brought to the table for honest discussion, even now, as we cope with another round of abuse revelations in Ireland, Germany, and other countries.

Mr. Clinton Changes His Mind: Knowing Gay People and Rejecting Homophobic Discrimination

There’s an aspect of what former President Clinton said the other day about gay marriage that keeps sticking in my mind, like a small pebble in an otherwise comfortable shoe. But before I talk about this, I want to take a cue from Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish blog and give credit to Mr. Clinton for changing his mind about gay marriage, and being willing to say so publicly.

In response to a critic who faults him for “enthusing” over Clinton’s change of mind about gay marriage, Andrew Sullivan notes that he has often written critically about the former president’s record on gay rights. As he says, having done so, he now has an obligation to give Mr. Clinton credit when credit is due.

I, too, have criticized the Clinton record about gay issues on this blog, and I agree with Andrew Sullivan that it is only just to recognize the significance of Clinton’s change of mind now. I take Andrew Sullivan’s remark about this as a useful reminder to remember to praise those I may have criticized on this blog, when they deserve praise.

With those remarks by way of introduction, here’s what catches my attention in Mr. Clinton’s statements about why he eventually changed his mind re: gay marriage. In response to Anderson Cooper’s question about what made him change his mind, Clinton says,

I had all these gay friends, I had all these gay couple friends, and I was hung up about it [i.e., about the term “marriage” as applied to same-sex couples]. And I decided I was wrong.

That comment intrigues me—it speaks volumes for me—because of what it says about how people change their moral minds when injustice and discrimination towards a targeted group of people have become so ingrained (and, often, so hedged about with religious warrants) that they seem “natural.” And right. And hardly unjust at all.

I’ve noted over and over on Bilgrimage that my own thinking about many social issues has been decisively shaped by my experience coming of age in the middle of the Civil Rights movement in the American South. As I’ve said here, some of my formative experiences during those years opened windows in my mind and soul, through which I began to see that I had been tutored in racism as a white Southerner, and that a social system I had grown up to think of as natural and even as divinely ordained was a radically unjust social system founded on insupportable tenets of white supremacy and black inferiority.

These formative experiences had everything to do with beginning to know African Americans as human beings. Throughout my childhood and adolescence, I was, like many white Southerners, in constant contact with African Americans. A black woman cleaned my family’s house and, to a great extent, raised my brothers and me.

But these contacts were controlled contacts: they were contacts that white society controlled so that they would invariably yield, among white citizens coming into contact with black citizens, the unvarying impression that whites are superior to blacks, that the humanity of blacks is inferior to that of whites. What changed that deeply inculcated impression for me was coming into contact with black people in uncontrolled environments, in settings in which the dominant white manipulation of racial consciousness had been removed by law—for instance, when the schools were integrated, and I came to know African Americans as human beings every bit as human as myself.

Once I had these breakthrough insights, there was no going back. The insights forced me to rethink everything I had taken for granted. They forced me to do more than see, feel, and think. They made me change, since that’s what moral insight is all about: new perspectives spawn new decisions that lead to new actions, which in turn deepen the perspectives that initiated the process of change in the first place.

One of the governing insights that these formative experiences have led to in my life is the recognition that we all grow up in social contexts in which we take for granted unjust, discriminatory practices and attitudes in many different areas of our lives. Recognizing that this is the case in one part of one’s life—say, in the area of race—only opens the door to questions about whether it can also be the case in other areas—say, re: gender or sexual orientation.

The process of re-examining our formative presuppositions, once revelatory insights have led to us to recognize that some of them are radically skewed by prejudice, is never-ending. There is no area of our social formation in any part of our upbringing in which we do not have the potential to imbibe discriminatory presuppositions.

I’m glad that Mr. Clinton has come to a recognition in the area of sexual orientation akin to mine about race, and that this recognition seems to have reached him through his interactions with gay friends. At the same time, I wonder why it is taking so many of us to reach conclusions similar to Mr. Clinton’s. Mr. Clinton is not the only one with gay friends. We all live in a world in which the likelihood that we know several gay people as more than passing acquaintances is rapidly increasing.

Why are people’s social attitudes about gay people and discrimination against gay people so often moving at snail’s pace, given that this is the social world in which many of us now live? For that matter, having struggled with his heritage of racism as a white Southerner, why did Mr. Clinton take so long to extrapolate from his experience in analyzing and rejecting racism to a recognition that discrimination based on sexual orientation is just as insupportable as discrimination based on race?

One would expect people who have struggled to understand and reject racism to do the same when they begin to encounter gay people and questions about sexual orientation. Wouldn’t one?

Or is there some difference between race and sexual orientation that is simply not obvious to many of us who make connections between those two issues, and who have come to the conclusion that homophobic discrimination is as indefensible as racial discrimination is? I suppose the question I’m really asking here is, how does one have close gay friends and gay family members and gay colleagues, and still support discrimination against these human beings whom one knows at a human level?

I’ll admit that this is a question I’ve already asked myself about Bill and Hilary Clinton for some time now, for a somewhat personal reason. Since I happen to live in a place in which they, too, have lived and were political leaders, I also happen to know some of the gay couples who have been closely associated with them over the years.

I want to be clear here. I do not know the Clintons at all. I do, however, know a number of gay people, including several gay couples, who have lived near members of their family, and have—or so they have told me—a more than passing acquaintance with the Clintons.

And as I have listened to these folks talk about their connections to the Clintons, I have wondered repeatedly over the years how they can have been so enthusiastic about a president who—let’s face it—had a less than stellar record in supporting gay rights. When Hilary Clinton was asked about her stance on gay issues during the last presidential campaign, and responded by saying something to the effect that she was still making up her mind, I have to admit I wondered how the gay people I know who claim to be close to the Clintons can have been so enthusiastic about them over the years. Enthusiastic about them as friends of the gay community . . . .

I take remarks like Hilary Clinton’s in response to that question personally. I put myself in the place of those gay couples that have close ties to the Clintons, and I think about their lives. They’re, as far as I can see, upstanding, hard-working, people who contribute a great deal to the community.

As far as I can see, nothing in their lives could possibly account for the decision of a majority of folks—at least in this area of the country—to deny them the right to adopt children, to marry or enter into a civil union, to be protected against discrimination in housing and employment, to visit each other in the hospital and make medical decisions about each other.

How, I wonder, does one know such people on a more than superficial basis, and not feel compelled to work as hard as possible to outlaw such gross discrimination—especially when one has the power to do so? If one concludes that one must make such solidarity with those discriminated against on grounds of race, how does one draw a line and then decide that similar solidarity is not demanded when sexual orientation is the question at hand?

I have come to the conclusion that, when it comes to gay people and gay rights, quite a few people do not move from knowing gay family members, friends, and colleagues, to working resolutely on behalf of gay rights, for one primary reason. This is that people—including many liberal people who profess to find discrimination of all sorts abhorrent—feel, at some deep, unexamined level that gay humanity is not quite like the humanity of heterosexual people. It is humanity at a slightly less human level.

How else can one claim to know, love, and support gay people, and continue accepting the legitimacy of gross, overt, persistent discrimination against gay people? And not merely accepting, but refusing to do what is in one’s power to overturn this particular form of discrimination, since one knows real people who suffer from it and do not deserve to suffer in that way?

My intent in asking these questions is not to criticize Mr. Clinton. I applaud him for changing his mind about gay marriage, and for saying so.

But I suspect he’s far from the only liberal Democrat in the United States who continues to struggle with questions that have everything to do with figuring out how to deal with the real humanity of people we’ve been taught by discriminatory ideologies to regard as somewhat less human than ourselves. And like Mr. Clinton, unfortunately, some of those liberal Democrats have the ability to make decisive changes to make things better for their gay family members, friends, and acquaintances.

And like Mr. Clinton until fairly recently, they do not seem to feel much urgency about making those changes, even when they have the power to make them. Even when they are, many of them, running the churches that talk a whole lot about love. And the government in D.C., which talks about change we can believe in.

Centrist Pragmatism: It's Time to Be Honest about Where the Center Really Stands

Points to ponder today: Katrina vanden Heuvel exposes the media game of labeling spokespersons for the far-right fringe as "centrists," while progressive viewpoints that now represent the center of American political discourse continue to be treated as beyond the pale:

At this moment -- when 72 percent of the nation supports a public plan option and 14,000 people lose their healthcare every day -- the House Blue Dogs and conservative Democratic Senators are doing just about everything they can to cripple real health care reform.

So why does the media keep ceding them the label of "centrist" or "moderate" as if they are the guardians of mainstream values?

And Daniel Schultz names liberal "pragmatism" for what it really is--a willingness to give in, over and over, to a small but powerful coterie of noisy thugs whose sole goal is to stop progressive change in its tracks, because such change threatens the wealthy elites who ultimately empower these thugs in American society:

We have allowed the pragmatists the run of the nation for decades now, and what has it gotten us? A frayed social safety net, crumbling infrastructure, massive inequalities in income, health, and opportunity, and a financial system that makes a den of fire-breathing pirate vipers an appealing alternative. Oh, and the finest (and most expensive) military ever known to man.

More properly, we have balanced the ideological insanity that is modern conservatism — don't argue with me, when Ann freaking Coulter is the voice of reason in your movement, you know you're in trouble - with a bunch of mush-mouthed hacks dedicated to compromise at all costs. The result is that the allowable spectrum of opinion now runs from the insane to the not-so insane, and the people who actually want something to be done for the poor get labeled the "far left," as if they were going to bolshivize inner cities across the nation.

The future of the nation--the continuation of our democratic experiment--is at stake. And many of us had hoped the new president realized that, when he talked about hope and change in his campaign. These days, the health care reform debacle seem to be yet another reminder that many of us have hoped in vain.

Mr. Obama Shines at Notre Dame: Disparate Reflections on the Commencement Address and the Occasion

Some thoughts about President Obama's commencement address at Notre Dame today, which I've just watched live at MSNBC:

• The president was, as always, a master communicator. He manages to take a situation others have tried to load negatively against him, and masterfully turn it around.
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• His stress on dialogue, listening, collaborating for the common good, clearly struck many resonant chords with this audience, because that stress so strongly echoes important themes of Catholic social teaching.
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• This event was a big loss for the right-wing fringe groups who tried to leverage it into a loss for the president. They've come off looking like, well, fringe groups, and have succeeded in alienating further those in the center who took time to study their tactics this week.
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• Even though there were many strong indicators that these fringe groups did not represent anywhere near the center of American Catholic thinking on any issue, and had only minimal support on the Notre Dame campus, the mainstream media have done their usual shameful pimping job for the right all week long.
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• The mainstream media have given a voice to a handful of extremists who receive attention out of all proportion to their numbers, attention that their tactics and positions do not warrant.
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• Information about the sordid pasts (and therefore dubious credibility and motives) of some of the protagonists of the protests against Obama's appearance at Notre Dame has been nowhere to be found in almost all mainstream media coverage of the protests this week.
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• It's clear who owns the media and why media coverage tilts so grossly in one direction.
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• It's also clear that the owners of the mainstream media are going to keep on doing all they can to suggest to the public at large that American religious groups lean overwhelmingly right and resist movements for social justice and progressive change.
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• I'm also noticing in recent days how strongly the media coverage on the right is bashing women, as the right continues looking for useful wedges to undermine solidarity of progressive groups in the Obama era. Gays remain front and center in the wedge politics, of course, but the attack on Nancy Pelosi has been fierce and dirty, and I'm seeing right-wing news sites now throwing dirt at Diane Sawyer.
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• If we expect meaningful change, change that really makes a difference, under Obama, there needs to be a moment of fierce resistance in American culture to the influence of these right-wing fringe groups, whose primary purpose is to fragment progressives and keep the grossly rich in control. The fierce resistance needs to be directed, as well, to the apologists for the right (and their grossly rich lords and masters) in the mainstream media.
  
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• It would be far more to my liking if that movement of fierce resistance received stronger signals of support from the White House. I don't see that strong support coming, however. Mr. Obama and his chief advisors reflect the liberal philosophy that has come to dominate the Democratic party--namely, that the primary role of government is to balance competing interest groups.
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• If there is going to be a resurgence of progressivism under this administration, that resurgence is going to have to come from the public itself, insofar as citizens become fed up with the cultural, political, and religious stalemates the right has produced for us for too many years now, while liberals appease the right and refuse to stand up, or to imagine a truly democratic society.
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• Which is to say that the moral backbone of progressive change in the Obama era is going to have to come, I believe, from progressive groups themselves, and not from the president and his advisors. I believe the president himself has that backbone, though I also believe he is, in many respects, a classic liberal who is willing to ignore strong moral considerations as he engages in pragmatic balancing acts. And it seems increasingly evident to me that he has surrounded himself with advisors who, to an even greater extent, are tone-deaf to the moral underpinnings of the agenda of change they talk about, and willing at every turn to ignore those underpinnings as they tinker, try to anticipate the winds of change, and seek to remain on top through it all.

Human Rights and Solidarity: The Soft Underbelly of the Obama Administration

Amnesty International is shocked at Secretary of State Clinton’s statements about human rights in Seoul this week (here). Clinton told reporters that the United States will continue pressing China on human rights issues, “"But our pressing on those issues can't interfere on [sic] the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis.”

T. Kumar of Amnesty International USA (rightly) regards the stance as a sell-out. He notes, “The United States is one of the only countries that can meaningfully stand up to China on human rights issues.”

Yes. And I am not shocked.

This is the point I’ve sought to make in posting after posting about the soft underbelly of the Obama administration, and about the pallid commitment of American liberals to solidarity and human rights (here) and (here). The commitment of liberal individualists to human rights is strategic. It is not principled—not in the sense that the commitment to human rights for all persons everywhere at all times is an overweening moral principle driving political decisions and agendas.

Liberals commit themselves to human rights struggles only when they have calculated that, in this or that discrete struggle, they are likely to win—and to further their own self-interest and that of their friends. This is what Clinton means—and is stating frankly and clearly—when she subordinates the quest for human rights in China to the global economic, climate change, and security crises. Human rights take a back seat to those pragmatic issues. We will deal with human rights only after we have dealt with the “really” pressing issues before us.

This is why I have insisted from the time the new president took office that this presidency may well turn out to be a disappointing sojourn for gay Americans. Running through this administration, there is not a strong and overriding commitment to human rights and solidarity. There is, instead, a commitment to calculation and political expediency that subordinates questions of human rights to pragmatic considerations.

This is not new. It is not unique to Barack Obama or to Hilary Clinton. It is what we experienced with President Clinton. It is why he was able to take our money during his campaigns and depend on our votes, and then throw us under the bus immediately with don’t ask, don’t tell—and then with DOMA and the truly vile ads Mr. Clinton placed in the “Christian” media at that point in his presidency, trumpeting his commitment to the sanctity of marriage.

Such behavior is about calculation, not principle. Liberals do not see themselves in those to whom they deny fundamental rights when they refuse to make solidarity with the oppressed. If they did see themselves, their own faces, the faces of their family and friends, among the oppressed, they could hardly stand aside and counsel patience while “real” problems like the economic crisis are solved, as human beings struggle with the continued denial of their claims to basic justice.

Solidarity sees things differently. It does not envisage the body politic as a set of competing interest groups in which the strongest naturally win and the weakest fall by the wayside. It sees that we are all in it together. Denying rights to you undermines my own claim to rights—and to humanity. Undermining your rights or standing by in silence while they are being undermined threatens my human rights and frays the ties that bind us in the body politic (not to mention the human community).

Liberal individualists are kissing cousins to neoconservatives. We have, in the American two-party system, only two options that are essentially mirror images of each other. We have two versions of individualism that are both classically liberal, in that they maximize individual freedom and achieve social harmony by playing interest against interest as they seek to manage and mitigate the conflict that arises in such clash of interests.

Both ideologies arise out of an individualist social philosophy in which competition is everything, and in which “winners” and “losers” reflect the divine stamp of approval on the final outcome: the strong and righteous prevail and the weak and immoral fail, with the sanction of nature and God. The primary difference between these two ideologies has to do with the extent to which they believe in governmental controls on the rapacious behavior of the “strong” vis-à-vis the “weak.” That, and their penchant for either a “natural” (classic liberalism) or a religious justification (neoconservatism) for their belief that the rapacious behavior of the “winner” is praiseworthy and morally justifiable . . . .

To see our society through the optic of human rights and solidarity would call for a radical reconfiguration of many of the most fundamental preoccupations of our culture. It would require a commitment on the part of our federal government to serve the common good by giving priority to human rights in all contexts, in all places and all times. This reconfiguration would entail a re-ordering of our church life, such that churches refuse any longer to serve as ideological fronts for an immoral economic and social philosophy that permits the powerful to trample down the powerless in the name of God.

Such a profound cultural revolution needs to be signaled from the top, by the leaders of our federal government. Mrs. Clinton’s statements in Seoul signal, instead, that we can expect business as usual, when it comes to human rights and the Obama administration. And that expectation should be of serious concern to gay citizens of this nation and anyone standing in solidarity with those citizens in their question for justice.

The Lion, The Lamb, and Rick Warren

I forget which liberation theologian wrote some years back something like the following: When you invite both the lion and the lamb to your table of inclusive dialogue, how will you assure that the lion doesn't eat the lamb?

It may have been Gustavo Gutiérrez who wrote an insightful comment to that effect. Or perhaps Juan Luis Segundo, or another Latin American liberation theologian. I don't recall, and would have to search years of back journals with no indexes in order to find the source of the observation.

What I have always admired about the liberation theologians is how their outsiders' perspective into the shell games of our liberal political worldview exposes what's really going on in those shell games. We pretend that, in trying to include everyone, we truly welcome the voice of everyone.

Without admitting that some of us are lions and some are lambs. Some have voices that count and some have voices that will not be heard at the table of "inclusive" dialogue. Some have power and others don't.

To host an "inclusive" table at which the power dynamics of domination and submission are not overturned reinforces those dynamics in a purportedly "inclusive" context in which we ask the lamb not to protest as the lion eats him, because protesting is bad form, unwelcoming behavior in an inclusive society.

This liberal use of the language of inclusivity, of bringing everyone to the table, of just all getting along, is obscene. It refuses to recognize the essential point, if inclusion is not to reinforce domination: that is, that power is distributed very unequally in our culture, and bringing everyone to the table without changing the power dynamics only allows those who already dominant to dominate even more fiercely, at the table of inclusion.

This liberal use of the language of inclusivity overlooks the intent of inclusivity and of bringing everyone to the table. It allows the dynamics of domination and subordination to continue in a new guise in which the lamb has even less protection than she ever had before, because now her very protest against being eaten will be taken as an act of ill grace at the inclusive table.

Why does the invitation of Rick Warren to give the inaugural invocation at the start of a new administration dedicated to change we can all believe in cut some Obama supporters to the quick?

If you want to know the answer to that question, you must ask the lamb. Not the lion.

Uncorking the Pandemic of Crazy: Predictions about the Religious Right in 2009

And on to the prognostications. Which I’m not sure many folks will want to hear—in part, because what I see down the pike is not promising for those who think we can relinquish the battle with the religious right as that movement dies and a new generation of younger evangelicals takes over.

I certainly take hope from that demographic shift, and I am convinced it is underway. But. A big but: I do not think that this shift should encourage those who see the religious right as one of the biggest threats to democracy in the world today to relax our vigilance. If anything, I believe that, after the election of Obama, we are going to see redoubled efforts on the part of the religious right to exercise control in American culture and politics—redoubled efforts to extend the influence of this political-religious movement and to secure the place of the movement in American life.

And along with those redoubled efforts will be a savage attack on gay citizens unparalleled by anything the religious right has sought to do in the past. After all, what does this movement have left, except the gay card? We are it: we are the last, best hope for the religious right to continue as a major political player in the Obama era.

I think Bob Cesca is absolutely correct when he observes in a recent Huffington Post article on the influence of the religious right, “Nevertheless, we can bet on the fact that the far-right is going to be uncorking a pandemic of crazy so unrelenting as to make the 1990s seem quaint by comparison”
(www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/fighting-back-in-the-age_b_153376.html). Get ready for it: we ain’t seen nothing yet. The pandemic of crazy headed our way now that Obama is president is going to make what the religious right has sought to do to gay citizens up to now look mickey-mouse.

As I look down the road and see this coming, I am intently concerned at the cavalier attitude of many of my fellow citizens—including many LGBT citizens—to all the ominous signs now appearing on the horizon. In some sectors of the gay community, there is the perception that older, politicized gays have done yeoman’s work fighting culture-war battles that they are now unwilling to give up, as the need for fighting those battles wanes with the passing of generations.

I think this is a naïve and dangerously apolitical approach to the continued power the religious right exerts in American culture—and in global culture, as well, since this movement has adroitly sought to replicate itself in other cultural contexts, and to fan flames of homophobia wherever it can across the globe. Those of us who have long fought these culture-war battles haven’t done so because we enjoy the fighting.

We’ve been fighting for our lives—for our humanity, for our human dignity and human rights. We’ve been fighting because we have had no choice. That’s what you do when life and dignity are at stake. That’s how you respond when others seek to diminish your humanity.

It was the religious right that declared these culture wars, after all, and which put all gay human beings in the world in its sights as it did so. When one is in the sights of an enemy, it does no good to say that one does not relish fighting. The only productive options are either to run fast, or to stand your ground and fight back.

And the fight is clearly not over. As Frederick Clarkson argues in a recent Alternet article, the religious right is not going anywhere. It will, Clarkson is convinced, continue to pose one of the central challenges to our participatory democracy:

There is a religious war going on in America in which one side seeks to thwart, and even to roll back, advances in civil rights. This poses one of the central challenges of our time for those of us who are not part of the Religious Right; those of us for whom religious pluralism and constitutional democracy matter, along with such closely related matters as reproductive freedom, marriage equality and free, quality and secular public education. The defense and advance of our most deeply held values requires our holding clear-eyed assessments of how the Religious Right adapts to the changed political environment (www.alternet.org/story/114798/merry_war_on_christmas_--_the_religious_right_isn%27t_going_anywhere).

The defense and advance of our most deeply held values requires our holding clear-eyed assessments of how the Religious Right adapts to the changed political environment: this is an extremely important point. The religious right is not merely carrying on the traditional culture wars it has inflicted on our culture—that is, carrying on those culture wars in ways we have all come to see as typical of the religious right. The religious right is now adapting to a changed political environment. It is developing new strategies and new techniques. And it behooves any of us concerned about the preservation of democracy to understand and combat those strategies.

The religious right is adapting to remain alive, to continue, and, if possible, to extend, its influence. Unless we track the adaptation process, become aware of it, predict its moves, we will not succeed in holding this powerful anti-democratic movement in check.

We have seen some indicators of where the religious right is going in recent weeks, and the response to those indicators should trouble those on the progressive end of the political and religious spectrum. This response suggests that too many of our fellow citizens are oblivious to the real threats the religious right poses to participatory democracy, and too willing to excuse this movement’s attacks on democracy, or to imagine that the religious right is obsolescent.

Look closely at what happened with both the Rick Warren selection and the Christmas message of Benedict XVI to the Curia, for instance, and you will see a clear pattern—one predictive of the strategy the religious right intends to employ now. Those who reacted against the inaugural selection and the papal statement immediately found themselves on the defensive.

And they were placed on the defensive not merely by the right, but by influential forces in the center that clearly do not want the religious right marginalized, for a variety of reasons. Those raising legitimate and important questions in both cases were immediately accused of being divisive and even dishonest. Rick Warren and Benedict, who both have strong, easily tracked records of hostility to the gay community and to gay human beings, were depicted by their centrist defenders as inoffensive and morally upstanding, while their critics were slammed as offensive and anti-religious.

Most worrisome of all, in both cases lies have been permitted to pass as acceptable public discourse in a democratic society, even as we have allowed those in the center to paint those challenging the lies as the real malefactors. When asked to own his rhetoric linking gay people to pedophilia, Rick Warren simply lied: he denied having said what he had said, even when clips of his homosexuality-pedophilia remarks are widely available. Just as he denied having allowed McCain to monitor the responses of Obama at the Saddleback Church debate, even after it became apparent that Warren’s claim that McCain had been in a sealed, soundproof room was false.

Re: Benedict’s Christmas statement, there have been repeated attempts in the mainstream media to claim that Benedict did not say what he did, in fact, say, or to minimize what he said by calling for contextual understanding of his statement about gay people as threats to the human ecology. There have been suggestions that the little pill of poison was, after all, tiny, and only a tiny portion of the overall argument—as if a tiny pill of poison hidden in a large concoction is somehow less dangerous simply because it is discrete.

What we are seeing here—and should prepare for throughout the Obama administration—is a bold mainstreaming of plainspoken homophobia. Read the blogs of liberal Catholic publications, as I do daily, and you’ll see a worrisome development in recent weeks: the homophobic rhetoric—the overt homophobic rhetoric—is no longer coming only from those on the far right. It is now pouring out from those at the center, who have been afraid until recently to express openly their reservations about gay rights and gay persons.

The closer our society comes to a moral turning point, to a line of no return at which people have to declare their solidarity with or opposition to gay persons, the more we can expect this open expression of homophobia to proliferate. And buried at the center of it all will be the religious right, working (as it did in California with proposition 8) to disseminate disinformation and to elicit fear and hostility among centrist citizens who have not previously been opposed to gay persons and gay rights.

Expect more—much more—“journalism” of the ilk of Jeffrey T. Kuhner’s defense of Benedict in this past Sunday’s Washington Times (www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/dec/28/papal-denunciation). What is remarkable in this shoddy mess of homophobic disinformation about Ratzinger/Benedict’s track record re: the gay community is not just the defense of Benedict. Kuhner has written in that vein before.

No, what is remarkable is that Kuhner now feels free, after Obama’s election, to pen the following poison, knowing it will be printed in a mainstream publication:

Homosexual behavior (along with abortion, contraception, euthanasia, and pornography) represents a key facet of the modern West's “culture of death.” The homosexual lifestyle is inherently dangerous and destructive. It is not just that most gays and lesbians are casually promiscuous, and that ritualized sodomy is profoundly unhealthy. But homosexuality is incapable of natural reproduction; its lifestyle is one that is barren and childless - and without children, there can be no future and ultimately, no hope.

What is remarkable is that a mainstream newspaper, a “centrist” media outlet, feels perfectly free to print lies that, before the election of Obama, would have been confined to hate sites on the internet.

It’s now out in the open, after the election of Obama. And it will continue to come out into the open now, with the religious right egging the rhetoric on: gays as “inherently dangerous and destructive,” as barren purveyors of a culture of death. Rhetoric very much like the antisemitic rhetoric that poured forth in Germany before the rise of the Nazis to power. Rhetoric that respectable mainstream media outlets and respectable religious journals would not have printed before. Rhetoric passed on as legitimate opinion by centrist religious and political thinkers who would never utter such statements about someone who is Jewish. Or about someone who is African American.

After the election of Obama. Something about this event, the election of a new president who has expressed mild support for gay rights and gay persons, is eliciting this rhetoric. It is doing so because the election of Obama is eliciting fear—fear of gay persons and gay rights—among many citizens, including (and increasingly) among citizens at the center. There is fear of a new moral turn in our society, which many of those at the center resist, and about which they have previously been unwilling to admit their ambivalence.

This is, in my view, ultimately why Mr. Obama chose Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration, and why that choice should deeply trouble those of us who are either gay or in solidarity with gay persons and who support Obama. As numerous observers have noted and as Obama himself has stated, in making this choice, Obama is playing to the center. He is assuring his support at the center of our culture.

Obama is a skilled politician. One of the strengths of his campaign was its ability to crunch numbers more effectively than the campaigns of his competitors—the ability to get its fingers on the pulse of the voting populace and to anticipate what voters would do.

Obama knows what he is doing in selecting Rick Warren for the inauguration, and in playing to the center. He is consolidating his power. He is making a political calculation that will not harm him, and will, in fact, aid him.

There is a price to be paid in making this calculation, and that price is the disenchantment of many gay voters and many voters in solidarity with gay persons. But that price is not a high price to pay—not high in political terms, that is. Gay voters simply do not have the political clout to cause concern to anyone who runs roughshod over gay rights and gay lives. And Americans of the center have still not moved decisively in the direction of gay rights—and, in fact, may move in the opposite direction as the religious right massages anti-gay sentiment to extend its power in the Obama era.

Obama is aware of this. His strength—and, in my view, his most significant shortcoming—as a leader is his political canniness. Obama is a liberal politician, par excellence. The strength of liberal politics is its ability to calculate, to predict on the basis of numbers and trends—and to play one competing interest group against another without ever standing with one of the competing groups until it becomes clear who will be the winner.

Liberalism is long on calculation. It is short on solidarity. Its strong suit is its ability to predict what will happen on the basis of hard data carefully gathered. Its weak suit is its inability to take moral stands—its unwillingness to take moral stands.

Calculation can only go so far, after all. The decision of a culture to shift its moral consensus on issues like slavery or women’s rights—that decision depends not entirely on calculation (and thus it cannot be entirely predicted by calculation): that decision depends on the formation of a new moral consensus that occurs in ways outside the purview of polls and number crunching.

And this is where things may get interesting for the new president, if he continues to rule by liberal calculation. It is possible, after all, to miscalculate. I have seen the effects of such miscalculation in educational leaders time and again. I have seen leaders topple, after they were unwilling to support what is clearly the moral thing to do in a situation, because they calculated that the decision to do what is moral would cost too much and would weaken their support.

In calculating the expedient thing to do and in overlooking the moral thing to do, leaders can succeed in undermining the strongest arguments for supporting them and their platform, in a democratic society: the argument that one should do right and not what is popular. Democracy rests, after all, on foundations that are in the final analysis moral. It rests on the belief that God has created all of us equal and endowed us with inalienable human rights.

Leaders who remove the moral calculus from their political calculations in democratic institutions may make temporary political gains, while undermining their effectiveness as leaders in the long run. I have seen it happen before; I have learned to recognize the pattern. I have watched a university president who likes to speak glibly of human rights miscalculate and violate the rights of some of her gay employees in an egregious and public way. As she did so, she miscalculated from the outset. She willingly listened to poisonous misinformation poured into her ears by those who sought to convince her that she would be shielded from charges of homophobia because those she targeted had no support, precisely because they were gay.

She was wrong. More eyes saw the disconnect between her rhetoric about human rights and her real actions than she predicted. Because her advisors are not morally admirable human beings, but motivated primarily by petty jealousy, they did not bring accurate information to her. She is now beginning to pay a high price for her miscalculation. She has dramatically undermined her effectiveness as a leader in a values-based democratic institution that proclaims the equality of all human beings under God.

I do not want to see this happen to the new president. I think it may well happen, however, if the Rick Warren selection is any indicator of how Obama intends to approach his responsibilities as a moral leader. It is possible that Obama is calculating well, as he courts the center in the election of Obama. It is possible that his calculation that gay human beings do not have sufficient support at the center is a good calculation.

But it is also possible that he is simply wrong. It is possible that we have moved, as a society, further down the road to a new moral consensus that gay human beings are fully human than Mr. Obama's advisors recognize. If so, and if he is miscalculating where the moral mind of the nation is heading regarding this decisive civil rights issue of our time, the religious right leaders to whom the new president is now seeking to cozy up—including the "kinder" and "gentler" types like Rev. Warren—will not be there to support him if he enters into difficult days. They will be exulting in the back room with all the others who hope to undermine his effectiveness as a moral leader, from the inception of his administration.

Disinformation Campaigns and the Generational Shift in Politics

In a posting several days ago (5 June), I addressed the issue of disinformation in American politics. I predicted that in this federal election cycle, we are on the verge of a disinformation campaign the likes of which we have not seen at any previous point in our history. I distinguished disinformation from misinformation: the former is the deliberate dissemination of information those disseminating it know to be false, in the expectation of twisting the consciousness of those receiving disinformation.

In my 5 June posting, I discussed a flurry of carefully tailored comments on progressive blogs immediately following the announcement that Barack Obama had won the Democratic nomination. These comments gave every indication of having been planned; they gave every indication of having been released all at once as soon as the announcement of Obama’s nomination win came through.

These comments purported to be statements by Democrats disgusted that Mr. Obama has the nomination. These “Democrats” stated that they intended to vote for McCain in the coming election.

My assessment of this flurry of comments on progressive blogs as part of a disinformation campaign seems to be borne out now that Ms. Clinton has endorsed Mr. Obama. That endorsement makes it very difficult now for those trying to split the Democratic vote to use this particular little nasty trick as effectively as they had hoped to do.

The comments of disaffected Hilary supporters have suddenly ceased on progressive blogs, for the most part. What is clear is that many of those making these comments were not disaffected Hilary supporters at all. They were Republicans masquerading as angry Democrats to create the illusion of a national movement of disaffected Democratic voters.

So on to new tricks: I predict that, in addition to the overtly nasty bash rhetoric we’ll see all over the place now that Obama has been chosen the Democratic candidate, we’re going to see another trick tried again and again. I’ve already noticed it on the blog of my statewide “liberal” weekly newspaper, the Arkansas Times.

This is the sober, dispassionate, disinterested prediction that McCain will win, because states that have been voting Republican for some time now will do so once again in this election.

This prediction is anything but dispassionate and disinterested, though it will be spoon-fed to voters again and again in the coming weeks as bona fide political analysis. The prediction plays a cynical numbers game to gain bogus legitimacy. It depends on projecting voting trends that will mirror precisely those of recent presidential elections.

Such analysis pays no attention at all to the fact that this election has changed the ground rules in significant ways. It has brought out a massive tide of new Democratic voters. Many of these are young voters who have previously felt disempowered.

These are trends of intent concern to those who want to conduct politics as usual. These trends portend changes in the way that we do politics which go beyond the surface—substantive changes. The trends point to shifts in the American political scene that may well—if they are not stopped in their tracks by sheer force—be as decisive for the future of the nation as the shifts of the 1960s were.

We are seeing now the birth of a new politics in this country. What is happening now, especially among young voters, does not break down along traditional liberal-conservative lines. The fault line in how the political process is being viewed runs right through the Democratic party itself, dividing Democratic voters into those wedded to politics as usual, and those seeking a new way to engage the political life of the nation.

This election has unmasked the fatuity and insincerity of many of the “liberal” claims of my generation of Democratic voters. Though we of the baby-boom generation have professed concern to include people of color, women, LGBT people in the political process, we have done next to nothing—next to nothing substantive—to translate our professed concern into action.

We have invited minorities to the table only as token representatives of groups. They have not had a voice at our table—not a real voice. They have been there to echo the opinions of the straight-identifying white males who still control our political, economic, and ecclesial life. We have tolerated these minorities at the table only insofar as they were clones of the white-male power structure dressed up in minority garb—only insofar as they were “nice” minority members who played our game, and did not threaten to change the status quo.

We have, in other words, we boomer liberals, willingly participated in the politics of divide and conquer, of pitting one minority group against another, of the Republican right. We are a vanilla version of the more robust flavors of discrimination offered by the right. We all come from the same manufacturer. The ugly divide-and-conquer tactics centered on race and gender in this election derive as much from right-wing strategy as from liberal complicity in that strategy.

It has been in our own best interest—the best interest of liberal boomers—to natter on about inclusion and representation and places at the table for all, while we belie our rhetoric in our actions. A case in point: liberal political commentators in my state are now (rightly) decrying the ugly misogyny we have seen in this election, primarily targeting Hilary Clinton.

Yet these same white-male commentators seem utterly oblivious to the reality that they themselves edit and write for publications that have only male (and white-male, at that) political commentators: white-male middle-aged middle-class heterosexual political commentators. These are almost the only voices we hear in any “official” political discussions in our local media, whether televised or print media.

Fortunately, not a few voters are getting the disconnect between liberal rhetoric and liberal action among voters of my generation. Many of those getting it are younger voters. And it is not accidental, I think, that these voters are also far more media-savvy than are those of either the traditional right or the old left. In particular, these voters know how to use the power of the internet to circumvent the information-flow stoppage of the “official” media, whether of the left or the right.

As I have noted frequently on this blog, one of the most promising developments the internet poses for our political life (and for the lives of our churches, I would also maintain) is the ability of blogs to give voice—real voice—to voices that have historically been excluded by the mainstream media, both of the left and of the right.

Blogs and other online media sites give everybody a chance to be at the table in a way entirely unanticipated by the control-oriented, status-quo-maintenance politics of both the traditional right and the old left. Those of us whose voices have been shut out or carefully tailored to echo the observations of the power centers of our society can now speak for ourselves—in a new way, in an unanticipated way, in a way that reaches around the world.

This potential for change (and for interconnection, for solidarity, between people of all colors and stripes everywhere in the world) frightens those who want to maintain the status quo. It frightens not merely those conservatives who want, with William F. Buckley, to stand athwart history and shout stop. It also frightens gradualist liberals, those who want to anoint only predictable voices that will speak lullingly of change that doesn’t upset the balance of power in any substantive way—that doesn’t upset the balance of their power in any substantive way.

Does all that I have said above mean I am a messianic Obamabot? Hardly. I know enough history to know that the reign of God is always on the horizon, never here in history. It’s what we have to keep striving after, not what we have already built.

Give people power, and they are likely to abuse it. Give power to the marginalized and oppressed, and they may misuse their new-found power even more spectacularly than those who once lorded it over them. Some of the absolutely most horrific abuses of power I have seen in my lifetime have been manifested by women of color, by women one would have expected to know better and do better.

Granting power alone—shifting the structures of power—is no guarantee that things will move in a more humane direction, once power shifts have occurred. What is always essential in participatory democracy as a check against the tendency of those with unbridled power in their hands to abuse their authority is the big table, at which a place is set for everyone.

Insofar as it is participatory, participatory democracy acts as its own check against the abuse of power by any person or group within the body politic. Building open forums in which accurate information is available to all, and all have a chance to comment on how this information is used by the entire society, by its very nature militates against abuse of power by any individual or group.

The shift we are now seeing in our political process is, in some sense, an inevitable one—insofar as we continue to be a society that values, at least theoretically, free speech and the free and wide transmission of information (and it is entirely possible that we can move in the other direction). The shift is an inevitable one in a postmodern age, in which the ground rules of communication, affiliation, bringing people to the table, have shifted radically due to new technologies.

We liberals of the baby-boom generation have, in key respects, simply been caught off-guard by the development of the internet. While we have remained stuck in the modern moment, using new technologies to extend our buying power, our illusion that we can remain young and powerful up to the very end, our lust for new experiences and new things, many of those in the next generations have begun to realize the power the internet offers postmodern global culture for radically inclusive participatory democracy.

And as we boomers continue playing, the next generation has been hard at work building—building towards postmodernity. This is their moment. We need to give them a chance. (For further information on doing so, see Micah Sifry, “Obama’s Organization and the Future of American Politics,” www.huffingtonpost.com/micah-sifry/obamas-organization-and-t_b_105958.html; and Courtney E. Martin, “Fanning the Flames of Youth Civic Engagement,” www.alternet.org/story/87026/).