The Last Martyr

 One man's heaven is another man's hell
One man's buy is another man's sell
One man's day is another man's night
One man's peace is another one's fight 
--Two Sides to Every Story,
Joe Walsh  

She could never be a saint,
but she thought she could be a martyr
if they killed her quick 
--Flannery O'Connor

And it repented the Lord
that he had made man on the earth,
and it grieved him at his heart
--Genesis 6:6
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A Clarification on the previous post, You're All In or You're Not:


While death, killing and dying are central issues in both Islam and Christianity (and Clint Eastwood movies and lots of other things) religions accord their own values to them. This is my view on the differences between the current two players, and why this is essential to their play of war.

Before proceeding, yes, this a military blog and most interest surrounds the "wars" qua war; the Phoney Wars on Terror (PWOT ©), in particular. But since tanks are driven and mortars lobbed by men, it seems fair to go to the human ground when considering war, despite the Department of Defense types who see the whole thing within the confines of their operational maps

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but whereas the United States has a secular Army composed of members hewing to a variety or religious beliefs or none at all, the Islamic State (IS) fighters are one thing: Sunni Muslims. (This is not a logical fallacy. I am not stating all Muslims are IS sympathizers, but simply all IS members are Muslims. ) When they complete a mission, they are always reported as hailing their god, "Allahu Akhbar!"

For those who wish to displace religion from its foundational position motivating most of the Islamic attacks in the past 35+ years, I would suggest that is a mistake. My position is to neither denigrate nor praise any particular religion, only to recognize a foundational belief driving today's hostilities.

Christianity worships a meek prophet, Jesus, who according to the dogma martyred himself so that others may live (John 10:10). Looking at the the Eucharist, what could it mean when Jesus insists that his followers will actually be eating his flesh and blood when they partake of the ritual?

One understanding might be that, beginning from the premise that man is fallen and therefore all are killers and betrayers and every other bad thing that humans are capable of, through the grisly Eucharist man is made to re-enact his responsibility for his murderous impulse each time.

The believer must face his failures in a very real way, by ingesting Him and therefore integrating His faultlessness into his being, perhaps analogous to a pluripotent stem cell injection. Ergo, every Eucharist is the drama of death and Resurrection, writ small (the Resurrection being the continuance of the life in the believer who has partaken of the meal.) Whether that is a precise analysis of His intention (who can know?) one point is clear: Jesus intends to be the last and ultimate martyr.

He will redeem man so that he need not continue carrying out his petty part (though it hasn't quite worked out that way.) Despite man's continued bad behavior, Jesus's death is memorialized at most services. No more sacrificial lambs, no more Crucifixion, no more martyrdom.

Jesus is known as the "Prince of Peace" and the "Lamb of God". This stands diametrically opposite to the warrior Mohammed, who does not preach love of one's brother. In fact, this is a tightly fraternal religion and its members are charged with killing the infidel, who in fact, may just be a member of another sect of Islam (Shi'ia).

To say this interpretation of Sharia is extremism is like calling the Catholic, who believes he is consuming the body and blood of Christ, misbegotten. In fact, they are both faithful adherents.

Followers of Christianity may not have gotten the brotherhood message correct for several centuries, and gross numbers committed grave crimes under cover of their God. Many still do not understand the message of the religion they would claim. But the message is naught but love, and especially, love the stranger.

However, for the Muslims warring today, for those who fight behind the aegis of their prophet Mohammed, they are not misunderstand their doctrine, they are fulfilling it. It is not for them the self-immolation of the Hindu or the Buddhist. There are no Gandhis.

Maybe someone should have done a cultural study prior to invasion and occupation. Some liberals might have stopped insisting what a peaceful religion Islam is.

Of course, it can be expected that anyone will fight against the colonizer, as the French and later the Americans saw in Vietnam. But in Iraq, we were two-down, for not only were we the unwelcome invaders, but the people had been seething at least since they were thrown together into that great confabulation called Iraq last century. We simply unleashed the controls on all of that anger.

Time to say, "We can't do this anymore. We are aiding and abetting the violence by our very presence. Sorry, gotta go." Yes, it's shabby, but who hasn't the U.S. betrayed at one time or another? That's realpolitik, baby.

Or we can continue with the showdown at the Apocalypto Corral, and give the talking heads more daily predictable fodder. And give you something predictable to view when you flip on the news, and a sound byte for when you want to have a little banter with business partners on world matters.

I write on a military blog, and I'm getting bored with this.

Are you getting bored?

Ducks, Redux

--Prefer your hunters look like Fernando Fernandez?
by Leonard Nones, GQ (1968)

I beg to present you as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah, 
with one hundred and fifty heavy guns and plenty of ammunition,
and also about twenty-five thousand bales of cotton.
--W. T. Sherman, Major-General

Now I don't mind choppin' wood,
and I don't care if the money's no good
Ya take what ya need and ya leave the rest
But they should never have taken the very best 
--The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, The Band

~“Officers, what offence have these men done?
~Marry, sir, they have committed false report;
moreover, they have spoken untruths;
secondarily, they are slanders;
sixth and lastly, they have belied a lady; 
thirdly, they have verified unjust things;
and, to conclude, they are lying knaves. 
--Much Ado About Nothing; William Shakespeare
_____________________

How embarrassing, predictable and perfectly-scripted is the outrage to the religious and social comments voiced by a character (Mr. Robertson) on the Duck t.v. program. If you played any part in this, you are being manipulated and are perfect pawns of the power brokers. Your outrage to an imagined offense is energy dissipated.

Not that this silly t.v. episode is of any import, save for the fact it shows the hatred, derision and bigotry which has riven our nation.

The producer's shameless manipulation in their construction of the Ducks (=Robertsons) as god-fearin' is a way to conduct a free Nielson-type survey. They -- whoever they are -- are gauging your tolerance for the exercise of your freedoms. Predictably, the good liberals are howling with disdain for the Duck brand of Christianity, which is to say, Christianity. They are persecuting the "dynasty" in their own bloodless and craven way.

Do you want to reform Christianity? Send the Ducks to a re-education camp? If so, what side of history are you on? Are you shocked and awed that Christianity is so judgmental? Outraged? Did you not know that Christian dogma rejects homosexuality, and that this is why a church wedding service for gays makes no sense? Are you Christian and finding yourself drawing into fellowship with these erstaz t.v. bumpkins by necessity?

Do you believe in the Constitution, and find your mouth agape at the insanity of the virtual lynch mob of the supposed best-and-brightest, the compassionate liberals, who are tripping over themselves to show their intolerance and distrust of their own constitutional rights?

The furore which erupted in the liberal commentariat, the palpable anger and hatred towards the actor, a stereotypical redneck, is ridiculous. Hatred is hatred -- it is absolute, and there is no "good" form. It is corrosive to fraternity and cannot survive a genuine impulse to brotherhood, which is the thing we most lack today.

The producers of the Duck program are forcing and revealing your bigotry to you. Is every effort by a white man to express his experience with a black person, without genuflecting, to be condemned? If so, kiss your democracy goodbye. 

What part of freedom of speech and religion is too unpalatable to the mostly white liberals? From whence this white liberal fear and anger, and why the thought that muzzling one's non-hate free speech is the way to a better society? The liberals chomping at the bit to curtail and discredit this character's speech wish to trample our Constitution as badly as do the neo-Cons. 

Our collective movement seems to span the small metronomic arc of a couple of thousand years (if that), and we are now back to persecuting Christians. It all looks very familiar, and we are not past our bloody-minded urges. The bible is the guidebook for Christians, and it proclaims, "You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination" (Leviticus 18:22) That's simple and clear. Now, you can deride those you think gulls who believe it's the word of God, but for them, it is.

The nice thing about our separation of Church and State is that one may believe or not, and the State may not intrude into that realm. (Separate is that fact that in a democratic society gay couples in civil partnership deserve all benefits accruing to any legal domestic partnership. You may think Chrisianity is old-fashioned, but most other faith systems aside from from Islam, Baha'i, Mormonism, Urantianism are even older. If you're a totemist, wiccan, pagan, polytheist, polyandrist, etc., you're beliefs are even more antiquated than those of Christians.)

If you're in a persecutorial mode, you can find succor with like minds in The Inquisition and the Joe McCarthy trials, but please do not fancy yourselves enlightened or democratic. What has you in a lather is not hate speech, but the personal views of a member of your society voiced on a television program.

If you are railing against this t.v. character's views on anything (religion, race relations -- anything), you are drawing into a safe community of like-minded bigots who would seek to curb another's speech and try him in the court of public opinion (never a reliable inquisitor.) Who are you to label someone as a cad, fool or liar? Worse yet, a t.v. persona, an unreal thing.

Why does the liberal commentariat feel it is their obligation to protest a white man's declaration that he worked in the fields with black men and did not see his black co-workers singled out for mistreatment? In the quote, Mr. Duck did not use a racial expletive when speaking of his experience ("I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person. Not once"), yet the liberals are on him like hyenas (much to the delight of the program producers.) The unenlightened arrogance is unsavory. 

This is the vitriol that creates a polarized society. In the past several years, I have seen Baptist friends who were once proud of and involved with their society's move to inclusivity now too drawing in amongst their own, feeling the burn of marginalization which the Tea Party and their too-ready liberal antagonists fan.

We have lived through ten years of war. Try and let go your anger as a gift to yourself, your country and your world.

I am loathe to call myself "liberal" against such a wave of fetid and naked bigotry.

Walks Like a Duck

 --graphic from RAW friend Alan Cring 

Because you can’t starve us out
And you can't makes us run
Cuz we're them old boys raised on shotgun
And we say grace and we say Ma’am
And if you ain’t into that we don’t give a damn 
--Country Boy Can Survive, Hank Williams, Jr. 
_____________________

Everything represented in the media comes with spin engineered to make the viewer feel one of the basic emotions (sad/mad/happy). Concomitant with this is the catharsis achieved by feeling like one is among the elect for understanding and identifying with the right side (the side to which one chooses to cleave.)

What masquerades as debate today erupted this week over a television character's opinion that homosexuality was disordered behavior, akin to bestiality. The media feigned at being aghast, stating that this point of view was "un-Christian". 

Sadly, no: In fact Mr. Duck was echoing exactly the Christian party line. In fact, it forms one of the pillars of belief in our main faith system in the United States. The problem is, proclaiming one is anti-homosexual is a bit embarrassing today when government agencies are recognizing homosexual partnerships as being a valid route to conferring employment benefits and inheritance. It is a bit démodé, quaint, to be polite.

The offending character was the patriarch of the Robinson family, a redneck family represented by a group of ZZ Top look-alikes who supposedly represent the Tea Party archetype in rural America. To some, they are subjects of derision, others doubt their veracity. Still others identify with them, and find kinship with their guns-and-god stance. Why did some t.v. executive feel these American Taliban look-alikes would make for good programming?

Further, why does anyone watch this? Is this a subtle joke, reflecting America's zealotry and in this way, kinship with the Taliban, back at us? (That seems too subtle a project.) Is it a bone thrown out to the marginalized backwoods of America, egging them on to be just who they are, then flogging them when it seems appropriate to do so? 

Is this spectacle a cultural expiation on a grand scale? Is wearing Mossy Oak tree bark the new scarlet "A"? In a theatrical biblical flogging, Mr. Duck the elder has been banished from his eponymous program -- ostracism and scapegoating for the new American project.

Whatever the Ducks are, the patriarch exactly voiced not just Right-wing zealotry when he disparaged homosexuality, but in fact the stance of mainline Christianity vis-a-vis homosexuality. As the late Christopher Hitchens wrote, you either are or you aren't. Cafeteria Christianity is no Christianity at all. 

The text for Christians, the bible, is clear in its stance against homosexuality. Therefore -- why would someone be ostracized for being Christian? Or are we so hypocritical that we hold these views, but may not voice them? Does constitutional freedom of speech no longer cover freedom of speech and religion?

Just last week it was reported that a Presbyterian minister was defrocked for wedding his gay son to his male lover. Show me the mainstream Christian church that marries gay couples and I will agree that Mr. Duck Sr. is being un-Christian. Until that day, he is being exactly Christian, and being ridiculed for it. Were he in a Brooks Brothers suit at the Washington National Cathedral, no one would bat an eye. 

New Yorker satirist Andy Borowitz hops on by writing in his fake story, "Scalia Calls 'Duck Dynasty' Decision Unconstitutional": 

He warned that the suspension of the "Duck" star would have a "chilling effect" on freedom of speech in America: "If Phil Robertson can be muzzled for expressing this perfectly legitimate view, what's to prevent the same thing from happening to, say, a Justice of the Supreme Court?

But Borowitz's attempt at satire is not. Mr. Robertson's "perfectly legitimate view" is not only that, but it is the raison d'etre for his hiring by A & E, and the exercise of those American rights which he is supposed to embody (free speech and religion).

It is completely disingenuous to feign disdain over his doctrinal thinking. It's a travesty for the media to yank us about, and for us to spend time doing anything but feeling disgust for the tripe we are mainlined on network t.v.

U.S.A. -- Ducks are us.

Gott Mit Uns

Everybody's talkin' about Bagism, Shagism,
dragism, Madism, Ragism, Tagism,
This-ism, That-ism
--Give Peace a Chance, John Lennon

We guard our world with locks and guns
And we guard our fine possessions
And once a year when Christmas comes
We give to our relations
--Rebel Jesus, Jackson Browne
__________________

Ranger hangs out at a coffee shop adjacent to the American Legion Post 13, and recently noticed a sign on the Legion's bulletin board: "For God and Country".

This concept is in their constitution and some of their goals are the furtherance of Judeo-Christian values like family, daily prayer and attendance at weekly church services. This post has monthly in-house church services.

The Legion's position dovetails nicely with a House of Representatives that recently paused from attending to issues like the budget deficit, soaring unemployment and myriad other Gordian Knot problems to reaffirm in a 396-9 vote that the U.S. national motto is "In God We Trust" (reminiscent of the motto on every German soldier's belt buckle in World War II.) Our Founders de facto motto, E Pluribus Unum, got ditched around the time of the McCarthy era Commie scares.

The American Legion is also devoted to 100% Americanism, a volatile cocktail of God-isms and patriotisms. As a former Army man, why do I not remember taking an oath to any God when I joined the military? This prompted the following thoughts:

[1] Ranger is a full patriot, but resents the Legion forcing a god upon me. While I do not believe in god, this does not make me any less of an American.

[2] If there were a God, why would we think He or his Son would particularly favor the U.S.? Is God political? The basis of Christianity is love thy neighbor as thyself, and the U.S. has flubbed that up on numerous occasions. Furthermore, shouldn't that neighborly love be extended to nasty Islamic hadji terrorists? How does the Legion's faith in doctrine -- turn the other cheek, for instance -- comport with modern warfare?

[3] Did God or His Son tell us to preemptively kill, or to torture and kidnap? How do we deify a tortured guy hanging on a cross and not feel empathy for those we torture?

[4] How did my country get hijacked by the God crowd? What do they do with a person like me?

[5] Godliness and patriotism are not synonymous. If one were godly, patriotism would be a foreign concept.

[6] Why do we struggle with aborting a fetus and ramp up the faithful by ascribing personhood to non-people, but have no problem dropping bombs on real people? Is the fetus sacred and actual life, not?

[7] Why would a God of a nomadic, Semitic tribe relocate to America and favor white-skinned people?

Before devolving into absurdity: Why is our nation great because it recognized the need to separate church and state, yet our congressionally-established fraternal organizations force the concept of god down our throats?

That just feels unAmerican.

Radically Left

Life is anything that dies when you stomp on it
--Dave Barry
__________________

[Ranger will not be re-wallowing (to quote Dick Cavett) in the sorrow-porn of the day, each agency vying for the new angle, like the "Children of 9-11". Not today.]

Today we return to our homey Sunday homily form --

Sunday Homily: Was Jesus the world's biggest bleeding heart liberal, or, Would Glen Beck call Jesus a Bum?

This entry was inspired by Paul Longgrear's recent letter to the editor of the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer sent to Ranger by a sleeper agent. Col. Longgrear, a minister and a brother-in-arms, objects to the idea of a "fair share plan" which he implies led to the socialization of this Great Nation and an endlessly raised debt ceiling.

Both Lisa and Ranger have conservative friends with strong notions of how to keep Old Glory flying high. It seems they are often emotional reactions which involve keeping certain people (= parasites) away from the pot of goodies that they have not earned, or alternately, which keep them parasitzed.

The parasites are people who need some assistance to make ends meet, and the fear is that they will keep the rest of us on a hamster wheel working for their salvation, or at least their existence. This is an adversarial relationship which presupposes that life would be better if the parasites could be separated from their host.

Many of these conservative thinkers also hold a strong Christian religious stance. Still, they also accept the rectitude of the use of torture in the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©), whose 10th birthday we commemorate today.

This all brought Ranger back to the founder of their religion, Jesus -- an unprivileged man conceived by an unwed mother and born in a stable. He was dedicated to the concept of uplifting the non-productive parasites in his society, i.e. the early Christians before they developed mega-churches with big screens, cheerleaders and quad sound systems.

Jesus was a thorn in the side of the Roman status quo who had consolidated power amongst the elite. Instead of genuflecting to authority, Jesus provided free wine and loaves and fishes on a socialist basis (= commodities). He also performed healing miracles for the most unsavory amongst his society (= free health care). Jesus was better than an EBT card.

These miracles tried to give the masses their "fair share" of the largesse of a newly sent Godson. "The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly" (John 10:10). He was not speaking to the bankers.

As for the issue of illegals, wasn't the unverified journey to Bethlehem by a future mother of God an attempt by the Romans to deal with illegal immigration? And how did that end up for the Roman Empire?

Jesus's message formed the basis of a new religion which appealed to the hoi polloi of the times, and is now the predominant religion of the developed Western nations. But somehow, the founder's method was warped into something called prosperity gospel, and many Christians think that God somehow holds those in lower socio-economic rungs in disdain.

However, the words of their founder belie this notion:

"Sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor ..." (Luke 18:22; Matthew 19:21);

"But you have insulted the poor. Is it not the rich who are exploiting you?" (James 2:7)

"And if thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee; then thou shalt relieve him: [yea, though he be] a stranger, or a sojourner; that he may live with thee" (Leviticus 25:35)

"I have shown you in every way, by laboring like this, that you must support the weak" (Acts 20:34)

"He has filled the hungry with good things and the rich he has sent away empty" (Luke 1:53). "Do not mistreat an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt" (Exodus 22:21).

Of course, there is nothing that should link the fantasies of a nomadic desert people with the workings of our society or governing policies. The Bible ain't the Constitution and we are already a socialist nation. Since Christianity is a socialist dogma, Ranger concludes that religion is the problem and not the solution.

We seem to be led by the mish-mash that is the Old Testament meets the New: An eye for an eye, yet turn the other cheek -- "forgive up to seventy times seven". Do we/should we follow Christian values when dealing with religious enemies? Should "values" issues (homosexual rights; abortion rights) even be a part of national political discourse?

If someone would turn some water into wine, Ranger says he'll drink to the elimination of biblical dogma from the halls of Congress.

--Ranger and Lisa