Kansas Preacher Man

 

He who is without sin among you,
let him be the first to throw a stone 
--John 8:7 

A half truth is a whole lie
--Yiddish proverb

 The evil that men do lives after them; 
the good is oft interred with their bones 
--Julius Ceasar (III, ii)
 __________________

We don't know Rev. Fred Phelps from Adam, and do not hawk any particular dogma. But we are interested in the way media presents events.

In our outraged society, the death of Kansas preacher Fred Phelps must call for celebration -- a blot of medieval backwardness has been removed from the planet. Mr. Phelps gained infamy for his pronouncements that the United States' pro-homosexual stance was bringing the wrath of God down upon it, and his protests at military funerals gained him no love from that community of mourners.

A WaPo piece on his death even endeavored to take the high road by suggesting that imminent posts by Facebookers and Twitterers not dance on his grave, as that might be bad form. But what the Post failed to provide readers was a balanced obituary for this easy-to-dislike man, which would have provided real grist for such a request.

Missing was the momentous first half of this attorney-cum-preacher's life, in which he was one of the only private attorney's in early 1960's Kansas who would advocate for the civil rights of its black citizens, and he was successful in a big way. As a Christian, Phelps found racial bias unpalatable and against the word of God. All men are made in God's image; that's what his Good Book said. He could not brook their second-class status, and he moved against prejudice in a meaningful way.

You may call him a demogogue, but this was a man of action and not solely words who behaved in accordance with his beliefs. According to his moral guidebook, marriage was between men and women, and recent moves to force gay marriage in church were an an abomination. He didn't create his viewpoint, but was guided by the Christian rulebook, a book which has provided the foundation for many of our laws. Playing by those rules, his positions were consonant throughout his public life. 

Gay rights is the cause du jour -- the last frontier of the civil rights movement -- and this time, Phelps was on the wrong side of public opinion. Monster (on gay marriage) / savior (black civil rights). Demagogue / demigod. Like Ella Fitzgerald sang, " 'taint what you do, it's the way that you do it," and Phelps' approach was far from politic.

However, it is futility to expect the State to attempt to coerce the Church to believe otherwise on the gay marriage issue. Our Founders were wise enough to separate the two spheres. But separation does not imply smashing the institution. We are not Communistic, and those who would condemn religionists are as intolerant as those they would condemn. Live and let live is the ideal.

The whole truth of the man's life is complex, not so easily dismissed in a 120 character tweeted diatribe. Had the Post presented a complete obituary, they would have to forgo their saintliness, and we would have to forgo our desire for outrage and easily understood stories.

Complexities require thought.

Truth is a Pathless Land

The devil and a friend of his
were walking down the street,
when they saw ahead of them
a man stoop down and pick up
something from the ground, look at it,
and put it away in his pocket.

The friend said to the devil,
“What did that man pick up?”
“He picked up a piece of Truth,”
said the devil.
“That is a very bad business for you, then,”
said his friend.
“Oh, not at all,”the devil replied,
“I am going to let him organize it."   
--Truth is a Pathless Land, 
Jiddhu Krishnamurti 

A man goes to knowledge as he goes to war:
wide-awake, with fear, with respect,
and with absolute assurance.
Going to knowledge or going to war in any
other manner is a mistake,
and whoever makes it might never live to regret it
--A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, 
Carlos Castenada 

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There has been a sea change in the content and distribution of news since 2006, when we started RangerAgainstWar.

This week, the executioner's hood came down on disinterested reportage on National Public Radio in the form of a program covering Facebook's recent $19 Billion acquisition of WhatsApp, a mobile messaging service.

Technology columnist Farhad Manjoo late of The New York Times stated disingenuously that young people don't like that their documentation of every facet of their lives (=doxxing) is being data mined. Did you get that? This suggests that the reason one opens a Facebook account is to protect one's privacy, which is absurd.

The unspoken presumption and agenda was that everyone must participate on Facebook, which is unequivocally false. (Interestingly, Manjoo wrote a book called True Enough, in which he recognized our current slide into what comedian- posing as -journo Steven Colbert called, "Truthiness" -- a way of "feeling the news".) So while Manjoo wrote a book about truthiness, virtually the entire hour-long NPR roundtable on the What'sApp story was an homage to such idiocy, meaning a lack of rigor and a puffy sycophantic awe at the latest toy.

Here's a portion of Manjoo's own truthiness (keep in mind Manjoo was formerly tech columnist at the Wall Street Journal and Slate):

"You know, (What'sApp developers) were adamant from the start that they did not want this app to feel lumbered -- you know, lumbering, sort of weighed down by advertising.

"It has no ads. They sort of have written several blog posts about how they hate advertising. And it also doesn't collect much user data because they don't have advertising. So they don't really need to kind of target you by, you know, your demographics or your location or, you know, any other information about you. So you sign on with very little information. And this is very unusual kind of in the internet industry and unusual -- very unusual for a company that's now going to be owned by Facebook"

I don't know what it means to "sort of have written several blog posts," but what are Manjoo's implications? --

• Idealism is beautiful and making no money from advertising is idealistically beautiful.
• What happened to FB's founder Mark Zuckerberg that he has become this profit-making titan of industry who sells ads on his sites?
• All hail the "advertising-hating" developers of What'sApp who have just pocketed a cool $19 Billion from the sale of their app to an advertising revenue-creating giant (so much for idealism.)

Manjoo called the adamantly anti-advertising stance of the What'sApp developers an "interesting shift", but this is a mouthful of mush for there is no shift whatsoever in media's revenue-making model: advertising is king. The developers just sold their product for $19 Billion to Mr. Zuckerberg, who will gladly get his hands dirty with advertising if the developers won't.

But did anyone else listening to or moderating the program catch these glaring inconsistencies which essentially rendered the program clap-trap? It does not seem so.

This is but one example of agenda posing as information, and it happens every time you read a paper or listen to any media transmission. Today, misinformation and agenda is the norm. Some more recent lies that pop into mind:

The Week Magazine recently wrote that the rise of the Fascist far-right Jobbik party in Hungary must be due to the fact that its members are unfamiliar with its uncomfortable Nazi link. Sadly, no -- more likely the neo-Nazi members are delighted with the linkage, and hence their affiliation. Appealing as it may be to a gentle conscience, we cannot whitewash hatred by explaining it as a function of the ignorance of the practitioners.Hatred is a deliberate choice every bit as valid as choosing for tolerance.

Reporting on the Ukrainian violence, the ABC Evening News added to the case against Ukraine's Prseident Viktor Yanukovich by stating he had been ushered into office on the results of a undemocratic election. This is false, as the election was closely monitored by an international group of elections officials. Whatever claims exist against Yanukovich, they cannot be substantiated by piling on the false one of an undemocratic election.

And there is so much more, on every newscast, in every paper.

Back in 2006, some interesting and informed people landed at the new blog, RAW. One, a Norwegian anarchist, pled, "Tell us what to think, Ranger." We were somewhat amused but also flummoxed: who were we to tell anyone what to think? Our goal then, as now, was to observe and place our observations out there for consideration and dialog.

Today, the reporter's agenda is not merely obscured -- however faintly -- but it is actively championed. Writers like Ezra Klein and Glenn Greenwald are hopping on the bandwagon of providing "opinionated news", and oxymoron if ever there were. At best, it is "benevolent propaganda" ready to tell you how they think, and how you probably should, too.

More on benevolent propaganda soon.

War in the Time of Facebook

 --The New Androids? 

ET, phone home! 
--E.T. the Extraterrestrial (1982) 

There's no place like home 
--Wizard of Oz (1939) 

Though it's cold and lonely in the deep dark night 
 I can see paradise by the dashboard lights 
--Paradise by the Dashboard Lights, Meatloaf 

We shall meet in the place 
where there is no darkness 
--1984, George Orwell
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USAToday's Weekend edition happened to have a sickly greenish hue to all of its photos yesterday, but the one of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg fronting the Money section bore a special pall. "Facebook: No place like home" was the homey title of the piece.

"We're calling this Home," said Zuckerberg of a download for "a family of Facebook apps" for the home screen of Android devices. The implication is that this device is a place you live, and a portal through which the world may enter and on which you may interface with them.  But this Home is nowhere.

We feel that if there is such a thing as "evil", its name is "Facebook". Facebook disappears people into dark dungeons lit only by the screen lights. It is a compulsive narcissism which has been imposed upon the users by the imperative to check the updates of their hundred or so friends throughout the day, and to likewise compulsively post the minutiae of their own daily so-called lives. Everything is neat and tidy on the 3 x 5" screen because we have all become editors of our existence, filtering out anything which fails to further the narrative.  But editors do not generate copy, at least not first-person.

Facebook is a Voluntary Servitude. Not only is it a supreme arrogance to imagine anyone cares to follow the timeline of your life, but it is also a supreme idiocy to reveal yourself so publicly to any comers. While Facebook might be a helpful escape for shut-ins or people housed in gulags, it is mainly useful for data mining by government agencies and cat burglars.

Like the students who used to hang non-functioning cell phones from their belt loops to show they were Somebody, today's Facebook slavers suggest that one is a (hopeful) player in the flow of life provided one swears one fealty via compulsive keyboard tapping, and proffer a suggested-though-false paradigm that everyone has a chair at the table of Facebook Home.  It is HOME, after all, and home is where they have to take you, right?

The new Facebook app also lets you "Like" something by double-tapping, or "Chat Head" with a "friend" whose mug pops up in the middle of your other Facebook distractions. Why are adult humans clicking on "thumbs up" icons across the internet?  It is so "middle school" to want to be liked in this way of being approved of.

Run away, while you still can cut the umbilicus.

(Note: If you tossed your AOL or Yahoo! account under the bus in favor of Gmail -- if you hop on the latest technological bus -- you are probably beyond this action. By my Old School homies still have a chance of rejecting the ersatz and finding a real home. If you've tried to rein in your habit, please let us know how that's going for you.  This is not heresy; the revolution WILL be televised, only you won't be there, as you will be watching it at HOME.]

Virtually Yours

--Arend Van Dam

Walking like a one man army
Fighting with the shadows in your head
Living up the same old moment
Knowing you'd be better off instead,
If you could only . . .
Say what you need to say [8x]
--Say, John Mayer

Express yourself
[You've got to make him]
So you can respect yourself
Hey, hey, hey!
--Express Yourself, Madonna

Pray what needs prayin'
Say what needs sayin'
Cause we're only here for a little while
--We're Only Here for a Little While,
Billy Dean
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We have speculated recently about the lack of protest in the U.S. Perhaps the fact that any protests which do occur tend to be small and easily corralled is the reason we do not hear of them.

The recent protests in Egypt have many pundits glowing about the potential of social networking platforms like Facebook and YouTube to foment change. The NYT suggests they offered a way for the "discontented to organize and mobilize" around a cause like that of Khalid Said, murdered by police because he supposedly uncovered instances of police corruption (Movement Began With Outrage and a Facebook Page That Gave It an Outlet).

But in order for such networking to manifest in actual social unrest requires waves of disenchanted, a phenomenon that may not resonate with ubiquitous cheap Chinese goods, nachos and wide screens and enough money to pay for a ticket to be distracted by the latest Hollywood drivel at the local multiplex.

Contemplating what a 21st century American protest might look like, I was brought to mind of a new viewing experience held recently in Miami: Wallcast. Wallcast is a 7,000 square-foot outdoor screen onto which was projected a Wagner opera for the viewing pleasure of the outdoor masses who could not score a ticket into the theatre (New World Symphony in Miami Beach).

The sounds was praised, as 167 speakers were unobtrusively placed behind plants surrounding the outdoor setting, "tucked neatly into a rectangular network of horizontal and vertical tubes. It looks more like an enormous tubular sculpture than an array of speakers." (Terry Gillam's Brazil, anyone?) "[T]he orchestra came through with remarkable presence, body and clarity. Sitting in the park watching the broadcast you do not detect the music coming from any particular set of speakers. Rather, it permeates the space."

And the cameramen were innovative in their use of side and overhead shots, giving the screen viewers a sensation of actually being at the performance (if one is willing to assume the perspective of the innovative cameramen and resist vertigo.) Wallcast may well be a spectre of things to come.

Our protesters may one day arrive, but they will be cordoned off from any meaningful confrontation, instead confronted by a giant wall screen onto which is projected the figures of our leaders gazing out, mutely, upon the rabble. We will have had our say, and it will feel real because for us, it was.

We will have organized, recruited and we will be tired, having paid for our transport and hotel rooms, and we will have schmoozed with our fellows and duly documented the experience on Facebook and Twitter.

If a tweet is chirped in the woods, is it heard?

And then, the screen will go dark.