Welcome to the first official issue of The Public Sphere. We have titled this issue “Global Responsibility.” After a summer of Olympics in China, hurricanes in the Caribbean, snide repartee between Vladimir Putin and Dick Cheney, and the official start of the presidential election campaigns, it is time to reflect on what it means to be responsible in our actions towards the world. While every piece may focus on something more local, each piece still queries something we may have taken for granted about politics, religion, culture, and media. Valerie Bailey reflects on the Sarah Palin as archetype within conservative evangelical Christian subculture. John Cochran‘s essay discusses how one manages the climate crisis through a transformation of consciousness. David Dault examines the dissolution of medical ethics in the midst of the U.S. healthcare crisis. Jacqueline Hidalgo‘s photo essay presents images of   U.S. religious life found along the road side when traveling from California to New York, while Marc Lombardo diagnoses the disease of U.S. democracy. Sourena Mohammadi‘s photo essay excavates the complex relationships between martyrdom and culture in Iran, and Paloma Ramirez remains indignant over New York City’s attempt to control her eating habits. Finally, Katy Scrogin asks us to reconsider if economic growth can really measure the health of U.S. society.

Individual authors may disagree with each other’s positions in this magazine-a dissonance that we believe is central to conversation in the public sphere. We invite you to read our queries of public life, and then to respond with your own thoughts.

By The Public Sphere | The post Issue № 1 <small> | September 2008</small> appeared first on The Public Sphere.

“The goal or object of practice is pleasure.”
(The Logic of Sense, trans. Mark Lester (Columbia University Press, 1990), 272.)  Gilles Deleuze

Permaculture farm

The majority of the citizens of the industrialized world and even a large number of inhabitants of the United States have come to recognize global warming as a significant problem posed to the continued existence of the species homo sapiens. However, a tremendous political and social inertia remains regarding just what needs to be done about this problem and how to do it. In other words, there is a clear disconnect between our cognitive understanding of the dilemmas posed by global warming and our apparent inability to address those dilemmas practically. This gap between what we know about global warming and what we are actually doing about it can be read as a sign that there is something about our framing of the issue that is itself a part of the problem.

Finding a “solution” to global warming is not just a matter of developing new technologies and the political mandate to implement them. If we are to address the issue seriously, then what needs to be fundamentally reconceived is nothing else and nothing less than the entire relationship between our species and the natural environment. At the heart of the relationship between organism and environment is the experience of pleasure as it arises in co-determining action. In nature, there is nothing more absolutely necessary than the superfluous (e.g., the feathers on a peacock, the spots on a bird, the vibrant colors of a flower, etc.). The activity of pleasure is the exclusive means by which all forms of biological life reproduce themselves. Accordingly, from the properly biological perspective, to say that humanity is in danger of ceasing to exist is really to say that humans are forgetting how to have pleasure.

In order to further examine the practicality and necessity of pleasure for the present moment, I would like to compare two recent approaches taken to the problem of global warming. One finds an interesting juxtaposition between the respective ways in which Al Gore and Michael Pollan address the problem in their lectures posted on the TED website. According to their website, “TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out in 1984 as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds.” Now it stands as a place on the Internet where ideas are spread through posted recorded talks.   Though these lectures appeared in the same forum, Pollan”s simple perspectival-practice approach contrasts starkly with Gore”s hero-citizen-market approach. Examining the contrast between these strategies allows us to appreciate how the very approach to a problem is itself a part of the problem. This examination also extends our notion of the problem of global warming into the realms of practice, play, and pleasure.

Al Gore”s New Thinking on the Climate Crisis portrays the problem of global warming as a problem of political will. According to Gore, the fact that the media are not adequately conveying the seriousness of the problem stands as a major barrier to action. In particular, political candidates need to be confronted with respect to what they are doing or not doing about the issue. As a response to the mainstream media”s inattentiveness, Gore advocates public organizing efforts to raise awareness in support of policies such as renewable energy, conservation efficiency, and a global transition to a low-carbon economy. Gore”s solutions are political and economic. His approach implies that, while it was our technology that helped to create the problem of global warming, we can take steps to reverse that problem by using technology in a politically and socially unified way.

As a rhetorical supplement to this political strategy, Gore conjures the creation of another hero generation.   According to Gore, we must recognize that with the problem of global warming, “history has presented us with a choice-a planet emergency, a generational mission.” Developing this theme, Gore evokes a series of images: World War II, the end of slavery, women”s suffrage, the civil rights movement, and landing a man on the moon. He says we should receive our opportunity to respond to global warming with profound joy and gratitude-it is an opportunity for us to rise to the challenge, to fight a war… to be heroes. In addition, if we succeed, then “we are the generation about which philharmonic orchestras, and poets and singers, will celebrate by saying they were the ones that found it within themselves to solve this crisis and to lay the basis for a bright and optimistic human future.” Gore concludes: “We need a higher level of consciousness… and that is coming.”

In contrast to Gore”s approach, Pollan advocates a shift in human thinking about the evolutionary location of the species; for Pollan, consciousness is just another tool used for getting along within co-evolutionary species systems. Pollan develops this point by beginning with a “simple” story about the practice of gardening:  

What did the bumble bee and I (as gardener) have in common… both of us were disseminating the genes of one species and not another… and both of us-if I can imagine the bee”s point of view-probably thought we were calling the shots… I had decided what potato I wanted to plant… I had picked my Yukon Gold or Yellow Fin or whatever it was… and that bee no doubt, assumed that it had decided I am going for that apple tree, I am going for that blossom…We have a grammar that suggests that”s who we are-we are sovereign subjects in nature, the bee as well as me… I plant… I weed… but what if that grammar is nothing more than a self-serving conceit? … The bee thinks he or she is in charge but we know better… The bee has been manipulated by that flower-I mean in the Darwinian sense… it (the flower) has evolved a very specific set of traits-color, scent-that has lured that bee in…The bee has been cleverly fooled into taking the nectar, getting some powder on his legs and then off to the next blossom… The bee is not calling the shots…   I realized then that I was not either… I have been seduced by that potato and not another into spreading its genes… what if we looked at us from this point of view… these other species that are working on us… agriculture appeared to me not as an invention, not as a technology but as a co-evolutionary development…

He goes on to add that viewing us and the world from the plants” and animals” points of view:  

…helps us to understand this weird anomaly:
We had this Darwinian revolution: we are just one species among many… evolution is just working on us the same way its working on all the others, we are acted upon as well as acting, we are really in the fabric of life… the weird thing is we have not absorbed this lesson 150 years later-none of us really believes this… we are still Cartesians… We are the children of Descartes, who believe that subjectivity, consciousness sets us apart-that the world is divided into subjects and objects.

Pollan then describes the practice of permaculture at the Polyface Farm in Virginia. Permaculture uses polyculture, the cultivation of multiple species in the same space, in reproduction of the diversity of natural ecosystems. There is a web of intricate connections that allow a diverse population of plant life and animals to survive by giving them food and protection. This practice understands the physiology of species, and by playing into the demands and desires of plants and animals, an abundance of food is created, while healing the earth at the same time. With little more than the technology of fences and the perspectival shift of “looking at us and the world from the plants” or the animals” point of view,” Pollan points to a practice (one of many approaches) that actually heals the earth and creates food by animating nature through playing into the pleasures of species. In Marxist terms, this is a practice to repair “the metabolic rift.” ((Capitalist production collects the population together in great centres, and causes the urban population to achieve an ever-growing preponderance¦ disturbs the metabolic interaction between man and the earth, i.e. it prevents the return to the soil of its constituent elements consumed by man in the form of food and clothing; hence it hinders the operation of the eternal natural condition for the lasting fertility of the soil¦” Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1, trans. Ben Fowkes (Penguin, 1992), 637-638.))

In his talk, Gore attempts to use rhetoric to manipulate his audience, and thereby to inspire them into action. He presents an unfinished series of heroic images, and he puts the audience in the position of completing that series. Gore wants the present generation to write another chapter in so-called “culture” by fighting and winning another war. Should this combat succeed, the rewards will be more cultural products-such as hero worship in the form of philharmonic symphonies. By contrast, Pollan conceives of ecological practice as being a simple shift in perspective. Pollan proposes that we simply feel the insights of Darwin in a direct and sensual way and thereby come to understand the earth as it can be animated with little or no technology. This conception of practice does nothing more than reconcile what we say and what we do-in the practice, play, and pleasure of physics, ethics, and hedonism.

Gore is simply reanimating Cartesian thinking, while Pollan is pleading with us to understand desire as a productive force within a symbiotic relationship. There is, quite simply, a fundamental dissimilarity in these approaches that hinges upon the question of how we relate to nature. Are we the self-important species, or do we instead consider our implicit place within diverse ecological systems? ((See Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 10, “¦the aparallel evolution of heterogeneous species or transcoding in the becoming wasp of the orchid and the becoming orchid of the wasp.” “¦each of these becomings brings about the deterritorialization of one term and the reterritoralization of the other; the two becomings interlink and form relays in a circulation of intensities pushing the deterritorialization ever further.)) How can we use notions of pleasure in recognizing the difference between necessity and ambition? Nature is a violent, imbalanced, and opportunistic connection of eco-systems, but where in nature do we find avarice? Is it desire that seduces us, that moves us to follow pleasure unique to humans? Is desire part of the “evolutionary manipulation” that we should accept? What does our relation to nature say about subjectivity? Pollan is quite clear here-his aim is to cure humans of the disease of self-importance and to appreciate desire as ecologically productive. ((See Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet, Dialogues II, trans. Hugh Tomlinson (Columbia University Press, 2007), 93 “No more subjects, but dynamic individuations without subjects, which constitute collective assemblages.))

In order to understand the implications of this shift in our perspective concerning our relationship to nature, it is helpful to recall some of the concepts of Epicurean philosophy. For Epicurus, time seems to be integral to his notion of pleasure-the ability to sustain life without anxiety.   The philosopher offers two types of pleasure: kinetic and katastematic. ((Don Fowler and Peta Fowler, “Introduction,” Lucretius: On the Nature of the Universe, Oxford”s World Classics (Oxford University Press, 1999), xxii.))   Katastematic pleasure is sustainable, pleasure at rest. Kinetic pleasure is the movement of fulfilling a desire. Epicurus advocates the katastematic pleasure of equilibrium-enjoyed when desire is satisfied and pain is absent- over the kinetic pleasure of a stimulus. Thus, pleasure is involved in moving from the sensible to the thinkable in the briefest manner of time. This aesthetics moves away from the judgment of good or bad and towards the valuation of intensities. The goal of this practice is the animation of life, the animation of pleasure for the satisfying of desire. Pleasure is not a gratuitous stopgap measure of the fulfilling of lack, but the counter actualization of mixtures and movements of sense and thought that resist myth and moral code. ((See Appendix, The Logic of Sense, “Lucretius and the Simulacrum,” an article by Gilles Deleuze originally titled “Lucretius and Naturalism” and published in 1960, eight years prior to Logic of Sense.))

It is also worth recalling that Lucretius, the later Epicurean, makes no distinction between living things in his discussions of will. Voluntas (will) for Lucretius is the freedom of all living beings to follow where pleasure leads. ((On the Nature of the Nature of Things,” lines 251-292, trans. Don Fowler in Don Fowler, Lucretius On Atomic Motion: A Commentary on De Rerum Natura Book II Lines 1-332 (Oxford University Press, 2002).)) For humanity to enter into these systems at the same level of all living beings, humanity will have to accept consciousness in the Pollanian sense, as a co-evolutionary tool. To understand things from, not only the bee”s point of view, but the apple tree”s as well.

What are the implications of declaring the pleasure of a sustainable state superior to that of the pleasure of a stimulus? We arrive at an awareness of natural motion and the cycle of deviation-which is connected to an Epicurean ethical theory-in that human beings see that they themselves are a part of this motion. Human pleasure is then no longer thought to require being apart from nature, but only acting in, through, and as nature. The Epicureans went the furthest in exposing false infinities as myth, to posit a cleavage in the cause/effect relation and to expound on these notions as naturalism. The Epicurean thinking of plurality arranges Epicurus” absence of pain as pleasure-not asceticism but an active production of the absence of pain. How does this Epicurean concept of pleasure relate to current approaches toward the ecological crisis?

At first glance, permaculture and symbiotic farming seem to be limitations upon what we conventionally think of as the pursuit of pleasure, because these systems of farming are based upon the idea that animals are hardwired to follow their pleasure. This dimension of necessity in the following of pleasure has no place within the post-Cartesian, subjective understanding of the word. However, the Epicurean conception of pleasure values chiefly a resistance to over-pleasure or the voluntary action not to move. Lucretius implies that nine times out of ten, a living being will act according to the living being that he is-but that tenth instance is the voluntary action not to move. ((Fowler, Lucretius On Atomic Motion, 418-419.)) Thus, in Epicurean philosophy, the necessary and the voluntary are not opposed but are simply different aspects of the same movement. If the ecological crisis is one of behavior, then the very inertia of humanity that we bemoan with respect to our inability to confront the ecological crisis should instead be reconceived as a form of resistance to the destructive practices that created the crisis in the first place. This inertia presents us with the possibility for a pause-a hesitation-in our action. Such a pause in action might very well be the most immediately practical thing that we can do.

To enact such a pause in our actions would be to use human consciousness as Pollan suggests-in a manner entirely similar to the way the lima bean releases bio-chemicals to summon other mites to defend against spider mites. In this view, a plant”s biochemistry and human consciousness are both posited as co-evolutionary tools and neither is superior to the other.

Pollan claims that his goal is to tell stories that help us to feel Darwin”s insights viscerally. Pollan recognizes the troublesome nature of the separation of sensible pleasure from political discourse. By pausing to pursue (or not pursue) our natural desires, we simultaneously move away from the largely ineffectual political practice of merely repeating what everyone already knows. The Epicurean notion of the pause helps us to understand that actions should not be opposed to politics-growing a garden becomes just as important as starting a blog.  

In an editorial for The New York Times, Michael Pollan has provocatively asked “Why Bother” addressing global warming? In response to this question, he writes, “But there are sweeter reasons to plant that garden, to bother. At least in this one corner of your yard and life, you will have begun to heal the split between what you think and what you do, to commingle your identities as consumer and producer and citizen.” ((Michael Pollan, “Why Bother?” The New York Times Magazine, April 20, 2008; Michael Pollan, “Why Bother?” Internet; available from http://www.michaelpollan.com/article.php?id=92; accessed 10 September, 2008.)) Pollan”s approach to global warming is that of reconciling gardening, physics, and ethics within an apolitical practice of sustainable hedonism.

By John Cochran | The post Sustainable Hedonism appeared first on The Public Sphere.

Now that tax season is well behind us, I was wondering what had become of a certain messianic stimulus package. Its mysterious disappearance from collective memory may be due to more than the nation’s short attention span. Our failure to analyze its impact, in fact, may merely reveal a hesitance behind our transition to a “newer” standard of national excellence. Setting aside cultural achievement, for instance, we apparently strive for nothing beyond the growth of the Market.

Historian Robert H. Zieger describes the effects of Cold War paranoia at mid-century: an overriding U.S. concern that those brainy Soviets would out-culture us, make us look stupid, and, well, blow us up. Amidst “an orgy of self-doubt and internal agonizing,” Zieger states, Americans wondered if their lives of plenty were causing them to suffer from “popular complacency and self-indulgence,” while the Commies soared to world dominance on Sputnik’s antennae. ((Robert H. Zieger, “Uncle Sam Wants You… to Go Shopping,” Canadian Review of American Studies 34 (2004), 92.)) With such scenes before their eyes, many a public figure demanded that the nation shake itself out of its prosperous ease and focus on education and self-restraint. “Economic abundance, charged [John F.] Kennedy, had “˜so undermined our strength of character that we are now unprepared to deal with the problems that face us… Disaster is our destiny. Unless we reinstall the toughness, the moral idealism which has guided this nation during its history.'” ((Zieger, 94.)) Policies emerging before and after Kennedy’s tenure, such as 1958’s National Defense Education Act and 1964’s Civil Rights Act, says Zieger, “indicated a broad pattern of public support for active government,” ((Zieger, 97.)) even if it meddled with the financially robust status quo.

I’m not sanctioning much of the John-Waynesian ideology inherent in such “toughness,” and I don’t want to portray the Kennedy administration, so steeped in its own inimitable gaffes, as the height of governmental nobility. After all, much of Kennedy’s own New Frontier was aimed at staving off the Soviets-not at national self-actualization. The attitudes that Zieger describes, however, contrast conspicuously with our current beliefs about the market, and the individual’s place within it.

Facing its own crisis, the Bush administration had a unique plan for meeting the new century’s challenges. Shore up our educational institutions? Encourage public service? Nope. The best way to help our ailing States, apparently, was to shop. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the president “insisted that “˜Americans must get back to work, to go shopping, going to the theatre [sic], to help get the country back on a sounder financial footing.'” ((Zieger, 94.)) The nation would not stand or fall on the strength of its people or its government-but on the resilience of its markets. Under such an assumption, closing our eyes and spending is just as upstanding as voting and volunteering for jury duty.

Obviously, our ability to feed, clothe, shelter ourselves, and so on, is linked to the health of the economy. But its continual growth? The perpetual increase of production and consumption, an ever-greater deluge of toys and toasters and Toyotas? As Barbara Ehrenreich asks,

What is this fixation on growth anyway? … the “cult of  growth” has led to global warming, ghastly levels of  pollution, and diminishing resources. Tumors grow, at  least until they kill their hosts; economies ought to be  sustainable. ((Barbara Ehrenreich, “RecessionWho Cares?” The Huffington Post; Internet; available from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barbara-ehrenreich/recession-who-cares_b_80748.html; accessed 6 August 2008.))

This rampant growth means, among other things, that we’re drowning in our own mass-produced waste, even as our perceived need to consume it becomes ever more ravenous and increasingly difficult to satisfy.

Think about this addiction-and note how the stimulus package feeds it. The handout was, remember, going to shake us out of our appalling newfangled failure to shop 24/7, for all kinds of necessities such as Webkinz, the latest iPhone, or that second DVD player for both cars. This care package was to have been a beneficent boost for a nation suddenly unable to support its habit of turning frills into essentials. (Life without cable? Unthinkable.)

This plan may have contained a sliver of sense- at least to those for whom six hundred dollars might really have constituted the final bit of cash necessary to buy a little something special. Not only alleviating the pangs of our dispirited economy, these lucky few would attain temporary release from the drudgery of increasingly lengthy work hours and commutes, the frustration of microwaved lunches, and the disappointing reality of a weirdly-lit cubicle.

Whether or not such purchases really propel anyone into a happier or less stressful life, this much-touted blessing turned out to be an insultingly empty symbol, a reminder of what we could accomplish if our priorities lay elsewhere. For instance, in forcing American-style democracy upon others, we’re frittering away a sum strikingly close to that of the stimulus package. The Nation estimates that war spending this year “will easily top $160 billion” ((Editors of The Nation. “It’s the War Economy, Stupid!” in The Nation; Internet; available from http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080331/editors; accessed 6 August 2008.)) -a little over 95% of the total taken from government coffers in order to maintain our shopping habits. ((Mark Silva, “Bush signs tax rebates, modest economic boost,” in The Swamp; Internet; available from http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/02/bush_signs_tax_rebates_modest.html; accessed 6 August 2008. The stimulus package totaled $168 billion.)) If we weren’t throwing down this bundle on the war, we might not be in a situation that some feel requires a stimulus. Again, The Nation:  “Redirecting Iraq War funds to education, healthcare, renewable energy and infrastructure would create up to twice as many jobs [as military spending does.]” ((War Economy.))  If you feel like depressing and amazing yourself with the contrast between Is and Could Be, you can easily extend this thought experiment.

I’ll return to reality, though, and reveal the striking impact that the stimulus had on this writer’s life. Declining the instantly gratifying purchase of a flat-screen TV, I guiltily, grudgingly-and after an angry glare at the envelope that contained a fraction of governmental folly-deposited my bribe in the bank. Not destined for any special purpose, it essentially shored up that poor little account with a fleeting bit of reserve. Sure, I undermined the administration’s big plan, but how could I set aside reality and treat a few friends to dinner? See, I’ll need to have some cash in hand when my next health care premium comes due. Given, my check won’t cover that expense, or take a minimal crack at the bills that my insurers won’t reimburse, since I sneezed once in the “˜80s and ended up with a pre-existing condition.

But even when it is time to shell out for my useless health care plan, that government assistance will already have disappeared, because I will in the interim have had to buy groceries, pay rent, and keep the electricity flowing, all before my farcical insurers have determined that forking out for an exam would only encourage me in selfish profligacy. Indulge in a spree at the mall? I chuckle at the suggestion.

Poor as I am, though, in the grand scheme of things, I never really would have missed that government handout. Being one of the more fortunate members of the lower income brackets, I realize that, if my financial situation were to become even more of a joke, I could cut out visits to the coffee shop or disconnect Internet access. Of course, I’m also aware that this sort of economizing isn’t possible for everyone; the more than 36 million Americans who lurk beneath the poverty line, after all, would love to be able to buy a cup of tea every day from the nice people down the street. ((The CIA’s World Factbook estimates that twelve percent of the U.S. populationwhich totaled over 303 million in 2007falls beneath the poverty line. See Central Intelligence Agency, The World Factbook, Internet; available from https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html# People; accessed 6 August 2008. This number, of course, fails to represent those who earn enough to find a place somewhere “above” this categorybut who also don’t have incomes great enough to grant them access to the realm of financial security, much less existence within the middle class.))

Even $600, though, won’t heal financially dire circumstances. If, on the other hand, the total of the government’s gift packages were used to provide everyone with health care worth its name, functional public transportation, or affordable and safe housing for citizens of every income level, most people’s lives would certainly take a turn for the better. By “better” I mean increased ease in managing our daily lives. “Better,” though, also refers to the state of living more responsibly, an example of which our leaders are not providing us.

Ignoring their own cries for balanced budgets and fiscal accountability, our lawmakers have bestowed upon taxpayers, not only the cash equivalent of a Greyhound ticket, but counsel to run, not walk-or think before rushing out-to spend it. In other words, our leaders would have us go out and shop, even if we can’t really afford to do it. In taking their advice, we might end up with a few neat toys-but still won’t consider what our actions say about our place in and responsibility to the world.

There are, of course, different opinions regarding what social wellbeing means, and the ways in which we best achieve it. Near-exclusive focus on individual material comfort, however, distracts us from considering such questions, from understanding the implications of individual lifestyles upon the whole. Encased in our comfortable domestic cocoons, we fail to look critically at the wide world out there-and by this sin of omission, often wind up harming it. We go on, unthinkingly guzzling about 23% of global resources, even though we only comprise 5% of world population. ((World Population Balance, “Population and Energy Consumption,” Internet; available from http://www.worldpopulationbalance.org/pop/energy/; accessed 6 August 2008. The U.S. “consumes far more energy than any other country¦ the combined energy consumption of the other five largest added together doesn’t match U.S. energy consumption! In other words, the 5% of the world’s population that lives in the U.S. has more environmental impact than the 51% that live in the other five largest countries.)) We gobble up clothes and iPods, refusing to recognize how such consumption supports growing landfills and poor working conditions for sweatshop workers and underpaid cashiers.

And what real good, after all, will our baubles do us? Even if this stimulus works, and we all end up with new TV’s and a resilient economy, what, to be irritatingly “moral,” will such developments mean for our character? What sort of person is our government attempting to create with so much “free” cash? I would love to see the administration square its encouragement of a national shopping spree with the biblical principles it so often claims to espouse. How, for instance, would Free Market Jesus proclaim, “For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their soul?” ((Matthew 8:36.))

Clearly, I’d like the government to rethink its slavish devotion to the growth of the market. But then the question becomes: What is the role of government? Merely to keep us from killing each other, in which case it constitutes nothing more than a police force? To provide an arena in which all can realize “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” as our own Declaration of Independence suggests?

Lately, the role of government seems merely to involve protection of the market, or really, of its biggest players (think oil, defense contractors, and telecoms, for example). Safeguarding its citizens-from each other, from “terrorists”-may also come into play, as long as this task doesn’t interfere with the first responsibility. So, big spenders such as Blackwater can ignore allegations of criminal activity at home and abroad; Chevron can apparently destroy entire chunks of Ecuador and expect the government to stand up for it. ((See, for example, P.W. Singer, “The Dark Truth About Blackwater,” Salon.com, Internet; available from http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/10/02/blackwater/index.html; accessed 6 August 2008. See also Democracy Now!, “Chevron Lobbies White House to Pressure Ecuador to Stop $12 Billion Amazon Pollution Lawsuit; Internet; available from http://www.democracynow.org/2008/8/5/chevron_lobbies_white_house_to_pressure; accessed 6 August 2008. Considering, too, negative perceptions of the United States, it would appear that the government is doing more to endanger its citizens than to protect them, where foreign hostility is concerned.)) Etcetera and etcetera. The administration limits itself these days to fund manager (for itself and its friends) and constable (to keep everyone else docile). Its aspirations for the general public become restricted to turning out good deaf-mutes, while guaranteeing civil liberties and exemplary education for each citizen remains unimportant. Of course, to grant such provisions-the tools necessary to live that life of liberty in pursuit of happiness-would be extremely dangerous, lest a vigorous, critically conscious, and articulate horde realize its own power and decide to live as if it resided in a democracy.

I’ll leave you, finally, with a question: Why not abandon this faith in the ultimate value of economic growth? Before encouraging everyone to go buy another TV, we should revamp and recreate those institutions that help those people least able to participate fully in public-and private-life to get back on their feet. If we allow these services to be successful, this demographic will probably cease to need them-and end up serving the economy even   better than before! And with a healthier, more critically aware nation, we would not only be more   “competitive”-if we insist upon using that characteristic as a measure of vigor-we might also be more interesting.

In the unlikely event that we could return our checks and make it happen, we would have gotten away with a pretty good deal-even if it deprived the kids of that second pair of Nikes. Let’s roll, then, if roll we must-but down a different road, towards a new destination.

photo credit: iChaz

By Katy Scrogin | The post Shopping and Stimuli: On Economic Citizenship appeared first on The Public Sphere.

Ron Suskind’s new book, The Way of the World, contains a number of revelations concerning the activities of the George W. Bush Administration during the months preceding the Iraq War. According to Suskind’s sources, when Bush was confronted with intelligence reports that did not support the projected war with Iraq he quipped, “Why don’t they [the CIA] give us something we can use?” This petulant remark was followed by a concerted effort to fabricate the evidence. Members of the Bush Administration-Vice President Cheney seems the most clearly implicated-led an effort to forge documents alleging Iraq’s possession of WMDs. If that wasn’t enough, these documents were attributed to a source who was actually saying exactly the opposite. It is hard to imagine a clearer breach of the public trust by governmental officials. The severity of this overt deception is compounded by the numerous atrocities that have followed in its wake. And yet, no one really cares. President Bush will finish his term unabated, after which time he’ll probably go back to his old career of running businesses funded by Saudi oil money-running them into the ground, that is. He’ll make for some amusing stories in the tabloids. Maybe he’ll even get his own reality TV show. In any event, he’ll never have to account for his actions in a court of law.  

The lack of public outrage over this new confirmation of the Bush Administration’s mendacity is not a great surprise. Suskind’s account does not really change our understanding of any of the facts regarding how the country was led into war; it only gives us a clearer picture of the complicity of members of the Administration (including Bush himself) with respect to those facts. We have known for over four years now, that the central justification for the Iraq War was incontrovertibly false. They said we had to go to war because Iraq might have WMDs. We went to war. We now know Iraq didn’t have WMDs. Mission accomplished. Not even the Administration’s chief apologists now deny that the intelligence leading to war was faulty. If everyone-regardless of political or ideological affiliation-recognizes that the intelligence which led to war was faulty, then why haven’t those responsible for the decision to go to war faced legal consequences? Indeed, as we look at the political landscape on the eve of the 2008 elections, those responsible for the Iraq War will likely never be held legally accountable for their actions. If impeachment proceedings could be started against President Clinton for a blowjob, then why not against President Bush for an unnecessary war?

It is not enough for us merely to remind ourselves of the grave results of Bush’s unpunished crimes and misdemeanors: e.g., over 4000 dead Americans, over 500,000 dead Iraqis, ((The number of Iraqi dead may very well be much higher than the conservative estimate of 500,000. Already in a  2006 study, researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health estimated the number of dead Iraqi civilians at 600,000. A more recent  study  by the British research firm Opinion Research Business calculates the death toll at over a million lives. Neither of these studies factored in deaths from sources like malnutrition and disease that occurred due to the war.))  millions of Iraqi refugees, the emboldening of extremists within Iran, the decline of the U.S.A.’s standing in the world community, the collapse of the U.S. economy, etc. The more pressing task at hand is to examine-in as dispassionate, apolitical, and clinical a matter as possible-just why it is that Bush’s crimes will almost certainly go unpunished. Understanding why we won’t prosecute the Bush Administration for the Iraq War just might help us to diagnose the functional disorders within the body politic as a whole. We need to regard our inability to hold Bush legally accountable as a matter of public health.

The first major barrier to prosecution of the Bush Administration is a simple but remarkably effective one: ignorance. War apologists now claim that while they may have been wrong about Iraq’s possession of WMDs, they were wrong in good faith. Intelligence is an imperfect science. We used the best information we had. We got it wrong. Sorry. Now, it is certainly refreshing any time political ideologues admit that they were wrong about anything. Indeed, this admission indicates that reality still has a small role in mainstream political debate. However, we must not lose sight of the fact that the admission of ignorance is being used in order to avoid responsibility.     Why is the claim to ignorance a plausible excuse for legal and political responsibility?

In order to answer this question, we should consider the role of the claim to ignorance in our moral and legal judgments more generally. We take it for granted that when we hold person X legally accountable for a given action, the physical evidence concerning how that action transpired ought to demonstrate that person X was the causal agent of the action in question. The claim to ignorance attempts to deny person X’s moral and/or legal responsibility for a given action without denying the evidence of his or her participation in that action. For this claim to be valid, person X’s lack of adequate information concerning the plausible alternatives and/or consequences of the action in question must be of such a constraining nature that, for all intents and purposes, person X was physically forced to commit the action in question.

The claim to ignorance is very difficult to refute on the basis of the scientific model of the universe. This worldview assumes that every action is caused by other prior actions. When a forest fire starts, we don’t assume that the fire caused itself. Rather, we investigate what might have ignited the fire, and if and when we find the source of ignition (e.g., a lightning strike, an arsonist, etc.), we accept that source as the fire’s causal agent. Why do we stop there? Isn’t it fundamentally arbitrary to say that either the lightning strike or the arsonist was responsible for the fire? Surely, other prior actions must have caused the lightning to strike or arsonist to set the fire. We identify the lightning strike or the arsonist as the fire’s causal agent, simply because finding the next anterior agent becomes exceedingly difficult. In other words, according to the scientific model of the universe, agency is always a matter of explanatory efficiency and nothing else.

Today, we all more or less accept this model of the universe-whether we know and admit it or not. The claim to ignorance relies upon the difficulty in scientifically identifying a single agent as the beginning of a causal chain. Aren’t we all fundamentally ignorant of the reasons why we do anything? What would it mean to make a truly informed decision? Could anyone but God ever really accomplish such a feat? When Bush, Vice President Cheney, Dr. Rice, et al. appeal to ignorance as an excuse for starting an unnecessary war, they are appealing to our inculturated sense of skepticism and fallibility with respect to the limits of knowledge.

At various points in our lives, each of us has made a decision that later turned out to be wrong. Modern science’s single greatest achievement made the fallibility of our personal experience applicable in an even more fundamental way to judgments and observations about the universe as a whole. Thus, when the Left criticizes Bush for his ignorance and stupidity, they are thereby placing his actions within a narrative that equates intuitively with the way we understand the world and our place in it. Not coincidentally, Bush and his fellow apologists themselves appeal to ignorance when explaining the decision to go to war. The more we accept Bush’s claim to ignorance, the less able we are to hold him accountable for the consequences of his actions.

If ignorance were the only thing that Bush could rely upon, however, he would likely have been impeached already. Even though we are likely to give the benefit of the doubt to people who claim to have acted out of ignorance, this benefit extends only so far. Therefore, we have the long-standing legal principle ignorantia juris non excusat (ignorance is no protection from the law). The success of a claim to ignorance depends entirely upon others perceiving the claimant to have acted in good faith. While no one blames an idiot, everyone hates a liar. Hence the moral outrage and legal proceedings directed at Nixon and Clinton.

For what other reason do we not prosecute Bush? I have already argued that part of the problem resides in our skepticism, which is emblematic of what is best in both our common sense and the scientific method. The other significant barrier to holding Bush legally accountable for his actions similarly arises from another great and rich cultural tradition: distrusting the government. The United States inherited this tradition from the philosophies and practices of modern liberalism as articulated by figures like John Locke and Adam Smith.

John Locke argued for limiting governmental powers on the basis of a strict distinction between public and private: the king can perhaps tell a man what he ought to do when that man is out in the world, but no one should tell him what he can or cannot do when he is in his own home. The male pronoun is instructive in this case, as Locke was effectively transposing the classical figure of the pater familias, resulting in the birth of a peculiarly modern entity: homo economicus. Adam Smith made the economic significance of Locke’s notion of private liberty more explicit, showing that the concepts of property and liberty are fundamentally intertwined. Smith argued that even the public good (i.e., what is best for all) is most effectively and efficiently pursued only when private interests are left unchecked by any external influences whatsoever (most especially, that of the government). The liberals defined private liberty as existing only to the extent that the government did not interfere with it. This in turn required that private liberty could only be protected if and when private individuals came together collectively in order to limit the exercise of governmental power upon their lives. As such, from the liberal viewpoint, the ability to do what one wants in one’s private life depends entirely upon the public and cooperative practice of constantly and diligently surveiling and criticizing everything that the government does. The active public manifestation of the distrust of government is the basis for all other private liberties. The U.S. Founders, being good liberals, naturally placed the “First Amendment” first in the Bill of Rights.

What do I take to be the pernicious consequences of this tradition? For the time being, I will leave aside the issues concerning the conflation of human dignity with economic property. I would like to focus upon the issue that most directly applies to the distrust of government. When such suspicion results in the active communication of information concerning the pernicious effects of government policies, no temperament is more conducive to the well-being of the public as a whole. The distrust of government, however, becomes pernicious if it results in either of the following: 1, its use by government institutions in order to disavow accountability for their actions, or 2, a vague but inoperative cynicism on the part of the populace, whereby the task of holding the government accountable is abandoned as a fool’s errand.

Both of these pernicious uses of the distrust of government mutually reinforce one another. When the government itself claims its own incompetence, ignorance, and/or ineffectiveness, the aim is to escape public accountability. A government’s appeal to the distrust of government will displace successfully the responsibility for policy insofar as that claim resonates with the people’s own cynicism regarding what government can do. Similarly, whenever the people are content with their own private suspicions regarding the incompetence of government, an incompetent government that disavows responsibility for its own policies is exactly what they will receive. When these sentiments of government disavowal and personal resignation support one another, the distrust of government becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Precisely this brand of mistrust turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy prevents us from holding Bush and his accomplices accountable for their abuses of the public trust. There is only one cure for this disease, and one hope for rehabilitating our social institutions in its wake: the distrust of government must be transformed from a vague, inoperative, private sentiment into a series of specific public accusations. Those in power must be made to account for the consequences of their actions directly. It will not matter what party we choose in November unless all of our representatives fear their constituents more than they defer to private interests. Furthermore, if this fear of the public only extends to the election cycle or the polls, its actual effects upon policy are nil. Cheney’s response, when asked about the Bush Administration’s low poll numbers, was quite candid in this regard: “So?” This blatant disregard for any and all forms of public accountability should be taken as a challenge upon which the health of our democracy entirely depends. For the liberal tradition, it is meaningless to talk about personal liberty unless it is accompanied by a collective mechanism for restraining governmental and corporate interests. If the crimes of the past eight years go unpunished, we can conclude that the U.S. iteration of the liberal experiment in governance ended in failure.

I have already said that Bush and his accomplices will never be held legally responsible for their actions in a criminal court. Fortunately, humanity discovered another more effective means of punishing those guilty of violating the public trust. The social response to such crimes does not strictly require that guilty individuals undergo physical suffering comparable to that which they exacted upon the innocent. Surely, a traitor can never be hanged enough. Rather, criminals of this sort must be made to account for their actions publicly. Admittedly, as Frederick Douglass notes, the threat of physical violence may be required as a persuasive instrument for the procurement of such testimony. However, the true punishment and the true reparation is the testimony itself. Bring on the Truth and Reconciliation.

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Image of the U.S. Bill of Rights is available from the National Archives.

By Marc Lombardo | The post Your Government Lied to You. So What? appeared first on The Public Sphere.

In every house where I come I will enter only for the good of my patients, keeping myself far from all intentional ill-doing.
(from the Hippocratic Oath)

As you go, proclaim the good news: “The kingdom of heaven is at hand!”   Cure the sick… as you received without payment; give without payment.
(Matthew 10:7-8)

1.

A couple of days ago I was on the phone with my Mother. She had recently undergone cataract surgery for both her eyes – a series of operations that has brightened her outlook, both figuratively and literally.   My mother has been on a pretty fixed income for the past several years, but because of a program in the city in which she resides (a program designed to benefit those on a scale from “pretty fixed” to “no” income), the procedures were very nearly free. During our conversation I made the comment, “Hooray for socialized medicine!”

Mother, a lifelong Libertarian and congenital contrarian, was quick to chide me.   “This is not socialized medicine,” she insisted. “Socialized medicine would be terrible!”

This is what I would call a typical conversation between my Mother and me on such subjects.   It is a disagreement we have had for decades. For her, the Market (always with a capital-‘M‘) is the Answer (again, you can almost hear the capital-‘A’) to all problems – be they social or personal (and all those potentially-unhygienic crevices in-between).   Anything, therefore, that would supplant or interfere with the unfettered workings of the Market is bad.

I am inclined to disagree.  

2.

I was in mind of this conversation, over the past several days, as I came across the following two anecdotes, related to me by friends of mine:

First, one friend, just recently returned from a pre-Olympic visit of five weeks in China, told of getting a cut on her ankle, which then got badly infected. After a couple days of just trying to let it heal on its own, the wound began turning blackish, and so she went to see a Chinese physician.   She mentioned that she was slightly frightened to take that step, as she had – like many of us – been raised on the horror stories surrounding anything non-American that relates to medical practice.

She was in for a pleasant surprise.   At the Chinese clinic she was immediately seen by a (female) doctor, who examined the wound, made a treatment decision, and relayed instructions to the (male) nurse.   The nurse, in turn, cleaned the wound and bandaged it properly. The infection was treated with antibiotics and is now fully healed.

The surprise did not end there.   Total time in the clinic? Less than an hour (with a translator, no less). Total cost of the antibiotics? $1.50. Total cost for the visit itself? Fifty cents, American.

The second story, slightly less rosy, involves a graduate school colleague of mine, who has just been given formal permission to take part of the next year off for medical leave. The leave is officially sanctioned, remember; it is recognized by the University and is, in effect, simply a “pause” in her studies. In other words, she is still a student.

Despite this very clear fact, however, she was recently informed, by the administrator of the school’s insurance plan, that she would not be considered eligible for school medical insurance while she was on school medical leave. Never mind that (to quote the Book of Esther) it was for such a time as this that medical insurance was invented in the first place; my friend has been caught up in a bureaucracy with its own illogical logic.

While I am not privy to all the details of the discussion that followed, I am reasonably certain that my colleague noted the frank absurdity of this situation to the administrator.

3.

Given the above, I wish to make the following points:

1) As much as I may dislike the practices of the People’s Republic of China on issues of liberty, I cannot fault them for having an inexpensive health care system that seems, at least on my limited knowledge of it, relayed to me by my friends who have been there, to work.   That is to say, the usual argument against China’s “human rights record” shifts somewhat if we expand our imagining of “human rights” to include effective, affordable health care.

2) The argument often made against a program of socialized health care for our nation – by my Mother and those of her mindset – is that such a system would be mired in bureaucracy and inefficiency, such that those who need care might not get it at the time they most need it. What I have observed, however, in my own health care and that of others, is precisely this sort of bloated inefficiency already at work here in America – with the added insult of an obscene price tag.

My evidence, I admit, is scant, and consists at this point of hearsay and anecdote.   And yet the sheer preponderance is certainly indicative.   Consider, for example, doctors who insist on putting human beings ahead of profits.   I am friends with physicians who are idealistic and truly concerned for the full health and wellbeing of their patients, and each one of them in the past ten years has been encouraged by the partners in their practices to leave because such care is not serving the ultimate goal of profit (One friend now works, interestingly enough, as a major administrator for the public health establishment).

Contrariwise, I have been acquainted with other doctors, who are, in more typical fashion, concerned chiefly with dollar signs. One such soul, while diversifying his portfolio into real estate, was recently involved in callously dispossessing my wife and I of our apartment with less than a month’s notice when it became profitable to turn them into condominiums (So, let the reader be aware, I do have some personal bias, if not animus, in these discussions. Caveat emptor).

4.

“Health care for profit” is not simply an oxymoron or an ethical dilemma – it is a blasphemy. Mention of the phrase makes me mindful of another image – this time of a college classmate, some years ago, weeping openly on her graduation day.  

She wept, not for joy, but because she suffered from both youth-onset diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis, and had not yet secured a job, and had therefore no access to affordable job-related insurance to replace the school’s plan (a plan by which she would no longer be covered upon graduating). She wept because, despite all the high talk of the “Market” and its “forces,” and of that mythic abundance that supposedly abounds when supply meets demand, she was, quite simply, uninsurable.     Even if she could have afforded to pay the premiums, private insurance would have refused to cover the very conditions for which she most needed insurance.

Those who disagree with my outrage at this will speak here of “complexities.”   I am aware that this is a complex issue, and I am aware that the answer is not simple (or at least not simple-minded) charity.   After all, even the Nazis gave bread to the poor, at least at first.   The Nazi example chastens us that we should always look deeply into the motives and methods of any model of charity we might endorse.  

But the situation I have just described, regarding my college friend and many more like her, is simply, patently, perversely unreasonable.   There must be a point at which reason – and reasonable kindness – prevails, mustn’t there?

5.

Frankly, at this point, I do not care what it is called – whether it goes by the name “socialized medicine” or by some other, less offending moniker – but the fact remains that there are countries all over the globe, of every stripe of politics and resource, that are delivering efficient and affordable, if not free, health care options to their citizens. The quality of this care, moreover, often beats the best that the American medical market seems to provide; in fact, we’re pretty low on the totem pole when it comes to the effectiveness (total or partial) of our care system.

So, to be blunt, call it what you will, but I am tired of waiting. Health care, by my lights, should be readily available, highly effective, and free. I have little interest in discussing anything short of that anymore. Nor am I interested in discussing or rehearsing the reasons given as to why we can’t do it.   Such reasons are simple lies, and should be named as such.   Like the other countries that are doing it, we can do it.   The fact that we Americans aren’t amounts to little more than simple foolishness and petty jingoism.

Too often, human beings are made to suffer so that the comforting word choice of a few powerful individuals can remain untarnished, or for some idiocy of ideological gluttony. Systems are put in place to preserve the systems themselves, and not the lives put in their care.   Why do we (who with all our talk of affluence and education relative to those “less fortunate,” should certainly know better) allow such gluttony to continue?

We will be judged, I am told, by how we have cared for the “least of these” among us. Let us, for once, be honest: The least among us deserve better – better, certainly, than we have offered them thus far.

By David Dault | The post “When Did We See You Lord?” How the U.S. Healthcare System Ignores the Basic Ethic of Do No Harm appeared first on The Public Sphere.

I am grateful for so many things about this country, things like free speech, freedom of religion, and our general prosperity (and relative to the rest of the world, we are prosperous even in our current economic crisis). I’m grateful for electricity 24 hours a day, indoor plumbing, and the more-or-less consistent availability of hot water. I’m grateful for supermarkets whose shelves are always stocked with more food than any of us will ever eat. And then there are the things we used to have that I wish I could still be grateful for, like anti-trust laws and an objective judiciary. But I digress. I do appreciate many aspects of life in this country. What I don’t appreciate is the tendency of the government of this free nation to get involved in our private lives in the name of public interest.

The social contract, of course, requires the government to act in the public interest, but its methods are occasionally overly intrusive. Sometimes we compromise because, after all, it makes sense that motorcyclists should wear helmets (although apparently the availability of donor organs decreased dramatically when those laws began to be enforced). But should government have a say in what we feel like eating? Recent public health measures in New York City aim to do just that, and I have to say, I resent it.

First, New York banned the use of artificial trans fats in all foods sold in restaurants.Yes, we all agree that trans fats are bad and an unnecessary element in any diet. And of course, the food industry would not have changed its recipes without government intervention. Fine. But earlier this summer, a new regulation began to be enforced that requires any restaurant that makes nutritional information public and uses standardized recipes to prominently post the calorie counts of all menu items. For those of you who live in cities with less meddlesome administrations, that means that when you walk into a Starbucks for a mocha frappucino fix, you see exactly how many calories are in that mocha frappucino (280 in the tall size). Not to mention how many calories are in the chocolate chunk cookie that you might have thought about getting to go with it (420).

The justification for making all this information, not just public, but unavoidably prominent, is that it will help guide informed and healthier food choices in a public that is suffering under an obesity epidemic. For now, the regulation applies only to restaurants with 15 or more outlets nationwide, with menus that are standardized for content and portion size. It specifically targets fast food and casual dining chains, which make up about 10% of the restaurants in the city. Apparently, even Mayor Michael Bloomberg doesn’t want to know how many calories are in that plate of foie gras at Per Se.

So, the goal, ultimately is to reduce obesity by making people aware of the number of calories they’re consuming when they go to these kinds of restaurants. According to a Health Department survey conducted in support of this regulation, people in Subway restaurants who saw the information consumed about 50 fewer calories than those who didn’t. And I can honestly say that the first time I walked into a Starbucks and was confronted by the fact that a blueberry scone has about twice as many calories as a plain croissant, I went for the croissant. I guess it works to a certain extent. I admit this grudgingly, of course, not because I’m opposed to an informed public, but because I object to the method of dissemination. I am not a “latte lady” who needs a daily Starbucks fix. Generally, when I go into one of these places, I do it specifically to indulge. So, when my monthly chocolate chunk cookie craving rolls around, I don’t particularly care to know the extent to which I am indulging. Plus, I’d be willing to bet that the people who are most likely to notice this stuff are the ones least likely to be in danger of becoming obese anyway.

One of the main arguments against this kind of regulation is that it is paternalistic. While everyone agrees that government should act in the public interest, there is very little agreement as to the extent to which it should act. By promoting this kind of policy, the City of New York is taking another step down a potentially slippery slope toward the dreaded “nanny state” in which no one can smoke outside their own home and children sit in car seats until they’re old enough to drive. I am all for acting in the public interest, but is this kind of action the best use of government time and taxpayer money? If the Health Department wants to fight the obesity crisis, why not invest in educating the public? Sure, by forcing the prominent posting of calorie counts, they’re informing the public, but that’s not quite the same thing, is it?

Just because I now know that the average full-size salad at California Pizza Kitchen has well over 1000 calories doesn’t mean I have any idea how much of that is fat or sugar in relation to the BBQ chicken pizza (1060 calories). Nor does it tell me anything about how it really relates to my personal health. The nutrition information on packaged foods is based on a 2000-calorie diet, which is the recommended daily intake for the average person. The “average person” weighs about 150 pounds. I am not average, and, frankly, I have no clue what my ideal caloric intake actually is. I eat salad when I feel like eating salad and French fries when I feel like eating French fries. I live with the hope that it will ultimately all balance out. But aside from knowing that the average adult should eat about 2000 calories a day, to me, all these numbers are just numbers. Combine them with all the other information on a chain restaurant’s menu, and they just blend in with the visual noise.

Instead of posting calorie counts in chain restaurants, teach us what calorie counts really mean. Introduce real education programs, starting in schools, that not only emphasize the importance of a healthy diet, but show children that it means different things for different people and why. Make a few PSAs asking people to think about what they eat or giving them tips on how to improve their diets. Better yet, address the root of the problem by confronting the food industry itself about portion sizes or the ingredients that go into packaged foods or the way they advertise. Sure, that yogurt is low-fat, but have you noticed how much sugar is in it? Nothing needs as much high fructose corn syrup as it has, especially considering that it’s been proven to be a factor in increasing obesity, and it’s in almost everything we eat. And that 1000-calorie salad at California Pizza Kitchen is a full-size order, but I’ve never been able to finish even a half order at that place. Of course, all that introduces a much deeper issue when you consider how much easier it is for the government to create “nanny laws” than to regulate industry. It’s a simple thing to say, “Yeah, show “˜em a bunch of numbers and maybe they’ll realize they’re eating too much.” It’s a much more complex matter when you mention that there are an awful lot of junk food commercials on during popular cartoon shows, and that they make eating look so fun.

Who knows, maybe this is one of those bass-ackward ways of forcing corporations to take some responsibility. Maybe it will have some long-term positive effect on people’s eating habits. More likely, after the initial sticker shock wears off, people will stop noticing and go back to eating whatever they would have initially. As for me, after I saw how many calories are in a Starbucks chocolate chip cookie, I walked out of the store and across the street to a gourmet chocolate shop where I purchased a cookie that was about the size of my open hand. It was warm, full of huge gooey chunks of rich homemade chocolate, not to mention sugar, butter, and fat, but, as far as I could tell, it was completely calorie free.

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“LineUp” Courtesy of Loretta Lopez

By Paloma Ramirez | The post I Am Indignant: Don’t Nanny Law Me! I Want That Brownie appeared first on The Public Sphere.

Remember that really nice girl who greeted you warmly as a potential friend when you first arrived at college? Remember how she conscientiously invited you to dinner, or to study, or to her Christian fellowship activity? Remember the conversations about religion that you thought were a precursor to sharing secrets among friends? But then you expressed a different opinion, or you joined a liberal club, or you started to explore your sexuality, and suddenly, you felt a sharp pain in your back?   Betrayed by some evangelical whom you thought was a friend?

The night after Sarah Palin’s speech, I had nightmares. I kept dreaming of people like the many sweet, well-meaning evangelical Christians whom I had trusted in the past, only to find myself rejected for holding some “liberal” view. Days after the Republican convention, these memories kept one scene from a movie running through my mind.

That clip, from the 1999 film Dogma, starts with a ringing doorbell. A mild-mannered suburban woman opens her front door to see a man in a well-tailored white suit standing before her, holding a clipboard. He smiles and says, “Good afternoon, Mrs. Reynolds. I’m from the EPA. We’re checking on possible Freon leaks. Tell me, do you have air conditioning?”

Suspecting nothing extraordinary, our suburbanite answers easily, “Yes, we have central air.” The supposed EPA representative queries further, “In every room?” She nods her head, quizzically. “Except the bathroom, why?” He looks her directly in the eyes and says, “You know what that means, don’t you?” Before Mrs. Reynolds can possibly respond she is stabbed in the back with a hockey stick. Meanwhile, our EPA representative, now known to us as Azrael, enters the house to enjoy the air conditioning, and with a casual wave of the hand, orders the hockey-stick minion to get rid of the body.

Every time vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin describes herself or is described as a “hockey mom,” I remember that scene, and instead of Azrael, I see a train of sweet, smiling evangelical girls. All of their attempts to bring me into line with a “Christian America” ended with my being stabbed in the back.

As a college student, I was not unaware of evangelical theology. I was a born-again Christian who attended eight years of Christian school. However, growing up African American in the 1980s with Jim-Crow-era parents also formed my political views. My mother and father grew up in the segregated south of the 1940s and 50s. They told my siblings and me horrible stories, even describing attacks on black children who were attempting to get an education. The white school board denied my grandmother her right to attend high school. My parents and public school teachers from kindergarten through fourth grade reminded me over and over about how the freedoms we enjoyed were a result of good legislation, like the Voting Rights Act signed by President Johnson. I was born a Democrat and I saw no reason to change.

When I first arrived at college in the Reagan-Bush years, my political views were not initially an issue when I befriended several of these sweet white evangelical girls, smiling nicely and reaching out to me, bringing me into the fold. They were my first friends in college. They invited me to dinner, they helped me study for my exams, they prayed with me, and we went to spiritual retreats together. We stayed up late talking about our hopes and dreams for our futures. During my sophomore year, I became more vocal about my political views, discussing how excited I was about Geraldine Ferraro‘s vice-presidential candidacy. My friends were horrified. One pulled me aside and said, “I believe that God would vote Republican, and if you love God, you will too.” I was shaken by their claims. These people had been good friends.

After thinking about what these girls were saying about God and the Republican party, I doubted myself. So I called my dad. I asked him if as a Christian, I should vote Republican. He reminded me that I could return to my Democratic home even if I voted Republican, “but” he chided me, “the Democrats have always been on your side.” I then went to my friend and reminded her of Democratic support for civil rights legislation. She quipped back to me, “Well, that’s just a liberal agenda, that’s not God’s agenda.” I didn’t know it then, but at that moment, she turned on her heel and went to get her hockey stick. I voted Democrat that season, but, as my sophomore year turned into my junior year, the calls for dinner steadily declined.

During my junior year, I committed a grievous sin: I joined the school paper, otherwise known as the liberal, godless media. One of the articles I was assigned to write involved examining whether or not the pressure due to schools’ divestiture of their holdings in South African companies would be enough to compel that government to overturn apartheid. I had learned little about South Africa in high school. Most of my Christian-fellowship friends knew nothing about the country, except for the fact that “liberal” students were always protesting about the situation there. When I told those friends of my assignment for the college newspaper, they became even more distant. They did encourage me, though, to turn down the assignment; they said that, “We as Christians should not question the actions of another ally government, and perhaps South Africa’s choice to use apartheid has merits.”

So, I went to my editor and did the one thing reporters are told never to do: I turned down the assignment. I explained to her that I wasn’t sure I opposed apartheid.   My blond-haired, blue-eyed editor looked at me like I was insane. “Do you know what apartheid is?” she asked. She promptly explained to me that, “it’s like segregation in the Jim Crow South.”

Once I learned that, I immediately went to work on the piece. Most of the campus received my article well, and it supplied additional fuel for divestment. However, the coverage was not well received in my Christian fellowship. The campus minister from this conservative group met with me several times. I expressed my doubts, not about God or Christianity, but about how the Christian fellowship seemed more like a College Republican meeting than a community of prayer.

Finally, the campus minister asked to meet with me in the student union, which required me to cross a picket line, to run past those people demanding the school divest its holdings in South Africa. The conservative campus minister then asked me to make a choice, follow their way or leave the group. I felt a hockey stick hanging out of my back.

The college eventually rid itself of its holdings. And my friends disappeared. Sarah Palin reminds me of these friends who eventually distanced themselves as I became more vocal about my political beliefs. Palin is this sort of warm, loving person whom you adore when you are her friend, but whose hockey stick you never forget if you found yourself on the other side of her beliefs.

She is also the archetypal “˜80s woman, the early Gen X-er. Unlike the college students in the 1960s and “˜70s, who often banged their heads bloody on the glass ceiling of male-dominated fields, women of the “˜80s found that most gender restrictions had vanished, and that women were prominently featured in previously male-dominated fields. Many of us appreciated our debt to first- and second-wave feminists who had cracked so many glass ceilings. Those of us who respected those feminists followed their example from a distance, for there were few role models, very few women professors, almost no women’s studies programs, and the ones that existed were usually run by women so scarred by discrimination that they were more likely to attack the optimistic younger women for being too happy and not angry enough.

However, the conservative women leaders were there as role models in full force, running local pro-life movements off campus and recruiting among the Christian college students. I was surrounded by conservative women from local churches, usually not professional women, but stay-at-home moms who were associated with these churches and married to faculty or staff. The camaraderie and support was amazing. I thought that these people were my friends. I loved that Bible study. The women would meet with us, mentor us, and teach us how to be good Christian women. And they also taught us that the highest good a woman can do is to be a wife and mother-a role that was apparently incompatible with the pursuit of higher education and a professional degree. When I broke up with my college boyfriend, my Bible study leader urged me to go back to him because, in her view, the purpose of a college education was to meet my future husband.

Palin reminds me of this Bible study leader. As a proud hockey mom, she is the sort of woman who will offer you embracing love, but happily hockey-stick you in the back if you are not following the party line. I don’t know Palin, and I’m sure she’s a nice, charming person, just like the other women I met in college. They always try to follow the official position/dogma, because to fall out of line is to lose your community. Palin has no doubt been so trained into this fear that she doesn’t notice it, even if her beliefs would help to maintain apartheid in South Africa. Such women are formed in Christian communities of limited acceptance where, when you enter, you are welcomed with apparently total and embracing love. And the warmth of this love is a stark contrast to what is offered by secular society, the corporate environment, and yes, even liberal communities. In contrast to the solitude that confronts many of us in the world outside, this embracing community is comparable to an oasis in the desert. The problem is that once you have drunk from the well, you believe you have been safely welcomed, without ever realizing you must be on guard against violent hockey sticks.

That young, sweet hockey-stick-grabbing young woman sometimes grows up to be another conservative religious archetype. While taking a seminary course on world religions, I encountered this sort again. That semester, my class visited a mosque. The male students sat on the floor with more than a thousand other men who were praying. Though the mosque invited the women students to sit on the floor with the men, my female classmates decided to join the Muslim women upstairs.

Mostly, the Muslim women prayed in a serious manner. But once in a while, two of them would start talking. When this transpired, another woman came out of nowhere, running across the balcony, flailing her arms until she reached the talkative duo. She shushed them and hit them on the shoulders. Things were kept quiet and in a certain sort of order because this older woman policed the other Muslim women in the balcony, glaring at the others, keeping them in line with her piercing gaze, and threatening to expel them if they fell too far from accepted practice. When we returned to the classroom, the women of the class talked about what we had observed. We dubbed the guard with the flailing arms “the prayer Nazi.”

Sometimes, I wonder how Palin imagines her leadership. Is she a mentor for younger women? Or is she a prayer Nazi, who on the behalf of men, keeps other women in line by threatening expulsion? In the mosque, the prayer Nazi kept you in line by threatening removal from the balcony. In evangelical communities, the prayer Nazi threatens social excommunication, either as a way to convince you that you are wrong, or so she can avoid being soiled by your aberrant behavior.

As we try to figure out who Palin is, all we have are stories of how she’s charming and tough and conservative. On occasion, she’s kicked someone out of a community. Her own “Troopergate” case scares me, because those tactics are so reminiscent of the hockey stick stabbers I knew in college. This is not the kind of person I want to be leading our country. How would she guide a nation composed largely of people who hold different beliefs than she does? What will she do to the people who agree with her on some things but disagree with her on matters she considers fundamentally incontrovertible? For now, the Republicans are offering us Palin as the person who will be a heartbeat away from the presidency. But how does John McCain know he won’t end up with a hockey stick in his back?

A certain strain of evangelicalism, the strain to which Palin’s Pentecostalism belongs, considers its greatest task on this earth to be the enforcement of the Great Commission (Mt. 28: 16-20), where Jesus charges his followers to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” My fellow conservative college students believed that this command should be fulfilled by any means necessary. Think about having someone with that view in charge of nuclear weapons.

As I moved further from conservative circles and into mainline circles, I was challenged with what Jesus said was actually the greatest commandment, to love God and to love our neighbor (Mt. 22:34-40; Mk 12:28-34; and Lk 10:25-28; also see Deut. 6:5 and Lev. 19:18).   I can only hope that, win or lose, Palin realizes that her faith is more about loving her neighbors than impaling them when they don’t agree with her.

By Valerie Bailey | The post Hockey Moms, Prayer Nazis, and Why I Love But Fear People Like Sarah Palin appeared first on The Public Sphere.

This summer, I indulged in a rapid drive from Pasadena, CA to Albany, NY. As I passed through the economically slowing but still alive Sun Belt on into the more economically depressed towns and cities of the Midwest, I also found myself barraged with a variety of unique advertisements set up to greet me specifically as an Interstate rider. Most focused on drawing my tourist dollars to the local town, but some just focused on getting my attention. While I focus on U.S. religiosity, I learned that every state did have a slightly different ethos of road signage. Here is some of what I saw.

By Jacqueline Hidalgo | The post Signage Across the U.S.A.: What I Learned While Watching the Road appeared first on The Public Sphere.

Images of “Martyrdom” dominate Tehran’s urban space. State-sponsored and hand-painted by artists close to the regime, they provide an insider’s view of the Islamic Republic’s psyche at a time when Iran makes daily headlines. Thematically, the murals feature images of the fathers of the Islamic Revolution and martyrs of the Iran-Iraq war, as well as explicitly anti-U.S. and anti-Israel messages. The primary objective is to document and present images that are part of Tehranians’ daily visual experience and of which people in the U.S. are largely oblivious.

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By Sourena Parham | The post Photo Essay: Martyrdom in Tehran appeared first on The Public Sphere.

In the September 15, 2008  Los Angeles Times, Gregory Rodriguez reminds us that U.S. politics has a love-hate relationship with the idea of victimhood. People, like Rush Limbaugh, criticize the ideas of “victimhood” when an ethic of proper treatment for victims leads to increased civil rights for African Americans. At the same time, John McCain loves playing his running mate as the victim of a misogynistic news media if he thinks it will solidify the base behind him. How does the U.S. sustain the tension between hating other people’s claims to victimization but loving our own?

By The Public Sphere | The post The Perpetual Practice of True Victimhood appeared first on The Public Sphere.