Since You Probably Didn't Notice...

Fafblog gets it absolutely right. Yet again.

Oh, and on a similar level, one of my current favorite blogs gets a different issue absolutely right. They might be bastards over there, but they're my kind of bastards.

Finally, a moral conundrum. Answered in the proper way.

The point is, of course, that if they don't look like us they're not human. If we can safely ignore them, they're not human. But if they fit in to our narrow definition of, "People who look like us and think like us and are our equals," then it's a tragedy if they die.

That's why whenever a soldier dies in Iraq or Afghanistan we get a name, a picture, a story of a grieving mother. But whenever a civilian dies we get, "14 people were killed by such-and-such in so-and-so place."

Next time someone tells you how great America is because it was "founded on Judeo-Christian values," point out the second and third links. Next time someone tells you that the Enlightenment was actually a terrible thing that brought evil moral relativism, tell them about Jeremy Bentham and Thomas Jefferson. Bentham especially, since Utilitarianism is one of the most humane philosophies we have as long as it's kept divorced from such horrid philosophies as Social Darwinism and left unmolested by the tyranny of the majority, which can be used to corrupt Utilitarianism.*

The Fort Hood shootings, while tragic and beyond the pale, go to illustrate this perfectly. It's like the scene from The Dark Knight where the Joker is in Two Face's hospital room talking about "the plan." His point is that nobody panics if everything goes according to plan even if the plan itself is horrible. Let's say we took those same soldiers from Fort Hood, put them on a truck, and had that truck blown up by an IED planted an AWOL Hasan who went to Iraq or Afghanistan to fight in the insurgency. The news would be completely different.

We'd get some stories of a bunch of soldiers dying in the line of duty, but since that's what soldiers are supposed to do the story would never have made the front page, or if it did it would just be a blurb right below the latest sports scores or something. If Hasan's actions were known he'd get some sort of "American Taliban"-esque nickname and it would be a story with some legs, but it wouldn't be the constant front-page news with recriminations and questions of the patriotism of all Muslims in the armed forces or questions of whether the FBI/CIA was doing their job correctly and properly monitoring all soldiers of questionable loyalty. It would be chalked up as an aberration.

But soldiers died on the home front. They died senselessly as the results of the actions of a crazy person. And we ask all the wrong questions. It shouldn't be, "Why did he do this?" It should be, "Why do we care more about these soldiers dying at Fort Hood than we would have if they died in Kabul?" More importantly, "Why do we care more about Americans dying because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time than we care about Iraqis or Afghans dying because they just happened to be living in the blast radius of that Predator's missile?"

People are dead. That's a bad thing.

But why is it that this is more of a bad thing than if they had died in some other way? Why are some deaths more noble than others? Why are some deaths more shocking than others? Most importantly, why do some deaths matter when it seems that others just don't?

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*Basically, Utilitarianism can be reduced to, "Do what's best for as many as possible." As long as this is kept within certain parameters it's one of the better philosophies. As in the discussion on the Pharyngula thread linked above it also can be used to influence situational ethics and Kant's categorical imperative to create a quite satisfying outcome. However, it can also be corrupted to basically say, "It would be for the best for [this group of people] if [that group of people] were to disappear from the face of the earth." This is a bad use of Utilitarianism and not at all the spirit in which the philosophy was intended. But ideas rarely survive contact with reality intact, so it's an important note.

Linkages...

I've been reading Ken Pulliam's blog off and on for the past month or so. He's a former Christian apologist with major bona fides from the Baptist world, including a Masters and Ph.D from Bob Jones University. Long story short, he now doesn't believe the hype and writes about his arguments against his old beliefs. He's mostly been writing about Penal Substitutionary Theory, which is basically the old, "Jesus died for your sins and that's the only way to Heaven," canard since I started reading. I mostly find that stuff kind of boring, since it's basic theology sexed-up with a lot of jargon and the arguments he makes don't really interest me. It's an important argument and it's good that someone with the background of Pulliam is willing and able to make the arguments he does forcefully and articulately, but I simply don't much care.

His most recent post is the beginning of an attempt to de-bunk the empty tomb mythology. This is much more fascinating for me. You might want to check it out.

Also, his post tickled my own memory and I felt compelled to leave a long comment:

That's interesting stuff.

I remember sitting in church and listening to the pastors make a big deal about two things: the fact that the tomb was sealed and the fact that a guard was placed before it. They always set it up that the tomb was sealed with a mark much like an old wax seal on a confidential letter and the guard was some sort of elite Roman Century or something. This was, of course, a pre-emptive strike against claims that someone came in the night and took the body.

But if you look at the actual Gospel accounts there are three problems with this. First, of all four accounts the only place where the tomb is explicitly said to be sealed and guarded is Matthew. Second, the account just says that the guard went with to seal the tomb, not that it was left behind overnight (and, furthermore, it's not exactly clear as to what kind of "guard" it was. Actual Roman legionnaires? A couple rent-a-cops? Just some guy?). Third, the women just kind of showed up at the tomb a couple days later expecting to finish the proper burial of the body and weren't challenged. This actually creates an additional problem.

It implies that two women were expecting to be able to gain access to enter a sealed and guarded tomb to dress the body. That completely destroys the entire argument that there was no way Jesus's body could have been taken out. It's kind of a deal breaker in my mind...

Given the above paragraph you don't even necessarily need the entire argument given in the original post. But it actually would tie together certain things. First, if the goal was simply to store the body quickly to deal with Passover laws before dumping it out, the sudden absence makes sense. Second, if there really was a seal and a guard, they probably would have had to open the tomb for its rightful owner, anyway.

Actually, this brings up a further question: why the rush to crucify people the day before Passover, anyway? Why wouldn't Pilate have just said, "Okay, we're going to kill him on Monday?"

So, yeah, that's some food for thought, I suppose...

Anyway, wander over if you want. It's interesting.

Sleigh Bells Ring

It's times like this I wish I was a performance artist.

Remember back when the Tea Baggers were just a gleam in Glenn Bek's crazy eyes? I wrote a post that contained the idea of going out to the end of Navy Pier and throwing a box of Bigelow in to Lake Michigan. At the time it seemed a lark. Then the Tea Baggers went and did exactly that.

It was like Poe's Law in 3D.

Anyway, we're officially up to my favorite season: The War on Christmas Season. This year I think it's time to start The War on The War on Christmas Season. Here's my plan:

We'll get a couple hundred people. We'll give them all posters of Santa on a crucifix. Then we'll march around the FOX News Headquarters and shout, "Happy Holidays!"

After that we'll go throw dreidels and those Kwanzaa candle holder thingies in to a giant hole in the ground somewhere, then covering it with pine branches and palm fronds before placing smoldering coals on top and watching everything burn. You know, for the symbolism.*

I think it will be my greatest triumph as a performance artist yet.

Just don't ask what my previous triumphs were. I might have to yell, "Hey! Look over there!" and run away. And I'm not wearing the right shoes for that just now...

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*The only thing better than actual symbolism is nonsensical symbolism dressed up with a story. So if anyone asks, there's a reason for it. We're symbolically burying other holiday tradition under a pastiche of Christianity and setting it ablaze with sinful crass commercialism. See? It's a perfectly valid bit of symbolism...

Since I'm Lazy...

So I have a question for my Dallas-based (or formerly Dallas-based, I don't judge...) peeps.

Let's say I was considering having to relocate to Dallas in, say, January. I mean, this is totally crazy, but let's just pretend. Further, let's pretend that I'm going for a job that would be located in the northern part of Irving. Let's also say that I friggin' hate long commutes. I used to have a 30 mile commute that took 45 minutes on a good day but was closer to an hour most of the time. When I got my current job and then moved to my current residence one of my reasons for doing so was because it was just under 10 miles and 25 minutes during rush hour except in the worst conditions.

So where should I live? Oh, let's also pretend, for the sake of argument, that money isn't really an issue. I know that electricity costs more in Dallas than it does in Chicago, but rent is lower and in theory, in theory, in this crazy scenario I'll be receiving the same level of compensation in Dallas that I currently receive in the significantly-more-expensive Chicagoland area (seriously, it'd be like getting at least a 10% raise just because...). Most of the rent figures I've seen are between $100 and $300 lower than I'm currently paying.

This is what I know/have heard:

1. I don't want to live south of 30.

2. Irving itself is kind of boring. And located directly between two airports that are less than 10 miles apart (I currently live about four or five miles from Midway and I barely notice, so this might not really be an issue. But flight patterns and the relative traffic of DFW and Love Field combined when compared to just Midway could be an issue).

3. Bedford is nice. And also on the other side of DFW from my completely imaginary possible future place of gainful employment.

4. Carrollton is kind of a hole.

5. Plano ain't bad, but wouldn't be my desired commute.

Oh, also, since the cost of things is so out of whack down there when I try to compare it to what I've experienced up here:

If I saw a listing for a 1-bedroom near Chicago for $550/month I would absolutely not even consider it. We're talking slum or worse. I'm not saying I'd rent a 1-bedroom for $550 in Dallas, either. But I've seen listings for such in the general Irving area. Should I consider that a place to avoid, or about right? I'm just looking for a baseline here.

Thanks a pantload in advance, everybody.

Ghosts You Can See

I wanna do better
I wanna try harder
I wanna believe
Down to the letter

Jesus and Mary
Can you carry us
Across this ocean
Into the arms of forgiveness

I don’t mean to laugh out loud
I’m trying to come clean
Trying to shed my doubt
Maybe I should just keep
My big mouth shut
--Over the Rhine, “Long Lost Brother”

I suppose it was appropriate. A stiff wind was blowing in from the southeast, pushing leaves across the pavement in a scritch-scratch swirl as I walked the few blocks through Waukegan from the Genesee Theater to my car. All Hallow’s Eve was only two hours away and I was leaving the Ray Bradbury Literary Ghost Stories Festival.

I don’t believe in ghosts. But I do believe in being haunted. I often find myself in the company of specters.

Those old stories of monsters and ghosts and things that go bump in the night have largely been ruined by our modern society. We don’t understand them, so we corrupt them, ruin them, forget their power. Those terrible Stephanie Meyer books with sparkly, brooding, sex symbol vampires and their swooning, anti-feminist main character completely ignore what vampires were originally all about. For the vampire was originally about the dangers of sexuality. Creepy, disturbed, restless old men stealing in to a woman’s room by night to suck the life out of her in order to live just a bit longer are not men to be admired or sexually idealized.

Similarly, the ghost story is not about Casper the Friendly Ghost or idiots running around with night vision cameras and silly gadgets on the Sci-Fi Channel. It’s not even about the dead at all, really. For the ghost story is about a soul in torment, unable or unwilling to move on from a past filled with shame or betrayal. Whether it’s Hamlet’s father asking for revenge against his scheming brother or…okay, now that I think about it, we have retained the traditional idea of the ghost. Most examples I can think of involved The Sixth Sense or that Jennifer Love Hewitt show.

Still, ghost stories aren’t necessarily about silly things passing through walls and yelling, “Boo!” They’re about the things that haunt us. They’re about the things that we can’t bury, whether it’s a horrible deed that gnaws away at our memories or a loss that simply won’t stop hurting. Ghost stories are about our need to give or receive forgiveness. They’re about the need to find solace or move on. They’re about how we don’t need to move on to the afterlife to be stuck in the place of our worst defeat or our greatest sin. Much as the ghost is forever stuck haunting that cursed patch of ground we get stuck haunting that cursed memory.

As such, I don’t believe in ghosts but I do believe in hauntings.

I was haunted the night before Halloween at the Genesee Theater. Jim May made sure to point out the various supernatural presences that are supposed to hang out in the venerable old building. They were the standard stories of some tragedy of decades past where the victim left an imprint and supposedly still wanders the place.

My haunting was a bit more immediate. It wasn’t even tragic. It involved my first visit to the Genesee Theater just two Halloweens ago. It was with Her. There was, of course, the commensurate recollection of October last, when I didn’t go to Bradbury. I was, instead, moving, and couldn’t exactly take the full U-Haul up to Waukegan that night. No, what I remember is that the following Sunday was the last time I had an actual civil encounter with Her. The last time I thought that we might actually be able to be friends.

Truth be told, these recollections annoy the hell out of me. I can safely forget about her for weeks or months at a time. I can easily recognize that my life is better without her involved in it in any way, shape, or form.

Then I find myself haunted. And it’s not always just the memories. Sometimes it almost seems like she’s there, in the room, that I could walk up to her, reach out, touch her.

Because, well, because she is. Because I could. Theoretically. I don’t really want to, though. I know better.

The inherent problem with my hauntings is that they occur in the places I’m most likely to have good memories of her. They’re also most likely to occur in places that are some of my favorite because of the memories I have that don’t involve her. This is the hole I dug for myself when I got involved in storytelling because of her.

I took 94 back home from Waukegan. I figured that it would make me feel better. I love driving down the spine of Chicago from the north and seeing the city spread across the horizon. It was clear and overcast that night. Off to the left of my car the city spread out, tiny rectangles of yellow poking out of the darkness and defining the shapes of building barely visible.

My city by the lake. My home.

It offered no comfort that haunted, accursed night. For the first time since I stopped believing that the reason I hated myself was because I was in the wrong place I felt no connection to Chicago, felt no love for my city. I realized I could leave. On some level I realized I wanted to leave.

Of course there’s a problem with that. I couldn’t get a couple lines of a Lovehammers song out of my head.

Run away from your problems
(No)
Run away from Chicago
(No)
--Lovehammers, “Low Life Insurance (Let’s Get Wasted)”

I have a theory that I stand by. Every time you leave a place to get away from some problem the first thing you pack is whatever you’re trying to escape. Emotional baggage is extremely portable.

But does this situation really apply? I’m not exactly pulling a Mikey from Swingers. I’m not sitting here pining for her. I’m not waiting for her call. I don’t think about her unless I’m being haunted. External factors have opened up the possibility that I’ll be moving to Dallas. It’s not like I woke up one morning and thought, “You know, I really want to move to a state where I’m practically guaranteed to be thought of as a big city librul by everyone and will never again vote for a winning candidate in any election ever.” It’s not like I realized it was really annoying to go somewhere I’m reminded of a certain individual and thought, “Shit, I’ve got to move halfway across the country just to escape from this.”

By the same token, it would be really nice to be in a place where there’s pretty much zero chance of walking in to a room and remembering her. It would be really nice to start fresh. And, hell, that’s not just about her.

The whole possibly moving to Dallas thing forced me to sit down and ask why I have this knee-jerk, ‘No, I don’t want to go,” response. I mean, beyond the fact that I’m not a big fan of Dallas but I am a big fan of Chicago. What’s the standard knee-jerk? “But I have a life here!”

I thought about that a bit and I realized something. I really don’t have that excuse. In truth, last year when I moved to my current home it was almost like moving to a whole new city. My friends have been scattering, I don’t talk to church people too much anymore and I basically needed to restart my life. I’ve only started taking the first, halting, steps toward that new life over the last couple months.

So I could pack up and leave. In fact, it might be good for me. It would force me to say, “Okay, I have to start over now. No excuses.” I can’t pretend that just because I still live within 20 miles of “home,” I have a life by default.

I’m still not terribly excited about the idea of moving 900 miles away from my city by the lake. I’ve already got a list of things I know I’d miss. Regular Local H and Lovehammers shows. The annual March Saw Doctors show at the Vic. The Bradbury Festival, the Fox Valley Folk and Storytelling Festival, the Illinois Storytelling Festival, Megan and Janice’s monthly open mic, my Guild meetings. Trader Joe’s. That rule that makes it illegal to smoke within 50 feet of the state.* Not being constantly worried I’m surrounded by people who are most likely a.) armed and b.) possibly insane. My dog.

There’s probably other stuff, too. But I don’t want to have to start crying.

Seriously, man. Trader Joe’s. The Saw Doctors at The Vic.

However, whether it’s moving or running, whether it’s by choice or not, even if I’m not overly excited about the idea of moving to Dallas, I’m at least at peace with the possibility. Which is good.

Because I got some news today. And let’s just say I’ve decided it’s a good idea to familiarize myself with the housing market in Irving, Texas.

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*Seriously. I was strongly against that rule when it was passed. To be honest, on the level of not liking it when the government goes all nanny on everyone I still do. But it’s really, really nice to be able to go to a show or a bar and not have to take a shower when I get home. During Rogtober I was reminded of how nice it is to get home feeling, well, if not exactly clean, at least not smoky. Oh, and you can actually smoke in Illinois. Just not anywhere anybody actually wants to be.

Here's a Thought

I have an idea. Let’s make 24-hour news networks illegal. At this point I have absolutely no idea what it is that they actually bring to the table. They regularly ignore important news in favor of random crap like what the Octomom is doing or how Michael Jackson’s funeral is going. They operate as propaganda for one side or the other in political disputes. When they’re not doing that they often create false equivalencies by giving equal time to Good Idea A and Loony Argumentative Moron B in order to cover “all sides” of a given “debate.”

Pro tip: When one side is espousing reality (say, that Barack Obama is an American citizen) and the other side is not (say, that he was born in Kenya and that everything has been set up to create a weird Manchurian Candidate sort of situation), then you don’t have to give equal time to both sides. If there is no coherent, reality-based opposition then there aren’t two sides. And, seriously, news organizations manage to do this correctly all the time. You don’t see CNN talking about the latest NASA launch, then bring in a flat-Earth person to argue the opinion that there’s no such thing as an orbit. You don’t seen FOX News bring in advocates for the moon landing hoax side. I also don’t recall 9/11 Truthers getting any air time back in the day.

Yet we have to hear from the Tea Baggers whenever the health plan debate comes up. We have to hear from the anti-vaxers whenever H1N1 immunization comes up. We had to hear from the Birthers when they were manufacturing a controversy.

But the worst, the absolute worst, is the election coverage. Races get handicapped two years before they happen. Actually, the 2012 Presidential election got handicapped on the day after the 2008 election. Since Sarah Palin was declared the probable Republican nominee back in November and December of last year she’s quit her job, “written” a terrible book, gone rogue, and helped hand the Republican seat in NY-23 over to a Democrat. Methinks that might have an impact on her chances to get the Republican nod come 2012. Meknows that it ruins a lot of theories about her political trajectory that were being advanced a year ago.

Yesterday we had a random grab-bag of elections that no one in their right mind should care about outside of the local electorate. From what I understand the New Jersey gubernatorial race was a clothespin vote of the highest order. NY-23 was interesting due to the sideshow nature of the whole thing. And Virginia…well, we’ll get to that in a second.

The 24-hour news networks spent the last several weeks letting us know that this was The Most Important Election Ever since the Last Most Important Election Ever and in anticipation of the Next Most Important Election Ever. It got so bad that the Daily Show last night showed a clip of a panel discussion on CNN. The topic? What will everyone on the panel be saying about the election results tomorrow?

Seriously? I need to know your speculation about what you’ll be speculating about tomorrow?

That’s a complete waste of everyone’s time. But that’s what the 24-hour news networks do. The reason for it is simple. They need to fill air time. No one needs 24 hours of news.

Hell, no one actually gets 24 hours of news. It’s a couple hours of news, followed by some random opinion shows. Or, in the case of FOX News, it’s a couple hours of opinion shows followed by some “news” shows reporting on the opinions expressed in the opinion shows.

And, of course, the ultimate goal is to sell ad space. So we get watered-down, sensationalized crap. And we have to hear about how the Virginia gubernatorial race tells us something about the Presidential race in 2012. It doesn’t. What it actually tells us is something about the Presidential race in 2008. But that’s an inconvenient truth to the news networks.

The Virginia governor election cycle lags a year behind the national elections. Take a look at the list of Virginia governors and you’ll notice an interesting pattern. Since 1978 the Governor of Virginia has had the opposite party affiliation of the sitting President.

The start of this pattern coincides nicely with the Southern Strategy. From basically the end of Reconstruction until 1970 the Commonwealth of Virginia had Democratic governors. At the tail-end of the ‘60s the southern Democrats started to realize that they had far more in common with the erstwhile Party of Lincoln than they did with the former Party of secession. The first couple terms of Republican governorship, then, were a result of individuals switching party affiliation, not massive party shifts. This is evidenced by one Mills Godwin, who was elected governor in 1965 as a Democrat and again in 1973 as a Republican.

Since the end Godwin’s second term, however, the Governor of Virginia has been of the opposite affiliation of the President of the United States. Yesterday’s election of Bob McDonnell serves to extend the run of Virginia contrariness. It’s a portent of absolutely nothing looking forward to 2012. It’s not a referendum on the Obama Administration any more than the election of Democratic candidate Chuck Robb in 1981 was a referendum on the Reagan Administration.

Unfortunately for anyone involved, that inconvenient set of historical data doesn’t make for good TV. It makes for a couple semi-interesting paragraphs on a random blog that doesn’t even sell ad space.

So it’ll never make it on CNN.

I say it’s time to ditch the 24-hour news cycle and the networks that pretend it matters.

The Curious Case of NY 23

It’s hard to see this story in anything other than religious terms.

This is what happens when a political party reaps the fallout of courting the most reactionary elements in society. It was only a matter of time before a schism formed. We know this because we can look around and see the evidence of it everywhere. There are buildings out there with signs that point to it. Most of those signs contain the words “Baptist” or “Bible” somewhere. Other times they have the word “Fellowship” or some other random Christian buzzword.

Eventually in the life of any church the congregation splits. It’s usually acrimonious and filled with much deeply non-Christian backbiting. Honestly, it’s not a particularly surprising thing, since any time you put a bunch of people together there are bound to be conflicts. But in the case of a church there are the extra layers of orthodoxy and commitment, combined with the fact that religion tends to magnify differences between people by making little disagreements in to issues of eternal significance.

I lived through one church schism. When I was in junior high and high school a whole bunch of people grew dissatisfied with the church I grew up in. In a situation like that you have some people who grin and bear it, some people who go off and find another church, and some people who basically throw a coup. The coup failed, but not before it cost the church a pastor and a whole lot of people’s names were dragged through the mud, especially in the anonymous letter writing campaign. The failed revolutionaries wandered off and started their own church.* My parents went to find a different church that was less filled with people who suck. I stuck around. At the time it was because my friends were all at that church. Now I’m pretty sure it was because I’m an idiot. But I digress…

Church schisms don’t just happen. Everything is fine as long as the church is stable. That requires a charismatic leader and a steady, well-perceived group of elders. If the charismatic leader disappears or the steady collection of elders is somehow knocked down a peg or two, then things start to get difficult. What happens next generally takes the form of a gathering wave of discontent. If there are malcontents in the congregation they’ll generally start passing around rumors. If they’re bold enough they’ll announce their disaffection to the entire church. Eventually things go pear-shaped if the leadership can’t get things under control.

Now, the interesting thing is that this sequence of events usually only happens in independent churches. The system in the Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican, and Presbyterian churches generally discourages this sort of thing, since there’s a larger corporate body making decisions that usually won’t accept half the congregation leaving and starting up a rival church down the street. The larger body certainly won’t accept a congregation-wide insurgency to put just anybody in charge, either. It might withdraw an unpopular pastor/priest, but it will then say, “And, by the way, here’s your new guy.” In those cases people usually just leave the church in dribs and drabs. In independent churches, however, the congregation gets to decide pretty much anything it wants. If enough people turn against the pastor then he’d better start working on his resume. It’s actually fairly rare to see a pastor who sticks to his church for more than five years or so. Generally the ones who do are fantastic politicians or the Bill Hybels- or Rick Warren-types who built the church from the ground up and trade on their celebrity and charisma every day of life. Any pastor who starts a new job at an independent church is basically walking in to a nest of vipers. It’s only a matter of time before someone starts biting.

Which brings us to the curious case of NY-23. It’s historically been a safe district for Republicans (“historically” being used in politics-speak, where sixteen years of Republican control over a House seat and the general perception that the number could easily grow is a pretty good record. Any claims that it’s always been a Republican seat are fallacious, but eight terms is an eternity in American politics. Then again, there’s also the issue of gerrymandering. NY 23 currently fills an area that is historically Republican going back to the old Whig days. Of course “Republican” in the North from 1860 to about 1908 doesn’t mean anything at all. Tories had a better chance of winning a seat than the Democrats did during that time period). But now no matter what happens today there won’t be a Republican in charge of NY-23 tomorrow.

And it’s all because of the Tea Bagger insurrection.

Now, I don’t claim to know the entire story of NY-23. But I know the broad strokes and I know something of the underlying mindset. And I’m far more interested in looking at the underlying mindset than I am at the race itself. Plus, I’m a blogger, which means I’m an expert in everything…

We all know the story. The Republicans picked Dede Scozzafava to run for them in the special election. The Democrats picked Bill Owens. Scozzafava had the backing of the NRA and in most cases her record as a state representative was actually slightly to the right of the rest of her party. However, on some things, like abortion and health care, she’s closer to the Democratic side of the spectrum. Rumor has it she also believes Barack Obama is an American citizen and not a sooper seekrit Mooslim…

Now, when going in to any election for a representative the question should be, “Will this candidate look after my own best interests?” As a former mayor and assemblywoman who seems at least reasonably moderate and willing to break party lines on issues of conscience there’s a good chance that yes, Scozzafava would have been a good choice for a representative. This, of course, makes her a terrible choice for a certain percentage of her constituency. Enter Doug Hoffman.

Hoffman does not live in the district (although it’s not entirely his fault, since his house didn’t move, but the district did). He, in fact, might as well live in Chicago. When asked what he thought of the issues of the district he indicated he didn’t care and that national ideology was the most important. This, specifically, is the Tea Bagger ideology. No abortion, no gay marriage, no national health care, Nobama. You know the drill.

Ideological purity trumped actually working with his constituents and, you know, representing NY 23 in the House. This, to me, sounds a lot like a church schism. For, you see, churches rarely split over something like, “You think we should be supporting the soup kitchen, I think we should be supporting Toys for Tots.” They split over things like, “Jesus doesn’t like Muslims. You’re friends with Muslims, so we’re out of here,” or, “The Bible says women and gays shouldn’t be pastors, so we’re going to go re-join the Catholic Church. They know what’s what.”

In an ever-increasing drive for purity churches rarely actually work through their issues. They simply split apart. Then when the splinters start to fight they split again. All in an ideological drive for purity.

The Republican Party is currently in a fight to determine what makes a perfect conservative. There’s no such thing. For some “conservative” simply means “small government.” For others “conservative” means “Republican.” For some it simply means, “keep your hands off our guns.” For still others “conservative” means “only allowed to do whatever the Bible says.” Then, of course, there are those for whom “conservative” means “do what Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Bill O’Reilly tell us to do.”

Michelle Malkin called Dede Scozzafava a “radical leftist.” If an NRA-endorsed Republican with a few Democratic leanings is a “radical leftist,” then there’s a wide gulf between reality and imagination. The difference between the two is the ideology of purity and the attending attitude that you can be for or against, but there’s no middle ground.

Dick Armey, the former political insider turned “grassroots” organizer has said, “My own view right now is the myth that you have to be a moderate — a Democrat lite — to win in the Northeast probably has less standing now than in any time since I’ve been in politics. The small-government candidate in the Republican Party — or running as an independent — is going to be the one to draw the energy of these voters.” This statement runs directly contrary to Michael Steele’s goal as RNC Chairman to focus less on ideological purity and more on a Republican Party that actually reflects the district it represents.

I rarely say this, but Steele is right in this case. Of course being right in an argument against Dick Armey and the Tea Baggers is right up there with winning a battle of wits against Ray Comfort or a brain damaged chihuahua. But the point stands.

From, basically, Lincoln up until now the Republican Party has been able to find a collection of charismatic (at least to them) leaders or unite against a common outside foe. From Grant through McKinley it basically coalesced around a group of Civil War veterans and the threat of a resurgent South. From Teddy Roosevelt’s defection and the Bull Moose split in the 1912 Election through Truman the Republican Party largely faltered. However, from Eisenhower through George W. Bush the Republicans again found their stride with the fight against Communism and militant Islam and strong (if not always charismatic) leadership from on high.

In the process, however, the Republicans made a deal with the Devil. The Devil, in this case, was conservative Christianity. The Christian Right responded well as long as they felt there was a good pastor in charge. But as more and more people fled from Bush and no one stepped forward to take the mantle, the Christian Right did as right-leaning Christians tend to do and split apart, searching for ideological purity.

With the complete implosion of Bush the Younger and the drive for purity came the end of the Republican Party as we know it. The RNC is not helping its cause, either. By throwing its support behind Hoffman it’s announcing that it will do whatever the wingnuts want. So either the Republicans who don’t like the Tea Baggers will support Democrats (as Scozzafava has done) or find themselves high and dry and alone (as Scozzafava has also done).

The wingnuts might be able to take local control in places like NY 23. But there’s no way they’ll be able to maintain a national presence. There simply aren’t enough people out there who agree with them.

Of course they could simply try to win enough seats to disrupt the democratic process. That worked really well to destabilize and ruin a different Republic about seventy years ago.

What was it that Sinclair Lewis said? “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross.”

I’ve avoided playing the Fascism card before. I simply do not see Fascism (or Communism) on the Democratic side of the line. I didn’t see it on the Republican side, either. However we might actually end up seeing it on the Tea Bagger side. All of the elements are there: focus on ideological purity, willingness to scapegoat, and a complete disinterest in the mechanics of governance.

I don’t think it will end up that way. But I also thought the Tea Bagger thing would burn itself out in a month or two. Now they’re a real threat to put a completely unqualified and inept candidate in to the House of Representatives.

This is not a good trend…

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*Ironically enough, my church was planning a big move to a new building on new property right as I was getting sick of it and decided to leave. The new property is right next door to the schism church’s property. 10 years on they’re neighbors…