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By Carolyn Baker

Speaking Truth to Power

In early 2005 in anticipation of my sixtieth birthday, I began working on an autobiography. Certainly, I reasoned, now entering my sixth decade, I should be putting in ink my reflections on life as I officially become a senior citizen. Following the publication of three books and countless articles, it seemed that my “memoirs” was the very next step.

Little did I realize that in the fall of 2006, just a few weeks after the release of my third book U.S. HISTORY UNCENSORED, a bombshell breaking news story that would hit a pivotal nerve in my own personal history would compel me to integrate the almost-finished memoirs with commentary on the story, not merely from my intellect but from my personal life experience. That news item was the revelation that fundamentalist Christian icon, Pastor Ted Haggard of the New Life Church of Colorado Springs, Colorado, ostensibly rabidly homophobic, had been involved for three years in a sexual relationship with another man.

Memoirs just lying around, serving no purpose except navel-gazing, are easily ignored and postponed for “some other day.” But when one’s autobiography so eerily parallels breaking news on CNN, one should consider taking it out, dusting it off, and disclosing to the world that human beings do not have to live a lie in order to follow the calling of their hearts in pursuit of the sacred.

Every day of Ted Haggard’s exposure in the news, I watched, listened, and read obsessively, and as the reader explores this book, he/she will soon understand why. Ted Haggard’s story is in so many ways, my story, but with one colossal difference: At the age of twenty-six, I realized that I was not willing to a live a lie for the rest of my life and came out as a lesbian to myself and to the world. Had I not made that decision, I might have perpetrated almost exactly the same excruciating deception on loved ones, colleagues, and admirers as he did.

Thus, I set to work on the completing of my new book which will be released in about two weeks, Coming out Of Fundamentalist Christianity: An Autobiography Affirming Sensuality, Social Justice, and The Sacred. In the Appendix section of this book the reader will find my November, 2006 article “Ted Haggard And Fundamentalist Christian Soul-Murder” that was posted on a number of Internet sites, including my own. It ultimately set in motion the completion of my autobiography.

I have taken enormous risks in writing my story, as well as my opinions regarding the American lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT) communities. This book will strike raw nerves among homophobes and anti-gay members of the religious community, and LGBT folks may not appreciate my taking our community to task politically, but the story must be told, and for me, it cannot be told without dividing the book into two parts: 1) My story, and 2) Our World. The anguish of my coming out process was exacerbated by a childhood devoid of social, political, or economic justice, and my notions about them today, inextricably connected with my sexual orientation, have determined the paradigm by which I intend to live the rest of my life. In other words, for me, the personal and political cannot be polarized, and anyone who knows that at a cellular level, also knows the distressing path that consciously integrating the two necessitates.

Except for mine, the names of all persons in the book have been changed in order to protect the innocent and the guilty. Two of my college years were spent in a fundamentalist Christian bible college which to this day I deplore, yet without its painful evisceration of my innocence, I would not become the person I now cherish. As most fundamentalist Christian colleges are, in my opinion, it was nothing less than a hothouse for blossoming homosexuals which it delighted in confining in the closet then castigating when impetuous latency could no longer be repressed.

This book is entering print as one of the most corrupt and conservative political administrations in the history of the United States is about to leave office. For me, it has been excruciating to witness its machinations for the past seven years, mirroring to me so much of what was an inhumane upbringing and what was so emotionally and spiritually devastating in the first half of my life. Yet, it is one thing to have grown up in a household terrorized by it and quite another to watch the same dogma, hypocrisy, and neo-fascist ideology perpetrated on an entire nation.

Approximately six weeks after the resignation of Ted Haggard from New Life Church, youth leadership minister, Christopher Beard of New Life, also resigned in disgrace over “sexual misconduct” the orientation of which at this writing is unknown. On Monday, December 11, 2006, the Associated Press broke the story of the disclosure and subsequent resignation of Englewood, Colorado’s Rev. Paul Barnes, pastor of another Rocky Mountain megachurch who confessed to his congregation that he had been involved in a number of homosexual relationships and was stepping down. I winced as I heard one sentence from Barnes’ mea culpa, so reminiscent of my pre-coming out years: “I have struggled with homosexuality since I was a 5-year-old boy. … I can’t tell you the number of nights I have cried myself to sleep, begging God to take this away.”

Was 2006 just a bad year for Colorado Christian fundamentalists? A series of coincidences, perhaps?

Or maybe December, 2006 was a bad year for fundamentalists in general as the Memphis Commercial Appeal reported on the 20th that church leaders announced that Rev. Paul Williams, a Bellevue Baptist Church staffer for 34 years, had been placed on paid leave pending an investigation regarding a “moral failure”—a disgustingly vague and abbreviated description of the pastor’s alleged sexual abuse of a relative some seventeen years prior. Supposedly aware of the incident, Senior Minister, Steven Gaines, had done nothing and complicitly assumed that “the incident had been resolved.” Fundamentalists would have us believe that only in the Roman Catholic Church is sexual abuse rampant and that only there does the non-offending clergy collude with it by moving priests from one location to another, thereby protecting their dirty little secrets.

On the contrary, I have for decades believed and publicly stated that there is something inherent in Christian fundamentalism that attracts individuals who are fleeing the impact of coming to terms with their sexual orientation, dealing with their own experiences of being sexually abused, or confronting other issues regarding sexuality and that fundamentalism not only draws such individuals but fosters their hypocrisy, thereby exacerbating their suffering and the suffering of everyone close to them. While a thorough exploration of this hypothesis is yet another book in itself, my book will endeavor to shed light by offering my own experiences and reflections on them.

In my experience and that of countless others, fundamentalist Christianity is intrinsically spiritually abusive, and I have painstakingly explained why in the pages of my book. Moreover, its homophobic and bigoted agenda has so infiltrated and influenced the pillars of power in the current fascist regime that governs America that all LGBT individuals residing in the United States need to be vigilant regarding the eroding and elimination of their civil liberties as a result of that reality.

Here is yet another example of how history repeats itself. Replete with homosexual activity, the Third Reich officially condemned homosexuality and hypocritically relegated homosexuals to the same status in German society as Jews. In fact, during the height of Hitler’s reign, homosexuals were required to wear pink triangles on their clothing, just as Jews were required to wear yellow stars on theirs. As I listen to the ranting of homophobic hatemongers such as James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Albert Mohler, and Janet Parshall, I hear not the essence of Christ’s teachings, but the deranged blathering of ideological neo-Nazis who would delight in slapping a pink triangle on me and shipping me off to a death camp.

In terms of the civil liberties of lesbian and gay individuals in the United States, these people are not harmless, or merely over-exuberant true believers. In his brilliant article, “For The Christian Right, Gay-Hating Is Just The Start,” Harvard Divinity School graduate Chris Hedges states:

These attacks mask a sinister agenda that has nothing to do with sexuality. It has to do with power. The radical Christian right — the most dangerous mass movement in American history — has built a binary worldview of command and submission wherein male leaders, who cannot be questioned and claim to speak for God, are in control and all others must follow. Any lifestyle outside the traditional model of male and female is a threat to this hierarchical male power structure. Women who do not depend on men for their identity and their sexuality, who live outside a male power relationship, challenge this pervasive cult of masculinity, as do men who find tenderness and love with other men as equals. The lifestyle of gays and lesbians is intolerable to the Christian right because its existence is a threat to the movement’s chain of command, one they insist was ordained by God.

In the Appendix of my book I have included an extraordinary article “The Psychology Of Christian Fundamentalism,” by Professor Emeritus, Walter Davis, Ohio State University, in which the author’s extraordinary insights into the emotional underpinnings of fundamentalism address that “something” in it that backfired, and in my opinion always does, on the three Colorado clerical homophobes and one Southern Baptist sex offender. “Morality for the fundamentalist,” says Davis, “is not about a life of charity or the pursuit of justice or the need to open oneself to the depth of human suffering. It’s about avoiding certain sexual sins and fixating on that dimension of life to the virtual exclusion of everything else.”

Because I am also an historian, I want to emphasize that fundamentalist Christianity as we know it today in the United States is a relatively new phenomenon in the Christian religion. From the official establishment of the Christian Church dating from the fourth century until the present time, myriad doctrines, traditions, practices, and biblical interpretations have existed in the Christian religion. Within the past two hundred years, the so-called mainstream denominations that were born in America’s Great Awakenings and some that evolved from the religious communities of European settlers—Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, Episcopal, Lutheran—have experienced diminished membership as the evangelical or fundamentalist factions of Christianity have skyrocketed in popularity and enrollment.

In this book I use evangelical and fundamentalist interchangeably. Both adhere to clearly delineated, strict “fundamentals” resulting from a literal interpretation of the bible, and whether one identifies as an evangelical or a fundamentalist, evangelizing or attempting to recruit believers into one’s religion is pivotal in accomplishing the mission of fundamentalism/evangelism, namely, enlarging Christ’s church on earth. “Fundamentalist” is a more nineteenth-century term associated with specific “fundamentals” that conservative Christian literalists believe are the backbone of Christianity whereas “evangelical”, a twentieth-century word may have been chosen to cosmetically alter the presentation of fundamentalist teachings, thereby making them appear more contemporary and less stodgy. Not wishing to evoke images of sweaty, red-faced Victorian ranters such as William Jennings Bryan or Billy Sunday, evangelical ministers adorned with blow-dried hairstyles and Rolex watches, their sermons preceded with hip-hop rhythms, synthesizer extravaganzas, and digital light shows, may not be any less theologically pedantic than their predecessors, but they are decidedly more marketable.

Coming Out Of Fundamentalist Christianity is not merely an autobiography—one woman’s coming out journey, but is intended to facilitate confluence between the integration of sexuality and spirituality and how individuals in the LGBT community struggling with that challenge, influence the society at large and are influenced by it, endeavoring to discern our limitations, our infinite opportunities, and the difference between them. In the Appendix the reader will find in addition to my article on Ted Haggard, an extensive list of articles, books, documentaries, and websites pertaining to sexual orientation research, spirituality, and issues social, economic, political, and environmental justice.

On February 6, 2007 , our collective intelligence was profoundly insulted with Ted Haggard’s “official” pronouncement that he is “completely heterosexual.” Even graduates of repulsively-onerous, long-term “ex-gay” therapy implied that this declaration by Haggard didn’t even pass the laugh test. Not only was American fundamentalism doing damage control, but once more, Ted Haggard opted to wallow in the same lie he has lived for over five decades.

Dr. Robin Meyers, United Church Of Christ minister and author of WHY THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT IS WRONG: A Minister’s Manifesto For Taking Back Your Faith, Your Flag, Your Future, states in his chapter on homosexuality:

Religious fanaticism itself is a symptom of compensatory behavior. The most rigid, the most compulsive, the most paranoid religious devotees are often hiding their own dark secrets. They seek the rigidity of authoritarian systems in order to cope with their own feelings of shame. Their inner conflicts are turned outward, and the collateral damage is all-too apparent….In my own ministry, I have noticed an unmistakable pattern, and it is more than mere coincidence. The most homophobic people I’ve ever met do not live comfortably inside their own sexual skin.

I am well aware that despite the vast sums of money and energy spent by Christian fundamentalism to convince its followers and the rest of the world that its dogma holds all possible answers to every human predicament, there are countless women and men within its fold whose souls, like Ted Haggard’s, and mine at the age of twenty, are eviscerated with conflict between their innate sexual orientation and a religious system and attendant community that proclaims them the worst of sinners for their impulses. Some have repressed their desires, some have shoved them into unconsciousness, some live double lives as Haggard did, and some have graduated from “ex-gay” therapy programs that promise a biblical transformation into lifelong heterosexuality, only to discover that they cannot annihilate a God-given, yes I said God-given, part of themselves. Others have become alcoholics, addicts, psychotics, or suicide statistics.

It is for those individuals, as well as those who are authentically content with their orientation, that this book has been written. As a tormented fundamentalist Christian in the second decade of life, I might have found liberation, comfort, and affirmation had I had access to a book that blessed my sexual orientation as compatible with, rather than at war with, my unquenchable heart’s desire for the sacred. Inexplicable suffering and a couple of suicide attempts might have been averted. And, I might have loved myself and others more attentively had I been able to love and honor the most forbidden aspect of all in my psyche.

But there are times and places when sexual orientation does not matter—or at least, when focus on LGBT “rights” must be considered in the context of the macrocosm of planet earth’s current condition. At this moment, planet earth is headed for cataclysm unless its inhabitants very quickly address daunting issues of climate chaos, hydrocarbon energy depletion, and global economic catastrophe. (I hasten to add that I am not referring to a Rapture/Tribulation scenario.) Such issues are far more comprehensive than sexual orientation—or are they? Yes and no. Perhaps they are macrocosmic mirrors of how humans have conducted themselves in their span of years on the earth. War, greed, and patriarchy—that is, attitudes of power and control, have put earthlings on a fast track to annihilation, and persecution of diverse sexual orientations has been an integral aspect of humanity behaving badly.

In the light of these daunting realities, I do not believe that the LGBT community can afford to focus only on the dual issues of gay marriage and HIV/AIDS. I do not oppose concern with these issues, but I cannot help but be appalled that LGBT political leaders have become fixated on them with little awareness or discourse about what I continue to name as The Terminal Triangle of climate change, Peak Oil, and global economic meltdown. While I support the right of every lesbian and gay individual to conceive and birth children, I cringe at what in some instances is an obsession with doing so in the face of earth’s carrying capacity, population overshoot, and the die-off that may occur as a result of the Terminal Triangle’s devastations. In one of the chapters of my book “Tunnel Vision In The Rainbow Nation”, I state that while the LGBT community desires a “place at the table” in the American political discourse, its overall lack of understanding about the nature of that political discourse and the realities of the Terminal Triangle guarantee that its misguided focus on gay marriage and HIV/AIDS assures that it will have a place at the table, but it’s place will be “dinner” for the ruling elite.

I hold little hope for the avoidance of civilization’s collapse, and in fact, it may be the only process capable of reconstituting humanity’s priorities. Much anguish will ensue, and when humans are desperate, they tend to blame someone—anyone for their misery. I therefore expect the LGBT community to be one scapegoat, among many others. I fully anticipate that as the severity of collapse intensifies, we are likely to see pink triangles or their equivalent foisted on the LGBT community. The ruling elite’s “need” for social control will intensify and with it, increased monitoring of all who do not conform to a lifestyle sanctioned by the empire’s pseudo-Christian, fascist agenda.

But if the LGBT community is capable of transcending so-called LGBT politics and addressing issues that affect all humanity, we may decrease our vulnerability. What would happen if thousands of lesbian and gay individuals in the United States, identifying themselves as such, began organizing to prepare for collapse and reached out to the heterosexual community in doing so? What would happen if gay and lesbian families began organizing with heterosexual families on issues of debt slavery, healthcare, childcare, and myriad concerns that affect all families?

Likewise, if the heterosexual community is capable of increasingly repudiating fundamentalist Christianity’s ghastly condemnation of all forms of diversity, civilization’s collapse may facilitate the creation of small communities of individuals who are willing to move beyond mainstream society’s media-manipulated, fundamentalist-fed culture wars and experience themselves on a cellular level as one human family.

In terms of human rights and civil liberties, sexual orientation matters enormously. In terms of the perils that threaten every life form on earth, it’s no longer about “us” and “them.” The lifeboats we create must honor the diversity of every passenger whose well being depends on the well being of every other.

Coming Out Of Fundamentalist Christianity: An Autobiography Affirming Sensuality, Social Justice, and The Sacred, is now available for order at Amazon. To order click HERE. The book will also be available very soon on this website.

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By Michael Goodspeed

6/3/07

Every man with the smallest inklings of humility and courage is forever discovering new things about himself. The self-images we cultivate through arrogance and ignorance are easily exposed in the harsh light of life experience. One may think himself a hero or genius or saint, but all too often, these grandiose self-analyses are born of egoic delusion rather than objective reality.

When one’s false pride has fallen and his ego stands defenseless and trembling, therein lays the greatest opportunity for self-discovery. One can either wait for the ego to re-inflate and again retreat to its comforting shelter, or one can leap head-first into the cavernous abyss that the ego once filled. The latter is the action advised by some of history’s great spiritual teachers, but the former is the one preferred by almost all of humankind.

We only do the really serious introspection when we have no choice, when we’re at life’s bottom. Stripped of every flattering self-concept, one is given an unobstructed glimpse of his own soul. The key is to not flinch when this mirror is held to your face. It is even more advisable that you not shatter it and cut your own throat with the broken shards.

I recently had an opportunity to both engage in and witness in others some brutally honest soul analysis. Whether it’s ugly or beautiful, cowardly or courageous, loving or hateful, all the soul can do is tell the truth of itself. Mine, like everyone’s, wants desperately to know love and joy and peace, but it is badly stunned by trauma, heartache,and loneliness. Mostly, it is barely aware of its own existence, let alone its inherent greatness. This also describes the soul of Chuck, a homeless man I met a few weeks ago on the streets of Las Vegas.

I went to Las Vegas with the intention of investigating the city’s homelessness crisis from a first-hand perspective. I was going to live on the streets for two weeks, with no money in my pocket and only utilizing the resources available to the homeless. I arrived on May6th, 2007, after a 30 hour Greyhound bus ride. The first evening was frightening and disorienting. I was exhausted, and for hours, I asked anyone who might be helpful — mostly security guards and police officers — where I could find a shelter for a night’s sleep. But each gave contradictory directions, and most admitted that they didn’t know the location of a single shelter.

I had not slept for two days, and my brain felt mutilated. I decided that my best bet for an evening of rest would be the outdoors. I caught a bus to nearby Henderson and slept in an open field in an industrial area. I worried that this trip just outside of Vegas’ city limits might constitute a violation of the experiment’s terms and integrity. But then I reminded myself that I was sleeping in a field and things were bad enough as they were.

After a few hours of fitful sleep, I caught a bus back to downtown Vegas and restarted my search for homeless services. A few blocks from the Fremont district, a hooker approached me and asked if I wanted a “date.” I told her I was broke and asked her for directions. She did so and proceeded to give me the 101 on being homeless in Vegas:

“Don’t ever walk around without money in your pocket. The police will arrest you for vagrancy. And don’t sit at a bus stop without taking a bus. Don’t stand in one place for too long, and don’t ever try to sleep in a park or in front of a building. And always have your ID on you, or they’ll put you in jail.”

I was concerned about these possibilities going into the project, particularly since the Las Vegas police were already interested in me. I had announced my project in an essay a week prior, and two days before I took the trip, police in Beaverton, Oregon visited my home at the behest of the LVMPD. I was a bit horrified at the prospect of being jailed and would do my absolute best to avoid it.

Following the hooker’s directions, I took a right down Main St. and headed toward a cluster of homeless services and shelters. On the way, I passed a badly disheveled elderly man lying sprawled and unconscious in the dirt. Held in his right hand was a pristine Holy Bible, a “gift” freely given to homeless men and women all across the United States. Upon seeing this tragic and poignant sight, my first thought was, I wish I had my camera — the image would have made great “art,” and I might have been able to sell it to a newspaper or magazine.

Self-discovery number one on my homeless journey: I am not nearly as compassionate or empathetic as I had imagined.

I spotted what l thought was a group of good Samaritans erecting a mini-campsite for the homeless off of a sidewalk, and I approached them and asked for directions. They informed me that they were homeless, and invited me into their “camp.” There were four men in total, 3 of whom were Hawaiian — an elderly man named “Uncle Dave,” his nephew Mark, and a diminutive man whose name I’ve already forgotten. And there was Chuck, a 49 year-old bespectacled white man who immediately began offering me helpful guidance. He offered to show me the various shelters that offered meals and beds, and I accepted.

Chuck looked a great deal older than this years — I would have guessed him to be in his early to mid 60’s. He explained this by describing himself as “a straight up alkie” (alcoholic). Indeed, Chuck placed no blame for his unhappy circumstances on anyone but himself. He told me, “Mike, if I won a million dollars, within 5 minutes I would have a meth pipe in one hand, a beer in the other, and my (bleep) in a hooker’s mouth.” As we walked, he gave me a brief overview of his past. He said that he had earned a decent living as a casino dealer in Reno, but that drug and alcohol addictions had drained all his money and destroyed his ability to work. He had been homeless in Vegas for the previous three months, and it was the lowest he had ever been in his life. Twice, he had been badly beaten and nearly killed by street gangs. He said that he didn’t believe he would be alive if he was still homeless at the end of the year.

Our first meal of the day was an early lunch at a shelter whose name I have either forgotten or never caught. (Lesson number two on my homeless journey: I am a writer and not a journalist — I am far more concerned with the existential wanderings of my own psyche than I am with gathering objective data.) The food was plentiful, and, not surprisingly, not very good. It was bland soup and cheese pasta and all the white bread and rolls you could eat. I found that I was extremely thirsty and tried to load up on water, but it tasted the way tap water always tastes in hot desert towns — murky and gritty. Since I didn’t have money to buy bottled water, I hoped that the dirty tap water would sufficiently hydrate me for the next two weeks.

As the hour approached noon, I noticed with some alarm that the sun was already having an effect on me. The heat in the desert southwest has a different quality than what I am used to in Oregon. Even when it’s not terribly hot, the solar radiation seems to act like a microwave, cooking your organs from the outside in. I asked Chuck how he had managed to live for the past three months under such an intense sun, and he claimed that his body had simply grown accustomed to it.

We headed back to the makeshift “camp,” which was essentially a big tarp and blankets held aloft by shopping carts. I had enjoyed perhaps ten minutes of shade when a police unit drove by and instructed us to remove the cover. I was dumbfounded and asked Chuck for an explanation. He said that the police always insisted that the tarp remain down until at least 4:30 in the afternoon. Whether they were worried about some nefarious activities occurring under the tarp or they were trying to kill us, I don’t know.

Since the sun had already become unbearable, we needed to find shelter elsewhere. Chuck told me that the only place where we could legally take refuge was a shaded outdoor area offered at the Salvation Army. This, I was told, was by far the most dangerous of all the shelters, and I was advised to never attempt to go there by myself. Chuck claimed that in just the previous two weeks, there had been a total of 6 stabbings (including three murders) and one rape.

One of the many crappy things about homelessness is the lines — you have to stand in them for long, long periods of time to get whatever you need. The line outside the Salvation Army was exceptionally long, and I passed the time by visually scanning the many countenances in the crowd. I immediately noticed someone who seemed profoundly out of place. She was a beautiful young blonde girl, surely no more than 19 or 20, with the clean-cut features of a prom queen or cheerleader. She seemed to be alone and stared straight down at the ground with a peculiar, slanted smile on her face. Given the shelter’s reputation, it seemed like an awfully dangerous environment for an attractive young woman to be on her own. I pointed the girl out to Chuck and asked if he knew her story.

“That’s Kimberly. Don’t ever try to talk to her or look her directly in the eye. She’s a ’spitter.’ One time, I asked her if she was OK, and she spit in my face and tried to kick me in the balls.”

Chuck went on to explain the girl’s generally accepted back-story. Supposedly, her husband was a crack dealer who had a falling out with a competitor, and repaid his “debt” by offering his wife as currency. For several hellish nights, the girl was tied up, raped and defiled in unimaginable ways by a horde of gangsters and druggies. The brutalization so traumatized her that her mind shut down and just vacated reality. Now she was alone and psychotic, living in the shelter’s “psychiatric” unit, receiving medication but surely not getting any better. True or not, I have no idea.

But that’s the way it is with every homeless person — they are not automatons or ghosts or ghouls or shadows. They’re human beings and each has a story.

When we finally made it to the outdoor sanctuary, Chuck and I sat down and he began ascribing a brief biography to each individual. There was Kathy, a rowdy and perpetually drunk ex-Marine who purportedly still did some kind of nebulous “freelance” work out at Nellis Air Force Base (when I asked her for a description of this work, she told me to go f*** myself.) There was an elderly and functionally nameless man who had supposedly not changed a single item of clothing for the last three years. There was a gangster named either “Blue” or “Boo” with the most terrifying countenance I had ever seen — every one of his front “teeth” had been transformed into a four-inch metal shank. According to Chuck, the man had spent upwards of ten grand on this bizarre dental procedure, the purpose of which was known only to him.

I would have liked to have remained in the shade until the sun went down, but Uncle Dave joined us drunk and out of his mind. He immediately wore out his welcome when he screamed at the top of his lungs, “De la Hoya lost! F*ck all the Mexicans!” Since perhaps four dozen Mexican men were within earshot, Chuck and I decided to leave the sanctuary post haste.

We headed back to the “camp,” and I was happy to see that the tarp had been reinstated, hopefully for the remainder of the day. A bottle of “Night Train,” which along with Thunderbird ranks as the top “bum wine,” was being passed around. For “politeness” sake, I took a sip, and as a lifelong non-drinker I was surprised that it didn’t taste too terrible. But it didn’t help my emerging headache and nausea, and I was growing more thirsty by the minute.

I told Chuck about my dehydration, and he offered to fetch me a jug of water from the tap at the Salvation Army. I laid down under the tarp and stared for a while at the cars passing by. I noticed a number of drivers smiling, laughing, and pointing at the camp in apparent contempt. It occurred to me that these monkeys were so disconnected from reality it was almost unbelievable. To take pleasure in another person’s misfortune is always an indication of mental illness, and these folks didn’t seem to realize how close they themselves might be to homelessness. They could lose hold of an addiction, get laid off, miss a couple of paychecks, maybe get the boot from a domestic partner. And without a loved one to help them in their time of need…what would happen? They would be in the exact same mess as the people they were mocking.

Chuck returned with the water as promised, but most of it disappeared into the Hawaiians before I got my hands on it. Uncle Dave received the lion’s share, since he was sporting a bloody nose as the result of his impolitic comments at the Salvation Army. I again wondered how I was going to stay hydrated for two weeks in the desert environment and resolved to earn some money through day labor to keep water in ready supply.

Around 2 PM, Chuck told me it was time for another meal. It dawned on me that staying fed and hydrated while homeless in Vegas was itself going to be a full-time job. The meals served at the shelters were offered during normal working hours — in other words, anyone who works is going to have to go without eating until he or she gets paid. To make matters worse, without a car or even money for bus fare, the only mode of transport is walking. And I was quickly learning that this entails a very serious physical price in the desert heat.

After another long wait in a long line under the hot burning sun, I ate another crappy meal of starch and cheese and gritty tap water. Afterwards, Chuck took me to a day labor office and I signed up with them. I also signed a paper stating my availability for landscaping work. Unsurprisingly, not everyone is eager to work outdoors for eight straight hours in 105 degree heat, but hard, physical, outdoor drudgery is the kind of work one gets through day labor outfits. I wondered what it would be like to be 65 years old and homeless in Vegas — the outrageous heat, the lack of shelter, the necessity of earning money through physical exertion. Since I was beginning to feel 65, it didn’t take much wondering at all.

We made our way back to camp at around 4:30, and incredibly, Chuck told me it was almost time for yet another meal — my third in less than 6 hours. According to Chuck, most of the shelters only served one meal a day, so the only way to get three squares was to visit each of them. I wasn’t looking forward to any more time under the sun, but I knew I needed to eat and drink. Chuck then offered me the alternative of going to a makeshift “picnic” under a bridge. He said that a local church offered this service once a week and provided such meals as Chinese food, pizza, and various “take-out.” I seriously doubted my tolerance for any more of the shelters’ cheese pasta or mystery meat, so I happily agreed.

Shortly into our walk, we came across a towering homeless man who was having a very animated conversation with himself. I thought he looked a bit like Christopher Lloyd in his Back to the Future role. Ordinarily, I steer a bit clear of the overtly insane, but I noticed that his T-shirt was emblazoned with an interesting phrase. It read, “This Is Not the Life I Ordered!” The sentiment seemed more jovial than embittered, and I could see in the man’s eye a glint of genuine humor underneath (or perhaps within) the craziness. I walked directly toward him, gave him a thumbs up, and said, “I like your shirt, man.” He returned my smile and simply said, “Yeah.”

At that moment, the T-shirt’s maxim seemed like the most profound teaching I had ever encountered. Think about it. It’s not as if anyone has ever set out to intentionally suffer. And we don’t ruin our own lives out of “sinfulness” or “evil” or “badness.” We are each of us doing the absolute best that we can in a culture and a world that lives in direct opposition to the truth. Some of us have had our bodies and brains and souls damaged by circumstances completely beyond our control. And others are continually harmed by the inevitable consequences of their own bad choices, but even these individuals are doing their best and are thus deserving of compassion.

Who among us feels that his life is the one that he “ordered?” Nothing turns out the way that we plan. When you’re young you have a million strategies for a perfect little life, but as you get older, your choices become evermore narrow. Your identity in the world is firmly entrenched, your personality is set, and indeed, your very consciousness is growing dimmer and dimmer. It’s a myth that people improve with age — most become caricatures until they finally submit to their own worst inclinations — the addictions, the prejudices, the neuroses, the obsessions.

I walked with Chuck and expressed some of these thoughts to him. He commiserated, but insisted that he was not yet ready to throw in the towel. “This is not the end of me, Mike. I’m gonna get back on my feet, and when I do, I sure as hell won’t take things for granted like I did before.” I then reminded Chuck of what he said he would do if he won a million dollars. He just laughed and took a pull from his cigarette.

When we finally arrived at the “picnic” after nearly an hour of wandering (”under a bridge somewhere” is not the most helpful direction in a big city), my throat was parched and my head was pounding. I was able to drink a couple of bottles of water, but I was dismayed to see a line of roughly a hundred people awaiting the promise of a meal. Chuck believed that the front of the line was located where a sermon was being performed. Unfortunately, this turned out to be false — it was in fact the END of the line. We endured the boring and soul-numbing sermon for nothing, and when it finally came our turn to be served, the best of the pickings were long gone. I felt physically ill when I saw our remaining food choices — cheese pasta, cheese sandwiches, Pepsi, and Chee-tos. I forced down the soft drink, begged another bottle of water, and said a prayer that I wouldn’t wretch my stomach’s rancid contents.

We got back to the camp at around 7:45 or 8 PM, and the sun was mercifully all but a memory. I lied down and tried to ignore the throbbing in my head and turning of my stomach. The ever-helpful Chuck offered me more Night Train and cigarettes and even some pot, all of which I politely declined. I dozed off thinking of nothing but that T-shirt and its world-weary axiom.

At around midnight, I woke up and instantly knew that I was going to vomit. With knees buckling, I very slowly stood and began shuffling up the street away from the camp. My headache had grown from a dull throb to a full-blown migraine, an electric spike shoving through the base of my skull. I doubled over and coughed and hacked a dry heave for maybe thirty seconds. Every wretch made my headache more agonizing, so I was enormously relieved when an ungodly eruption of pasta and goulash spewed from my mouth onto the Vegas sidewalk.

It occurred to me that there was a very real chance I might be dying — sunstroke, dehydration, or food poisoning seemed the likeliest culprits. With all of the bemusement I could muster, I sort of chuckled at my own meekness — it had taken less than 36 hours for Sin City to almost kill me. Even those who had advised against my experiment conceded that I might last at least a few days. Interestingly, my body had not been damaged by an attack from a homeless person, as many people had warned. Indeed, I had felt no anxiety whatsoever in their presence. It was the natural elements of the city itself — and the ultra harsh circumstances intentionally inflicted by city officials, led by Mayor Oscar Goodman — that did me in.

I took my cell phone from my pocket and dialed 9-1-1. I wasn’t sure if this action was going to mark the end of my experiment, but I felt that I needed some immediate medical attention.

An ambulance came and took me to The Valley hospital. After about 30 minutes, I vomited again, to which the attending nurse commented, “Hmm…That looks like the stew they serve downtown.” For some reason, I didn’t want the guy to know that I was living as a homeless person, so I told him I had eaten dinner at the buffet line at Circus Circus (a very plausible lie).

Unsurprisingly, the physician who attended me insisted that I needed some expensive tests, beginning with a CAT scan. I agreed to this simply because I thought it might give me an opportunity to catch a few minutes of sleep. The physician then stated that he thought I might be having an aneurysm, and he needed to perform a procedure called a lumbar puncture (or a spinal tap). I don’t know much medical jargon, but any procedure with the word “lumbar” in it sounds way too f*cking expensive. I told him I felt certain that I was dehydrated and not having an aneurysm, and he responded that I knew no such thing. I then asked if I had the legal right to leave the hospital, to which he replied, “Yes, but you have to sign a waiver stating that you are leaving against medical advice.” I signed the waiver and walked out of the hospital at around 4 AM.

I’ve done some catastrophically stupid things in my life, but leaving the hospital in the sad shape I was in is at the top of the list. And the fact that I had no idea where I was and didn’t know how to get back to the camp made matters worse. For the first time in my life, my body was so depleted that I felt unable to simply put one foot in front of the other. It was like trying to walk underwater. My throat burned from vomit and my head felt like a canoe. Shit.

I took out my cell and called my parents. They agreed to Western Union me some cash, but they’d be unable to do so until 10 AM. I realized what this meant — I would have to shamble up and down the Vegas streets in a state near death for the next 6 hours.

And that’s what I did. I tried asking for directions back to the camp, but I was too exhausted to walk for more than a couple of minutes at a time. I found a bus stop that offered a little bit of shade, but as soon as the sun came up, its glare beat directly down on my head. I found it nearly impossible to stay awake, but every now and then, I would see a police car drive by and I would snap my head to full attention. I remembered the hooker’s comment that the cops would arrest anyone who loitered at a bus stop. I had no money in my pockets, so according to Vegas law; my very presence on the streets was a crime. I began to feel real terror that I might get arrested, a scenario only slightly more appealing to me than physical death.

Until perhaps 8 AM, I would sit at the bus stop until the bus arrived, stand and lurch a few steps away, then return after the bus had left. I felt desperately in need of water, so I staggered over to the nearest casino/hotel, hoping against hope that my uneven gate would not lead to an arrest for public drunkenness.

Inside the casino, I asked one of the porters if they had a Western Union, and much to my relief, he said yes. But unfortunately, a casino is only a hospitable environment to those who are spending money. I had none and couldn’t just sit and stare at a slot machine to kill time. So I walked into a bathroom with the intention of hiding in a stall for a couple of hours.

After drinking countless handfuls of water from the tap, I sat miserably on the toilet and drifted in and out of consciousness. The bathroom was equipped with a PA system which blasted an inane assortment of bad 80’s tunes by bands like Huey Lewis and the News and Air Supply. When you’re squatting and slowly dying on a toilet in a Vegas casino, a song like “Hip to be Square” seems sadly appropriate. I wished for cyanide capsules almost as badly as I wished for a 60 ounce Big Gulp.

After maybe an hour, I was jarred from my stupor by a loud pounding on the stall door followed by a deep voice that bellowed, “Security!” I guess that someone found it a little suspicious that the same pair of shoes could be seen in the stall for an hour without so much as a flush (this makes sense — the function of a bathroom is, you do your business and you leave). I opened the door, and this big burly behemoth with real alarm on his face asked me, “What’s the problem, sir?” I felt certain that I was about to be arrested, so I used the truth as my only defense.

“I’m waiting for a Western Union, man, and I can’t wait in the lobby. You have to spend money to be out there, and I don’t have any.”

He responded that I couldn’t just sit on the toilet. Apparently, it frightens people too much.

Much to my surprise, I was allowed to walk from the bathroom a free man. The Western Union was not going to open until 10, so my challenge was to exist in the casino for almost an hour without getting the boot for not spending money. I sat in front of a slot machine and punched at buttons while trying to stare attentively at the screen. I counted the minutes in my head and tried not to look as wasted as I felt. I hoped that when the Western Union opened I would be coherent enough to communicate intelligibly with the agent. The minutes passed and I kept stabbing stupidly at the slot machine buttons.

With legs filled with cement and acid, I staggered to the gated booth that I hoped might hold my salvation. The woman behind the counter looked at me and shook her head. “We don’t open until 10.” I looked at the clock on the wall behind her and it said 10:07. In a moment of blind and irrational panic, I wondered if she meant 10 PM rather than 10 AM. I watched her walk back and forth shuffling papers and stapling things and looking busy for the next few minutes. Finally, with the mercy of Mother Mary herself, this stupid yet wonderful lady asked me for my business, and I could have wept with joy.

I got enough money for a motel room, where I would wait until my sister (who — thank the love of Christ — lives in a small town a few hours away) could come and pick me up. It is with no shame I admit that without the loving assistance of my family, I might well have died on the streets of Sin City. For the record, I am 31 years old and in excellent physical shape — I don’t smoke or drink, I eat a healthy diet, and I’ve been a devoted marathon runner for the last 17 years. I knew that Vegas was a tough place to be homeless, but my God — less than 36 hours, and I was at death’s door and crying to my mammy and pappy for help.

Going into the experiment, I had been communicating with a reporter for the Las Vegas Sun newspaper named Tim Pratt. When he learned of my experiment’s premature and pathetic end, Pratt insisted that it might still make for a good story. After all, the reason I almost died is because I had no money, minimal resources, and was trapped in a viciously hot climate. In other words, I was in EXACTLY the same boat as the approximately 12,000 homeless human beings who live in Las Vegas year round. 36 hours, and I was almost dead. Imagine trying 36 days, or 36 weeks, or 36 months, as many have.

As an interesting footnote, Pratt informed me that roughly 40 percent of all homeless in Vegas have no valid ID whatsoever. This prevents them from getting work and even receiving many essential services. I experienced the horror of this first hand — I lost my birth certificate in Vegas, and while trying to get some temporary work while staying with my sister in Arizona, I found that no one would hire me, since I had only one form of ID. I don’t casually use the term “police state” to describe America, but the first rule of any police state is, don’t go anywhere without your papers.

Synchronistically, as I write this, I am a couple of days from returning to Vegas under much happier circumstances, to attend a scientific conference. It is with little fondness that I remember my hellish two days on the city’s unforgiving streets. But I would give
anything to again encounter that lanky crazy fellow with the funny, sad, and oh-so-true axiom on his T-shirt.

“This is not the life I ordered.”

It’s not the one I ordered either. But I have to believe that my order still matters. Self-discovery number whatever on my homeless journey: our choices ALWAYS matter. No matter how bleak or hopeless or unforgiving our circumstances, there must be meaning in choosing wisely rather than poorly. Alternatively, life is truly without purpose and God a sadistic madman. Our choices have to matter. Always. In the gutter, on a battlefield, right up to the moment of death.

If nothing else, I want my order to be a true one. I no longer ask for a “better life” — no force in the universe exists that can provide it for us. Rather, I want the ability to choose correctly, now and forever. Sanity. Rationality. Integrity. Love. These are the gifts I want for myself, because they ARE the road to a better life. In this moment, this is the life I order.

Michael Goodspeed can be contacted at gspeed2000@gmail.com

Book Review of Michael C. McHugh, The Second Gilded Age: The Great Reaction in the United States 1973-2000 by Ed Bloomer

5/25/07

When I was working on the assembly line at General Electric in 1979, a boss came down one day and gave each worker a share of stock worth $3.00. I tore mine up and threw it in the trash. Even so, the company kept it on record, and from time to time in the 1980s and ‘90s contacted me to say that the stock had split and increased in value. To make a long story short, by August 2001, that lonely share of GE stock had multiplied like capitalist loaves and fishes into 90 shares—now worth $4,500. Not being much of a capitalist, I gave away my totally unearned loot to my family or the Catholic Worker community. Even so, when I imagined from this one example just how much the rich, the near-rich and the obscenely rich must have increased their wealth during this time, I understand just what Michael McHugh meant when he called it a Second Gilded Age.

Anyone interested in politics, culture and race will certainly be enthralled with this book! It describes the cycles of US History from the time of the First Gilded Age (1873-1901) to the Second a century later. Both were periods of laissez faire capitalism, of Robber Barons who exploited new technologies to establish giant industries such as John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil in the 19th Century or Microsoft a hundred years later. In these capitalist heydays, wealth and incomes are highly concentrated in the hands of the top 10% of the population, while the living standards for most of the population stagnated or declined. Far from protecting and defending the interests of the common people, politicians serve the oligarchy during these Gilded Ages, while manipulating the voters through the calculated use of racism, religious and cultural issues, law and order and nationalism. It is no accident that these capitalist heydays are also the heydays of right-wing populist movements like the Ku Klux Klan and Moral Majority.

McHugh compares these Gilded Ages with what he calls the Historical Exception Period of 1945-73. He shows us how prosperity after World War II, when the American Empire was at its strongest, also gave working people social democratic and modern liberal capitalist welfare state. Building on the New Deal and Fair Deal of the 1930s and 1940s, the New Frontier of John Kennedy and the Great Society Lyndon Johnson created programs that uplifted the cities and fed the hungry plus Medicare, which enriched the elderly with help on their medical expenses. As a result of the Second Reconstruction of 1954-65, new laws were passed to protect minorities in voting rights, affirmative action and desegregation of schools and work places.

In the 1968 election, the Vietnam War was tearing the fabric of the nation apart. Nixon beat out Humphrey for the presidency. Nixon was the last president of the Historical Exception Period and the initiator of the Second Gilded Age. He promised to dismantle the Great Society programs that benefited poor women with children the so called ‘welfare queens’. He was effective in manipulating the backlash of white voters, which Republicans called the Southern Strategy. Nixon also used the issue of ‘law and order’ to erode the gains which minorities and working people had gained during the Historical Exception Period. Reelected in a landslide against George McGovern in 1972, only the Watergate break-in and his disgrace and his ouster from office prevented him from establishing a new Republican majority. Nixon self-destructed in 1974, but the conservative backlash endured and prospered despite this.

Even so, with the declining economy and massive public distrust of government and politicians, the Second Gilded Age was being ushered in. Jimmy Carter was elected in 1976 by labor minorities and the Old New Deal Coalition, but he was basically a moderately conservative southern Democrat. In the last two years of his term, Carter had on the drawing board massive increases in military spending, the neutron bomb, and the B-2 bomber—all of which robbed the poor. The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 was the High Noon of the Second Gilded Age, which featured huge cuts in social spending, longstanding hostility toward civil rights for minorities, the Draconian age of more prisons, tougher penalties, and ushered in a backlash against gays, feminists and minority rights. Reagan and his advisors were experts in using the reactionary Southern Strategy, beating Carter and Mondale with issues of culture, race, flag-waving and family values.

By the 1990’s, after twenty years of declining living standards, the majority of voters were alienated from the political system and favored a third party candidates, from Pat Buchanan on the right and Ralph Nader on the left. In the 1992 election Ross Perot stole enough white votes from George Bush Sr to hand the election to Bill Clinton. Like Carter, he was a moderately conservative southern governor, who made promises about improved social programs and universal health care, but was unable to keep them. Once again using cultural and racial backlash issues, the Republicans under Newt Gingrich seized both the House and Senate in 1994.Their Contract on America was a radically free market version of capitalism to which Clinton accommodated with a welfare ‘reform’ law that dumped the poor into the street. Thanks to this ‘triangulation’ strategy, Clinton was elected for a second term in 1996. By then, the Stock Market was riding high, although by 2000 -2001 its bubble began to look deflated even before 9/11. This Gilded Ageversion of ‘prosperity’, like that of the 1920s or the First Gilded Age, was concentrated mostly at the top. In an election that further disgraced the political system, George Bush, Jr. came to power in 2000 thanks to a conservative majority on the Supreme Court. His War on Terror and Second Oil War brought about big deficits, high inflation with big tax cuts and breaks to the rich.

I cannot do this book a great enough service. In The Second Gilded Age, Dr. Michael McHugh has given a concise critique of the history of the workings of our society and political system in an amazing way. This book should be read by scholars or anyone who is concerned about the future of this country and our world. It at least offers the hope that the Gilded Ages are cyclical and that although they might have seemed endless at the time, they have never been the last word in history.

Winning the Battle for their Souls

By Jason Miller

7/8/06

America as the beacon of human rights and dignity is but a dream yet to be realized. While the dream has lain dormant, amoral opportunists have busily unleashed their nightmare on billions of human beings. And all the while they have trumpeted the many virtues of the United States as a Christian nation.

There are many admirable aspects to our country, but these are often over-shadowed by the actions of the Machiavellian, ruthless, and avaricious individuals who have long dominated the social, economic, religious, and political institutions comprising the power structure United States of America. While a nation is an abstraction encompassing many aspects and dynamics (i.e. its people, culture, government, resources, etc.) that are in a constant state of flux, there are at least four elements of the United States which have remained relatively consistent throughout much of its history:

1. A wealthy White patriarchy has monopolized most of the power and wealth.

2. An economic system resting on the pillars of greed and self-interest has driven the United States to enslave a race of human beings, commit genocide against another, and to commit virtually innumerable crimes against humanity in the pursuit of growth and profit.

3. Disseminating powerful propagandistic messages through a corporate-owned media and a public school system designed from the top down to produce obedient consumers and workers, the ruling elite in the United States has convinced generations of citizens that their nation is a moral icon and that American Exceptionalism justifies the slaughter of millions of innocents.

4. Many in the United States assert that the United States is a Christian nation. “Christianizing” the “heathen” Native Americans and the Filipino “savages” provided a rationalization for annihilating millions of human beings.

Self-righteous hypocrisy and the banner of Christianity have been staples of the ruling elite in the United States as they have led their followers on a 200 year spree of economic and geographic expansion at the expense of those unfortunate enough to stand in their way. Exemplifying their latest crusade, in October 2003, newly appointed undersecretary of defense for intelligence Lt. General William Boykin emphatically proclaimed that fundamentalist Muslims hated the United States “because we’re a Christian nation, because our foundation and roots are Judeo-Christian…and the enemy is a guy named Satan”

Given that the psyche of most Americans has been battered with the notion that our country was founded by Christians intending to form a Christian nation, and that many of those besieged psyches have acquiesced and accepted this assertion as dogmatic truth, perhaps an analysis of the founder of Christianity would be instructive.

Jesus Christ. Was he deity, man, or myth? The answer to that question depends on one’s point of view. Christians embrace him as the son of God and a member of the Holy Trinity. Followers of Islam consider him to be a prophet and holy man who performed miracles, but do not believe in his divinity. Some of us in the “pagan” realm simply view him as an inspirational moral leader. Others doubt that Christ even existed.

Whether he was god, exceptional human or legend, almost all of our knowledge about Jesus Christ is derived from the synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And these three books of the Bible do reveal a story of a remarkable being.

Jesus was a radical agitator and social outcast who challenged the establishment of his day. A carpenter by trade, Christ would have been considered one of the working poor. As is common knowledge, he defied the Sanhedrin’s insistence on strict adherence to religious law to the extent that they eventually saw to his crucifixion.

In his hometown of Nazareth, Jesus was stigmatized as a bastard and shunned as the son of an adulteress. Joseph is believed to have adopted him, but that apparently did little to alleviate the situation. Jesus eventually embraced a new “family” in the sect that followed John the Baptist. Jewish leaders, whose power was largely dependent upon their Roman occupiers, came to view John as a serious threat as he preached loyalty to God over Caesar. Jesus’ equally tenacious commitment to placing the will of God above that of a political leader ultimately led him to martyrdom too. Both men represented serious threats to the social order and it was virtually inevitable that the ruling class would kill them.

Aside from the fact that he claimed to be the Messiah and seriously threatened their authority, the Pharisees feared and hated Jesus because he developed such a mass following throughout much of Galilee during his three year ministry. He won hearts and minds with his messages of redemption and compassion. Whether it was through the placebo effect, alleviation of psychosomatic illnesses, or true divine intervention, Jesus performed many miraculous cures and exorcisms. Encouraging his considerable throng of followers to follow the spirit rather than the letter of the law and asserting corruption in the Temples, Jesus demonstrated that he was an anarchist capable of initiating a successful rebellion against the status quo.

Excepting his martyrdom, perhaps his crowning achievement as a spiritual leader was the Sermon on the Mount. As he spoke, he shocked his listeners with the Beatitudes in which he defined the blessed in ways that defied orthodoxy. According to Christ and his Beatitudes, the blessed and the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Heaven include mourners, the hungry, the persecuted, the merciful, the meek, the poor in spirit, the pure in heart, and the peacemakers.

Note that his criteria for blessedness did not encompass the aspects of humanity which Americans have been programmed to worship, including winning; accumulating wealth; attaining power; being thin, youthful and beautiful; succeeding; heterosexuality; regular attendance of church; being Caucasian; and patriotism.

Besides the Beatitudes, Jesus Christ gave us several other gems of moral wisdom. His “turn the other cheek” metaphor inspired the powerful non-violent spiritual leadership of Gandhi and Martin Luther King. The Golden Rule has acted as a cornerstone of civilized behavior. And Christ’s hyperbole concerning rich men, camels and eyes of needles has served as a largely unheeded warning about greed and the accumulation of excessive wealth.

Were Jesus Christ incarnate today and living in America, what would he think of a nation inhabited by many who claim to be followers of the spiritual movement he founded? And how would the ruling elite of the United States receive him?

Imagine this scenario:

Jesus Christ returns to Earth as he was portrayed in the Gospels at the height of his ministry. Geographically, his manifestation occurs in a blighted urban core in a large American city. Despite his humanity, he is endowed with omniscience and omnipotence. But he will not use them to change the course of humankind. He is here to act as a mortal agent of change.

Jesus’ initial reaction to the knowledge flooding his mind and the assault to his senses is a catatonic state. Horror at the rapacious and avaricious nature of the United States’ social order overwhelms his consciousness.

Shaking off the initial shock, he succumbs to a wave of uncontrollable nausea. Thoughts of institutionalized racism, the wealth chasm, and the military industrial complex evoke a burst of primal and toxic hatred. He retches violently.

Having purged his loathing, Jesus sits back and rests quietly on a soiled mattress someone had dragged into the garbage strewn alley where he finds himself.

Surrounded by broken bottles, hypodermic needles, and used prophylactics containing their repulsive spent payloads, Christ falls into a deep state of reflection which is unhindered by the scurrying sounds of rats and roaches. As he contemplates the many horrific atrocities committed in his name, a resident of the alley brushes past him in a drunken stupor, urinates in his pants and promptly passes out.

A country claiming to practice his spirituality spends $600 billion a year on its behemoth murder machine while over two million of its own people live on the street and eat from dumpsters. Rage surges through Jesus’ being. He grabs a chunk of broken brick, hurls it with abandon, and shatters what is left of a broken window. The thought that his ministry and martyrdom had spawned such inhumanity infuriated him.

Regaining his calm and composure, Jesus resumes his contemplation.

What is this abomination called Capitalism? Permeating nearly every facet of the United States (including his churches), exploiting human beings and the Earth, demanding perpetual war, and ensuring the comfort of a few through the suffering of the many, Capitalism is a cancer that reduces its blind adherents to empty, soulless shells.

Greed is good? Had his flock truly strayed so far that they enshrined selfishness, mean-spiritedness, ruthless competitive instincts, and avarice as virtues? What chance would his message of compassion and peace have competing with the clever propaganda and allure of immediate gratification purveyed by the likes of Fox, McDonald’s, Wal-Mart, and Rush Limbaugh?

Grief-stricken, he cries in despair for the Native Americans, Black Americans, and the tens of millions of victims of the imperialist United States foreign policy in Latin America, Africa, the Philippines, Vietnam, Iraq, and Palestine. He smiles briefly at the thought of Judea and Galilee and feels a twinge of home-sickness. Joy and nostalgia are short-lived as thoughts of Palestinian suffering at the hands of the merciless Israeli government quickly intrude on his nostalgic reminiscence.

It perplexes him that the United States has not lived up to the rich promise spawned by the American Revolution that broke the shackles of tyranny against tremendous odds. Early Americans had created a phenomenal instrument with which to govern a nation when they wrote the Constitution. They even included a mechanism to amend its inherent flaws (i.e. the legalization of slavery). But despite the valiant struggle of many poor, working class, and minority Americans, the de facto tyranny of wealthy elitists has endured.

Jesus concludes that many Americans were amongst the blessed he had enumerated in the Sermon on the Mount and that many Americans would enter his Kingdom. Yet he agonizes over those millions who had succumbed to the propaganda and sold their souls for the hollow rewards offered by the “American Way”. Torment consumes him as he realizes that conspicuous consumption, aggressive militarism, overt and covert racism, abject inhumanity, torture, theft of land and resources, corruption, “win at all cost”, survival of the fittest, and pathological self-absorption are the hallmarks of the social and political systems of the United States. Jesus marvels that so many people would fall prey to such obvious spiritual cancers.

Limping severely, a one-armed man with a very bad prosthesis, matted gray hair, and a badly tattered Army jacket flops himself onto the mattress next to Jesus. He smells of alcohol and stale urine. Vacant eyes transfixed on the alley wall before him, he mutters unintelligibly as he pulls a rancid-smelling piece of meat from his pocket and begins gingerly munching with the remaining stumps of his severely decayed teeth.

Christ feels overwhelmed with compassion and embraces the man. There is little response, but he does feel a slight shudder. This coupled with the fact that the man does not reject the embrace satisfies Jesus that at some level of his being, the hapless itinerant welcomes human contact and kindness. Jesus realizes that this man had answered America’s call to “fight for his country” in Vietnam. Abandoned by the government he had served, this lost soul had been condemned to suffer a living hell of homelessness, untreated PTSD, and substance abuse.

Suddenly Jesus had an epiphany. Despite being one of the wealthiest societies in human history, the United States has a homeless population of about two million. As a fisher of men, he would troll America’s cities, reaping a bountiful harvest of loyal followers from amongst the homeless and other disenfranchised groups. And he would start with the human derelict he had just embraced.

Jesus begins laying out his strategy to his first disciple. As Christ talks, the despondent man’s vacant expression is replaced by a crooked smile and a look of enthusiasm. He feasts upon a small loaf of fresh bread from Christ’s goatskin bag and listens to Jesus’ message of hope and redemption. Jesus talks for several hours. His willing adherent absorbs his words like a desiccated sponge.

Jesus speaks of his vision to cast out his net, gathering millions of loyal followers from amongst the homeless, poor, gays, minorities, the working class, and other people who felt powerless to stop the momentum of the corporatocracy in Washington. Reminding his disciple that the strength of his moral revolution will lie in the sheer number of participants, Jesus predicts that tens of millions will abandon working and shopping to join him in a triumphant non-violent march on Washington. Crippled by the loss of its cogs, the profit and war machine would finally grind to a halt.

Feeling mildly annoyed, Jesus pauses briefly to brush away a fly that had been persistently buzzing about his face.

Continuing his monologue, Jesus reveals that he plans to expose the true weakness of the iniquitous corporate militarists ruling the United States by awakening the millions of Americans it had psychologically enslaved. He would free those who had been deluded into giving their blood, sweat, tears, and children to expand a malevolent economic empire. He would lay the nightmare to rest and awaken the dream.

A sharp screech of tires gives Jesus and his newly anointed apostle a jolt. Two powerfully built men with close-cropped hair and serious expressions emerge from an ominous-looking black SUV with heavily tinted windows. With the quick precision of a trained assassin, one of the “men in black” snaps the disciple’s neck. The other snatches Jesus by his hair and hurls him into the back of the Escalade…

Awakening in a mental fog induced by heavy sedation, Jesus struggles to remember what had happened. Barely lucid, he slowly takes in his surroundings. He is in a small cell dimly illuminated by a lone flickering candle. It is chilly and the air is dank. Seated at a small table in front of him, a simple-looking man is glaring at him with deep contempt. Jesus notes a rotund male figure wearing a permanent snarl and a cruel looking woman with dark skin hovering nearby. He senses that wickedness and deceit are habitual with this trio.

Despite his significantly inferior intellect, it is obvious to Jesus that the two others maintain the pretense that the man at the table is their leader.

“I am George W. Bush. I am President of the United States and the leader of the free world. Our spies at the NSA were monitoring your conversation in the alley. We know of your terrorist plot to destroy freedom and democracy in America. I am declaring you an enemy combatant.”

Brimming with smug arrogance, Bush leans back in his chair and locks his fingers behind his head. He trains his gaze on Jesus with the air of one studying an insect and contemplating whether or not to squash such an inferior being.

Finally he returns his attention to the script laid before him. After several minutes of careful study, he gives Jesus, Cheney and Condoleezza a start by forcefully slamming his fist onto the rickety wooden table. Feeling triumphant because he is about to vanquish a tremendous threat to the established power structure, he begins speaking again,

“You are a threat to national security. Like that MLK bastard, your goal is to empower the poor, minorities, and the other groups we keep oppressed to protect our selfish interests. You would awaken the masses to our moral bankruptcy and to the foolish self-destructiveness of supporting us.

I cannot let that happen. My wealthy base has spent years selling Americans on the virtues of war, greed, free trade, free markets, tax cuts for the rich, cutting social programs, surrendering their rights for security, and mixing religion and government.

Millions of Americans need to remain indifferent to our wealth obtained by exploiting billions of people, the prison system we have used to replace slavery and Jim Crow, the millions we slaughter to feed the military industrial complex, and the torture of enemy combatants like you.

Many of my people believe that I have a personal relationship with you and that your Father guides me on a divine mission. They must continue believing these atrocious lies.

We learned from the mistake of the Roman and the Jewish leaders. You will not get a second chance at martyrdom. I have decided to rendition you. You will simply disappear and die anonymously in a torture dungeon in Syria.”

Wearing a confident smirk, the self-satisfied little man fires a question at Jesus,

“Well, Jesus? What do you have to say?”

Shedding tears born of profound melancholy, Jesus responds,

“In the words of the inimitable Russian novelist, if God does not exist, then everything is permitted.”

Jesus then sighs heavily, looks heavenward, and makes a quiet appeal,

“Father, forgive them. Despite the fact that they know what they do. And Father. I beg you to have mercy on the souls of their many wretched victims.”

Jason Miller is a 39 year old sociopolitical essayist with a degree in liberal arts and an extensive self-education (derived from an insatiable appetite for reading). He is a member of Amnesty International and an avid supporter of Oxfam International and Human Rights Watch. He welcomes responses at willpowerful@hotmail.com or comments on his blog, Thomas Paine’s Corner, at http://civillibertarian.blogspot.com/.

Fair Use Statement:
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107 of US Copyright Law, this attributed work is provided via Thomas Paine’s Corner on a non-profit basis to facilitate understanding, research, education, and the advancement of human rights and social justice.

By Jason Miller

5/21/07

Larry Kudlow is CEO of Kudlow & Co., LLC, an economic and investment research firm. Kudlow is host of CNBC’s “Kudlow & Company” which airs weeknights at 5 p.m. He is the host of “The Larry Kudlow Show” on WABC Radio on Saturdays 10:00am. Kudlow is a nationally syndicated columnist and also hosts his own blog. He is a contributing editor of National Review magazine, as well as a columnist and economics editor for National Review Online. He is the author of “American Abundance: The New Economic and Moral Prosperity,” published by Forbes in January 1998. Kudlow is consistently ranked one of the nation’s premier and most accurate economic forecasters according to The Wall Street Journal’s semiannual forecasting survey.

Kudlow began his career as a staff economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, working in the areas of domestic open market operations and bank supervision. Kudlow was educated at the University of Rochester and Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He and his wife Judy live in New York City and Redding, Connecticut. (from the CNBC website)

Karl Marx once asserted, “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.”

Even a relatively cursory study of Western socioeconomic history and current events provides abundant evidence to substantiate Marx’s observation. Forged in a crucible of formidable indoctrination underscored by materialistic bribes enabled by usurious lending, seductive propaganda in the form of media and advertising, and illusory “get rich” opportunities, American Capitalism maintains an iron grip on the psyches of hundreds of millions of people—not only at home but around the globe.

Blindly worshipping profits, money, and material “success”, we US Americans have plunged the United States into a moral abyss from which it is unlikely we will re-emerge. If we don’t implode due to our own decadence, the rest of the world will see to the demise of our bloody, exploitative, and barbaric empire.

Wrestle free for at least a moment, if you can, from the catechism of free markets, deregulation, free trade, and the like. Now consider just a few characteristics of American Capitalism which guarantee that we, as its practitioners, will continue sinking deeper and deeper into the fetid cesspool of depravity and isolation that rules our everyday lives, even if we (at least many of us) remain largely oblivious to its daily exactions. Our system, which we have been inculcated to view through Panglossian lenses, rewards greed, selfishness, self-absorption, and hyper-individualism (four of the most repulsive aspects of human nature); necessitates that profits trump humanity, and demands perpetually futile efforts to fulfill an insatiable appetite for growth and expansion. If we in the United States had the courage to gaze upon our collective reflection in the mirror, we would shudder at the sight of a visage more grotesque than that of Dorian Gray.

Few in today’s corporate-dominated mass media in the United States better embody our “ruling intellectual force” than Lawrence Kudlow. As his CNBC bio sketch indicates, he is no mere sycophant to the criminal class of plutocrats who rule our nation. His resume’ includes a Princeton education, an influential position within the Reagan administration, a stint as a high-powered player on Wall Street, and (currently) a position as the principal of an investment research firm. No mere journalist is he. Lawrence is both a member of the ruling class and its staunch advocate in the “liberal media.”

Calling him a swine would insult our porcine brethren, so let’s not label him. Instead, let’s define him by his numerous betrayals of the human race. As we shall learn, these betrayals gush from his pen (and mouth) to form a relentlessly potent stream of perverse justifications for institutionalized theft, rape and murder.

Let’s consider and dissect some examples of Mr. Kudlow’s punditry:

Kudlow’s “Design for Doom” appeared in the Washington Times on 5/13/07:

“And while Republicans talk about significantly increasing the defense budget and expanding American force levels for all the armed services, the Democrats hope for some sort of Iraqi peace dividend upon immediate withdrawal — one that can be rechanneled into higher domestic social spending….. To a person, each Democratic presidential candidate also wants to raise taxes on the rich and roll back President Bush’s tax cuts. The Republicans, however, understand those tax cuts have propelled economic growth and contributed to a stock market boom. They recognize Mr. Bush’s Goldilocks bull-market economy — which I call the greatest story never told — relies on extending the investor tax cuts and perhaps even moving forward with a flat tax or national sales tax…. Finally, to a person, each Democratic presidential candidate also has it in for corporate America. The Democrats discuss various punishments for business — especially oil companies, but also drug, utility and insurance firms. Not so for the Republicans, who talk about helping businesses and promoting entrepreneurship in our successful free-enterprise economy.”

Slow down there, Larry! You are emptying your arsenal of American Capitalist memes in just a few paragraphs.

Kudlow knows that if he and his fellow aristocrats are to maintain the shekels to afford $3,000 suits, cars costing six figures, Rolexes, trophy wives and mistresses, global jet-setting, and homes with the square footage of the Taj Mahal, us “commoners” have to believe in the illusion of democracy, and hence that there is a dime’s worth of difference between Republicans and Democrats. Yet given the fact that both parties are beholden to obscenely wealthy corporations and individuals, and that many of our “elected” officials are well-heeled insiders like Mr. Kudlow, even Mr. Roarke and Tattoo couldn’t make this fantasy real.

And by all means, let’s increase a “defense” budget that already exceeds more than the rest of the world combined (to “defend” 5% of the world’s population). Assuming the Democrats did throw a few additional crumbs to the homeless, poor and working class via the “higher domestic social spending” Larry decries, public spending for infrastructure, education, housing, transportation, and health care would remain grossly inadequate for a nation with the wealth and power of the United States.

Presenting a particularly glaring pair of contradictions, Kudlow laments that the Democrats have “it in for corporate America.” Would Larry have us believe that the Democrats are truly dense enough to bite the hand that feeds them?

Further miring himself in inconsistencies, he raves about the success of our “free-enterprise economy.” With sharply decreased regulation and the increasingly incestuous relationship between the US government and “corporate America,” leviathan companies like Microsoft, Halliburton, and Wal-Mart are attaining frightening power and dominating the so-called “free market.” Free enterprise has indeed been wildly successful for a relative handful of major investors, like Kudlow.

In May of 2006, Larry penned “Would Adam Smith Approve?” This excerpt comes from Human Events.com, which claims to have been “leading the conservative movement since 1944”:

“A couple hundred years ago, in his “Theory of the Moral Sentiments,” Adam Smith contended that capitalism requires a moral and ethical center if it is to function effectively and to the benefit of all.

Once again, Kudlow has showered us with a salvo of deceptions and distortions. He wastes no time with subtlety either as he relentlessly advances the agenda of the ruling elite.

It is obviously a testament to his superior intellect that Kudlow can discern that Adam Smith would feel such pride “from his perch in heaven.” Yet in spite of Larry’s certainty, one can’t help but consider the more likely possibility that a moral philosopher like Smith would recoil in horror at the gross injustices and atrocities resulting from the economic system so often attributed to him.

In a flagrant display of intellectual dishonesty, Kudlow reassures us of the “moral compass” guiding capitalism by referencing Irving Kristol, the godfather of the Neoconservative movement. Sinking further into a quagmire of deceit, he portrays Victorian England as “an example of a moral society.” Lawrence has a point. Those of us with a social conscience marvel at the morality exhibited by the industrial capitalists of the Victorian Era. Child labor, fourteen hour work days, pittance wages, dangerous working conditions, squalid living conditions, and workhouses exemplified a moral society driven by an undying compassion for humanity.

What Larry means when he says that “capitalism in this country has been under assault ever since FDR’s New Deal 1930’s” is that he and his excessively wealthy associates strenuously object to progressive taxes, public spending on domestic social programs, and laws that protect workers and consumers. Kudlow longs for a return to the “good old days” of the Gilded Age, Robber Barons, monopolies, and unbridled freedom for him and his ilk to inflict misery upon the rest of us.

Lawrence’s professed reverence for “the Gipper” (who was largely successful in his efforts to crush what remained of the power of organized labor, emasculate government regulatory agencies, and shift the tax burden back to the poor and working class) coupled with his odd reference to George W. Bush as a “lineal descendent of Reagan” offer us more clear indications that he is a relentless champion for the cause of the ruling elite.

(“Lineal descendent?” Sounds almost as if he would welcome the restoration of a monarchy).

Kudlow’s highly disingenuous arguments concerning the “ownership class” or “investor class” in the US are riddled with fallacious conclusions.

Playing fast and loose with the truth, Larry boldly proclaims that “this investor class has also become the nation’s most powerful voting block….And yes, they are voting for capitalism — meaning lower tax rates, limited government and greater opportunities for entrepreneurship….. I’m willing to bet that this group’s demand for lower tax rates and entrepreneurial activity goes hand-in-hand with the cultural characteristics of hard work, thrift, personal responsibility and law-abiding behavior.”

Since we haven’t had a legitimate presidential election since 1996, and both the Democrats and Republicans represent corporate and patrician interests, the composition of the largest voting block is nearly irrelevant. This “minor detail” aside, wouldn’t it be instructive if we knew by what means Lawrence determines that people voting for a particular candidate were “voting for capitalism?” It is also interesting to note his less than subtle implication that those who don’t “vote for capitalism” are lazy, wasteful, irresponsible, and criminal.

Kudlow’s ebullient claim that, “Roughly 20 million investors evolved into over 100 million share-buyers, and they got rich in the process…” is extremely dubious.

For a more realistic perspective on the “ownership class” in the United States, consider this segment from a report from Professor G. William Domhoff of the University of California at Santa Cruz:

“In terms of types of financial wealth, the top one percent of households have 44.1% of all privately held stock, 58.0% of financial securities, and 57.3% of business equity. The top 10% have 85% to 90% of stock, bonds, trust funds, and business equity, and over 75% of non-home real estate. Since financial wealth is what counts as far as the control of income-producing assets, we can say that just 10% of the people own the United States of America.”

Remember that Lawrence Kudlow represents the 10% who own the United States. Those of us comprising the remaining 90% are “just renting” and need to recognize his agitprop for the intellectual flatulence that it is.

For those still doubting pernicious nature of Kudlow and his efforts, here are a few more examples:

“The Greatest Story Never Told” appeared in Human Events in 4/06:

“Today’s economy may be the greatest story never told. It’s an American boom, spurred by lower tax rates, huge profits, big productivity, plentiful jobs and an ongoing free-market capitalist resiliency. It’s also a global boom, marked by a spread of free-market capitalism like we’ve never seen before….

Energy is best left in the hands of the free market. With this in mind, Congress should allow environmentally friendly drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Outer Continental Shelf, more LNG terminals and the creation of nuclear power facilities.”

Perhaps today’s economy is the “greatest story never told” because the fairy tale Kudlow depicts never happened.

To his credit, in this piece Larry openly proclaims his support for rapacious industries (i.e. Big Oil), outrageously excessive CEO compensation, and the rape of the environment for profits.

Kudlow wrote “Bull-Market Cheers for Bush” on 2/3/07:

“… George W. Bush became only the second sitting American president to visit the floor of the New York Stock Exchange…

This is the same guy the mainstream media loves to kick around — the same guy who suffers sinking polls while standing resolute on the subject of Iraqi freedom, and who gets virtually no credit for the Goldilocks economy and unprecedented four-year stock market boom. He’s also the same guy who continues to prove he has more character than most anyone serving in public office today.”

Kudlow’s capacity to pervert the truth (or perhaps his tenuous grasp on reality) is breath-taking. While many serving in public office in the United States are ethically challenged (which lowers the bar considerably), Larry has still averred that George W. Bush, one of history’s most heinous war criminals, has character.

Notice too how he cleverly intimates that he is not a part of the “mainstream media”, which he and his fellow reactionaries often label as “liberal” to maintain the illusion that the Fourth Estate is still performing its function as watchdog rather than serving as the propaganda network for the ruling elite.

In response to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 7/06, Kudlow opined in “Israel’s Moment, the Free World’s Gain”:

“Israel is doing the Lord’s work. They are defending their own homeland and very existence, but they are also defending America’s homeland as our frontline democratic ally in the Middle East….

What are we to make of this bizarre set of statements?

Are we reading the ravings of a lunatic, the pronouncements of a pathological liar, or perhaps the calculated manipulations of a master propagandist?

Killing over a thousand Lebanese civilians (compared to the 43 Israelis Hezbollah killed), displacing over 200,000 people, and devastating Lebanese infrastructure is “doing the Lord’s work?”

What is Kudlow’s alleged connection linking the actions of the disparate entities he characterizes as “the totalitarians in Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas, and North Korea?”

Mr. Kudlow, thank you for pointing out that millions of “sensible freedom-loving people everywhere” are lining up to support oppressive, militaristic aggressors like Israel and the United States. Most of us are unable to recognize their presence.

“We are all Israelis now?” Wow! Perhaps Lawrence is a bit daft after all.

After examining Lawrence Kudlow’s mendacious punditry, it is reasonable to conclude that his myriad media conduits have enabled him to infect the minds of untold millions with “the ruling ideas” of “the ruling class.” Accordingly, if by some miracle the ruling elite of the United States face consequences for their egregious military and economic crimes against humanity, those meting out punishments need to remember to give Mr. Kudlow a generous helping.

Jason Miller is a wage slave of the American Empire who has freed himself intellectually and spiritually. He is Cyrano’s Journal Online’s associate editor (http://www.bestcyrano.org/) and publishes Thomas Paine’s Corner within Cyrano’s at http://www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/. He welcomes constructive correspondence at JMiller@bestcyrano.org

by Steven Jonas

Originally published at Buzz Flash

The First Republican Comedy Hour (otherwise known as the first Republican presidential debate) was held on May 3. It held some fascinating lessons for me, and I want to share some of them with you. I must tell you that hearing these men talk brought many a chuckle to my throat (and at times something else as well, but we won’t go into that, even though I am a doctor).

– All the candidates are in favor of “returning religion to the public square.” What, we don’t have enough churches, usually two to three, on (or at least near) enough public squares around the country already?

– “People are entitled to their faith,” unless, of course, their faith (or lack thereof) tells them that life begins at the time of viability, not conception.

– “People are entitled to their faith,” unless, of course, their faith (or lack thereof) tells them that under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, persons are entitled to all of the benefits and obligations of the institution of civil marriage, regardless of their sexual orientation.

– Any one of them will catch Osama bin Laden, with John McCain determined to “go to the gates of hell” (wherever they may be, apparently ready to risk Air Force One in the process) should doing so prove necessary. None of them commented on why President Bush, their President Bush for better or for worse, has failed to do that in 5 ½ years. (Hint, hint, hint, guys, for the next debate, in case a moderator asks you the latter question: a) bin Laden is a U.S. government asset, b) bin Laden is a Bush Family asset, c) the U.S. has got him, has had him for quite some time, but ain’t telling, because 1) he is of much more use for Georgite propaganda out there than he would be otherwise and 2) they would possible have to try him in at least a semi-open court and boy, would he have some stories to tell.)

– America is the most admired nation in the world.

– Spending will be reduced, mainly by “cutting pork” (although they didn’t say which cut of the pig would be cut).

– Welfare will be eliminated. Apparently they didn’t notice that Pres. Clinton actually did that in 1996.

– Three of the ten don’t believe in the Theory of Evolution.

– Republican corruption is the result of the failure of individuals, not a philosophy or a modus operandi of certain types of people attracted to the Republican Party and Republican politics. Senator Brownback’s long-term solution to the problem of Republican corruption is to build up families. That’s very long-term, of course. And anyway, he told us, using the favorite Republican/O’RHannibaugh “two wrongs make a right” argument, Democrats are corrupt too. He could name only one example, Cong. William Jefferson, but it must be the fact that the Cong. preserved that cash in his freezer that gives that single story of Democratic corruption so much staying power. It is indeed well-preserved, that is if it is still in someone’s freezer.

– In terms of his long-time opposition to the Iraq War and his “get out now” position on it, the Republicans have their very own Dennis Kucinich. His name is Ron Paul, Cong. From Texas. There are, however, major differences. He is far to the Right on virtually every other issue, and he does not have an absolutely gorgeous English wife, 30 years younger than he, who is also a serious political progressive and activist.

– Something called (but never defined by any of them) “Islamofascism” is the single most important foreign policy challenge of the United States. Where it comes from, who leads it, where one can find its statement of purpose, who its leaders are, what Muslim nation, if any, supports it, how it plans to achieve its goals, etc. were not mentioned.

– It would appear that if any of them except Cong. Paul were elected President, our nation could look forward to the indefinite continuation of the Cheney/Bush policy of Permanent War.

Of course, folks, none of this is truly funny. If the Democrats don’t get their act together, start running against the true Republican agenda as outlined above (and you can find much of it in the 2004 Republican National Platform), and get Dennis Kucinich elected, this is, however, what we are in for come Jan. 20, 2009.

Steven Jonas, MD, MPH is a Professor of Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University (NY), a weekly contributing author for The Political Junkies, and contributing editor for The Moving Planet Blog.