God Fires a Warning Shot

This post was almost my last blog post.  And the last blog post you would have read.

It's funny, how oblivious we are as a species to our own near demise.

Individually, we take those things pretty seriously.  We're driving along the road, jabbering on our handsfree, and the truck in front of us drops a huge metal object that comes a hair's breadth from tearing into the passenger compartment.  We flee indoors, as the storm comes, and just a moment after we've moved away from the tree we were sheltering under, it's torn apart by lightning.

Those moments have existential weight.  "I could have died just there," we marvel, and that knowledge can change us.

That, in a nutshell, was what almost happened for all of us back on July 23, 2012.  A massive solar storm blasted a huge wave of charged particles directly through the earth's orbit, missing us by around a week.  Same storm, one week's difference?  Well, the world would be a very different place.

The last time a storm of that magnitude hit the earth was in the early industrial age, and beyond putting on a wild and amazing heavenly light show, it fried our primitive telegraph systems.  Now, the energies of a solar storm would blow out a substantial portion of our electrical and telecommunications grid, leaving us critically unable to play around on Facebook.  Or communicate in any way.  Or cook.  Or get food from the store.  Or use money.  It'd have been a massive and global catastrophe.

An identical solar-storm catastrophe provides the narrative ground for the novel I wrote last year for National Novel Writing Month, which--God willing and the contract shows up in the mail--will be published sometime in 2016.  From all of my research for that manuscript, I feel this particular civilization-shattering option pretty personally.

This ain't no zombie 'pocalypse.  This could really happen.

Humanity in the early twenty-first century is far more vulnerable to such an event, and as the science points to this sort of thing as being a normal part of solar activity, it's not a question of whether it will happen, but when.  Every couple of hundred years, boom.

And yet, as this news or our near demise whispers by our ears like a passing shiruken, humankind trundles on about our business as if nothing happened.  We're so busy screaming at each other, posturing, and killing one another that we don't even notice.

"Hey, everything you're fighting about could be meaningless tomorrow," says the Creator of the Universe.  "Hello?  C'mon, people.  Pay attention.  Wake up."

The Unwavering Faith of Barack Obama

So having pitched a couple of faith 'n' politics posts out about the Romney, I figured it was time to balance out the airtime a little bit.

A-ways on back in 2008, Candidate Obama was, quite frankly, impressive.   One of the most significant ways he came across as impressive was to those of us who still dwell in the realm of the oldline.   I mean, you asked the man about his faith, and the next thing you know, you're getting an informed, measured, and thoughtful conversation about Reinhold Niebuhr.

He knows and can appropriately cite Reinhold Niebuhr, we gasped, and went a little light at the knees.

Then there was Obama's church, and his pastor.  Yes, I know, he said "God-Damn America," for which Fox News will never forgive him.   And yes, all the attention did kind of go to Jeremiah Wright's head.   But if you listened to that sermon, really listened to it, it kicked behind.  It challenged the idol of nationalism, it was dead on scripturally, and it rocked out hard against our boundaries in the way that the very best prophetic African American preaching always has.

And so the man had some serious faith bona-fides, and we were all talking about it.

Now, we're four years later, and a month out from a likely re-election, if the current meta-polling trend holds.   And the funny thing is, outside of the whackjobs who are convinced that Obama is a Muslim and very possibly a Red Lectroid fifth columnist, his faith is pretty much immaterial.   It gets no press.   There is no buzz.  It's a non-issue.

The campaign knows this, and so they're putting in the level of effort on that front one might expect.   If you go to the  "Faith" portion of the current Obama election campaign...well...it feels a teensy bit familiar.  Generic.  Perhaps even, dare I say it, stale.   Faith, we hear, was very important as he was getting elected.   It was vital, or so the pitch still goes, on the journey from Chi-town to Chocolate City.

But he's been president for four years.  What has his faith meant during those four years?

Because honestly?  He's not the same guy now that he was four years ago.  He can't possibly be.

It's not just that this campaign is different, though it is.   It's far more muscular, stronger, more in touch with its grasp on power.  He is the president, the POTUS, and he knows it and shows it.   He wears it well, as well as he does the grey flecks that now speckle his hair.

So saying the same things about the role of faith in governance both before and after you've been there just seems inadequate.

Here you've been CiC for four years.  You've sent men to their deaths.   You've ordered the deaths of others, and had your orders carried out.  Presumably, this doesn't happen so much when you are the junior Senator from Illinois, although given Chicago politics, one never knows.

There are other things.  The idealistic struggle for civil discourse with the Other Side of the Aisle, which did not work out so well.  The ongoing systemic crisis in the economy, which ain't over yet.  This has not been easy.

And yet the faith-schpiel of the campaign is the same.  Utterly unchanged.  It's untouched by crisis, unmoved by the reality of what must have been experienced over the last four years.   It does not waver.  It is, truth be told, perhaps the only part of the campaign that hasn't shifted to reflect the experience of governing.  It stands like a tree whose leaves are still and calm, unfluttered by the wind that roars around you.

This feels off, somehow.

Anyone who has leaned heavily on their faith in a time of profound existential challenge knows that faith does not remain unchanged.  If faith is irrelevant, it falls away.  If faith is weak, it crumbles.   If faith is strong, it deepens.

But it does not remain the same.   Faith is a living and dynamic thing.

A faith journey is not static, and finding yourself the most powerful human being on the planet is presumably a nontrivial part of said journey.   It's a pity this campaign won't be showing us that.  It might actually be kind of interesting.

Ah well.  So it goes.

Romney and Virginia

The signs are starting to pop up on lawns all throughout the DC Virginia suburbs.   As I've driven my young and idealistic/liberal/politically aware fourteen year old son to and from family and school events this last week, he's noted them.   "Why would anyone in this area vote for Romney," he asks.   "Don't they get it?"

I've tried to explain that there is much to commend conservatism, and that there are conservative values that are both rationally defensible and profoundly positive.   A sense of duty and personal responsibility, cherishing and defending the best of your faith and your heritage, valuing putting your best into something, caring for family and community and commitment: these things are a net positive for our culture.

But I do wonder about Virginians voting for the Romney/Ryan ticket.   I don't entirely get it, either.

Virginia appears, on the surface, to be a conservative state.   Our governor is conservative.   Our state legislature is conservative, sometimes to the point of being a little Talibanny.  We're business-friendly, with a laxer regulatory regimen than the People's Republic of Maryland that looms in all its stark Stalinist horror across the Potomac to our Northeast.

Virginia has, as a conservative, business-friendly state, weathered the recent recession quite well.   So you've got this prosperous, conservative state...and yet Romney is increasingly down in the polls here.   Why?

I think, quite honestly, because on a practical level many Virginians realize that our recent prosperity is entirely a function of the federal government.   Our state has two distinct economies.   There is the agricultural/industrial economy that dominates the southern part of the state.   It's stable, but not really growing.  Economically, it's basically East Kentucky.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.  It's a more easy going life, or would be if you didn't have to work three jobs.

Then there's Northern Virginia.   NoVa has been the driving force behind the growth of the state economy.   In my own county, for instance, there are 500,000 more residents than there were when when my family moved here 35 years ago.  NoVa has grown as government has grown.   Government and military workers are part of that, but so are government and defense contractors and the service and retail industries that have thrived here.

The Federal Government is the main industry of Virginia.  It is an inescapable empirical reality, one so present that it inhibits our GOP governor from heralding Virginia as an example of the success of his economic policies.  McDonnell is no fool.  He knows where things stand.

So when I see the Romney/Ryan signs popping up around Virginia, I get it.  We're conservative.   But on another level, it's a bit fuddling.

Everyone is entitled to have a political perspective and vote accordingly.  And I do grasp the desire for sane, right-sized, non-intrusive government.

But if Romney and Ryan win, and they actually do the things they have committed to do, the net effect on the Virginia economy will be devastating.   A decimation of the federal workforce...which Ryan has promised...would have disproportionate impacts here, as would radical reductions in spending.  Beyond increased unemployment, there'd also be a massive reduction in housing demand and a crash of home values.  Those things combined would cascade, leaving state coffers as empty as the abandoned homes, offices, and storefronts that would become the norm in the state.

For many Americans, thems would be the breaks.   If you believe in reducing the size of government, then so be it.  Que sera sera.   But for Virginians, a vote for Romney and Ryan is a vote to collapse the economy of our state.   It's a fascinating abandonment of material self-interest in the interest of a broader ideology.

Heck, on some levels it might even be noble, were it being done intentionally.

Romney, Government, and the Very Poor

Last week, Mitt Romney continued to roll inescapably towards the Republican nomination, much to no-one's surprise and the consternation of social conservatives everywhere.  Romney's a well oiled machine, capable as a speaker, smart and difficult to ruffle in a debate.  He presents the competent, distant benevolence of an early 1960s sitcom dad, arriving at 5:15 sharp from The Place Where Grownups Live, ready to sit down with Wally and the Beav to offer the final and definitive word on whatever sepia-toned hijinks have ensued.

It's unusual for him to slip, allowing that identity...not a facade, I'm convinced it goes deeper than that with Mitt...to be dinged.   Last week's wanderings into whether a president should be concerned about the very poor were such a slip.   Romney's statement in its entirety can be found here, and read in completeness, it is more nuanced than blood-in-the-water punditry would have you believe.   It is also utterly comprehensible in the calculus of politics in a democracy.  The key to winning an election in a democratic society is the same key you use to win a game of chess.  If you take the center of the board, you are likely to win.

Romney is money and a patrician.  What is he is not is stupid.  He understands that dynamic.  And so when he says that his concern is not with the very rich (who can take care of themselves) or the very poor (who have a "safety net"), but with everyday folks like you and me, he's speaking from the strategic heart of consumer politics.

There is a difference, though, between what is politically advantageous and what constitutes good governance.  The validity of a state rests on the ability of that state to protect the interests of its constituent citizens.  The provision of infrastructure, both physical and regulatory, is a significant part of that validity.

But when you get down to the bone and gristle of the thing, states provide protection.  It's what they do.

States protect against attack from "outside."  If rapacious hordes of flannel-clad Quebecois came pouring across the border to menace us with their strange twangy French, it would be the responsibility of our state to defend us.

But states also stand as protection against uncertainty from within.  The measure of a good state is that within its borders, you will not go cold or starve or die abandoned in the dirt by the side of the road.  If the harvest fails, the good state has reserves.  If you are disabled or abandoned or orphaned or widowed, the good state will insure you are cared for.  If a powerful man decides he wants your home, the state will prevent it.  If the storm rises or the earth shakes and all is lost, the state will be there to rebuild.   It's an essential part of the social contract.

That isn't just true for our Constitutional Republic, which in its ideal provides for the common defense, promotes the general welfare, and secures the blessings of liberty.  It has always been true.  The protection of the rights of the "very poor" rests at the foundation of even our most ancient systems of governance.

Within the legal codes of the Torah, care for the last and the least is absolutely fundamental.  If you fall into debt and bondslavery, it promises eventual release.  If you are a stranger in the land, you are promised hospitality and protection.  If you lose parents or find yourself unable to provide for your own care, it promises the protection of the community.   Torah is not alone on this front.  The Code of Hammurabi, equally ancient, makes a similar point of asserting care for the widow and the orphan...the "very poor"...as the mark of a good king.

It would be tempting to here note that the Book of Mormon contains no such legal code.  It's a book of narratives and visions, with scant and tangential reference to the concept of justice as presented in Torah.  But for all of my many struggles with the LDS conceptually, I know that concern for the "very poor" is a potent and vital part of what that community does.  One look at the church-produced food in the larders of a struggling Mormon family will disabuse you of any notion that Mormons aren't aware of that need.

Where Romney slipped is in not recognizing that to seek the interests of the "center," you have to assure them that should ill befall them, that safety net will be strong.  He did attempt to do this, in all fairness.  But as the "center" is often just one job-loss and one major illness away from being "very poor," his efforts aren't adequate.

For a Republican running in a time of lingering economic trauma, when all of us have seen friends and family struggling, this is a particular concern.  If you're the candidate of the party that sees the "safety net" as the problem, telling people to trust the safety net may not be the wisest course.

It cuts at the heart of our most fundamental expectations of good government.  And that is not good politics.

Resolution 2012

Last year, I rolled into 2011 promising myself that I would do a range of things.  There was the usual weight loss/fitness yearning, of course...but I've found that's a commitment best made continually.  Linking it to the New Year has just never quite worked out for me.  Instead, I pledged myself to e-publishing a book I'd written in college.  That was done, thank the Maker.

This year, the creative project that's sitting on the back burner is an exploration of M-Theory, multiverse cosmology, and the Biblical narrative.   It's tentatively titled, "New Heavens, New Earth," but I'm thinkin' that feels a bit grandiose.  Ah well.  A better title will come.

It has sat untouched on this laptop and my backup drive for a few months, crowded from my day-to-day by the demands of kids and work and my D.Min. program.  But I'm 20,000 words in, almost half a book.  I'm still hoping to get it finished.  It's still interesting to me, dagnabbit, and even if it goes nowhere, I want to get 'er done.

So...that's the resolution.  I'll get this manuscript done by the end of August, hopefully well before the Mayan universe comes to a crashing end in December.

To stir my discipline in getting it done, I'm also hoping to make it an independent study elective for my doctoral work.  Structures of accountability are remarkably efficacious in getting yourself motivated to do the things you know you really need to do.