Tom Emmer is Not Pro-Life

 

Dear Tom and Jacquie Emmer:

To be pro-life means to believe that Embryos Are Babies. 

And I don't accept that even you believe that.

But maybe I'm wrong--and if I am, please let me know and I will promptly apologize.  Here's my test:

Hypothetical A: Steve hates Pauline. One day Steve drugs Pauline, ties her up, puts her in the back of his pick-up truck and drives across town--to Mike's place. Mike tells Steve that the liquid in his syringe will cause speedy death in any human being. Steve then pays Mike $500 to inject Pauline--who dies immediately.

Hypothetical B: Sandra is unexpectedly pregnant and doesn't want to be. She asks some friends--and is provided with contact info for Bob, an illegal abortionist. Sandra then goes to Bob's place, where she pays Bob $500 for an abortion. Bob then performs the abortion on Sandra per her request.

Assuming the above-described events happened under Tom Emmer's preferred legal regime, would you agree that both Steve and Sandra should be punished in the precise same manner?

If you answer Yes--then I owe you an apology.

My email address appears above.

Warmest regards,

Gavin Sullivan
Eden Prairie

Hue Act

Yesterday's meeting of the Eden Prairie Book Club was unexpectedly interesting--with two new people who had many interesting things to say about Alice Munro's Too Much Happiness--a book that I also much enjoyed.  In one of the stories (Dimensions, I think) a man kills his three children and is committed to a mental hospital--and the children's mother, years later, visits the mental hospital several times, interacting with the man without rancor.

It seemed inconceivable to me, that any mother could relate with her children's murderer in this manner--so I was surprised when the two new women both said they found it plausible.  A club member who counsels traumatized women described how she has observed severely abused women return to relationships with their tormentors:  'They're not able to think rationally about their situations,' she said.

Are they in fact not able to think rationally?  (I'm thinking here of crazy people of either gender.)  Were they to unreservedly describe their own reasoning processes, what specific oddities would you expect to observe?  Randomly-dispersed logical errors, resulting in grave self-damage--or just inexplicable leaps into disaster?  Perhaps one might expect such people to unwittingly aim for some dystopic result? 

Perhaps I'm misdescribing the book club participant's explanation (of how her patients' might return to super-messed-up relationships), though it seems an oversimplification to conflate severe dysfunction with 'excessive random errors in rational sequences'.  Even a mentally-ill person's internal monologue must have some degree of pattern and sequence.  And the description, diagnosis and categorization of mental illness vary immensely by culture, of course.

A constant feature of this country's social intercourse is what might be described as psychic McCarthyism--in which people with little-to-no scientific knowledge diagnose mental illness in others, so as to disempower those challenging conventional wisdom and/or to lay claim to their own exemplary normality.  Psychic McCarthyism also impels one to thrust oneself forward--as mental health's shining paragon--as people do here, constantly. 

To return to a favorite theme:  We're hierarchical primates and we're status-obsessed. (Though I doubt this insight could be applied to bloggers; we tend toward innocence.)

Do people in other societies immerse themselves in psychic McCarthyism less--or differently--than one does, here in the Land of the Free? 

How might we address this problem--individually or collectively?

**

It was a clan that didn't always enjoy one another's

company but who made sure they got plenty of it.

                      Alice Munro

Poof

The leadership of the SD42 DFL appears likely--I was informed today--to confer the endorsement upon another potential state representative candidate, alas.  I still don't know the identity of that person--but I have no stomach for a primary contest, assuming that such an endorsement will occur long before August. 

I fervently hope that candidate can unseat Rep. Loon--and will do all in my power to help that lovely prospect toward fruition.

**

No man undertakes a trade he has not learned, even the meanest; yet every one thinks himself sufficiently qualified for the hardest of all trades - that of government.

Socrates

Dear Jake Grassel:

My name is Gavin Sullivan--and I'm the sole declared candidate seeking the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party's endorsement to oppose Rep. Jenifer Loon.

I've written several polite emails to Rep. Loon pertaining to abortion's legal status, but she won't reply. 

The first email was sent more than two years ago, the second just the other day.  You can easily verify this information with Mrs. Loon.

Am I rushing things, Mr. Grassel, expecting Rep. Loon to be able to decide what she believes on such short notice?  (Will three years be sufficient?)

I have a book checked out from the library--a guide on how to run for elective office--and it says that when your opponent asks you a fair question, it's not smart (purely as a matter of political strategy) to cut and run.  The book advises a prompt, courteous response from the candidate.

Can you please contact Rep. Loon and ask her to consider behaving honorably?

Very best regards,

Gavin Sullivan
Eden Prairie

I Have Faith

Dear Rep. Jenifer Loon:

On April 29, 2008--a Tuesday--I attended the 42B GOP endorsing convention in which you secured the Republican nod for House.  During your speech you emphasized your commitment, if elected, to work to ban abortion in Minnesota.  (You listed several extreme-situation 'exceptions' in which--from your perspective--abortion ought to remain legal.)

You put this issue on the table--so I assumed that a series of follow-up questions would be in order.

On Saturday, August 16, 2008--standing as a candidate for Minnesota's House of Representatives--you held a non-partisan, public 'meet-and-greet' at the Smith-Douglas-More Dunn Bros.  (I snapped the photo--above--while at the event.) 

I said hello to you--and asked if you'd mind my asking a brief series of questions pertaining to your views on abortion's legal status.  Our interaction was entirely civil and no unkind word was uttered.

I explained to you that--driving on 35W--I'd recently seen a billboard that said Embryos are Babies.  And I asked you to comment on the sign:  "Do you agree or disagree--or are you somewhere in the middle?"

Your reply:  "I can't comment, because I haven't seen the sign."

I then asked:  "Assume for a moment that I am telling you the truth--that there is a billboard alongside 35W which says simply Embryos are Babies.  Do you agree or disagree--or are you somewhere in the middle?"

You responded:  "I don't agree or disagree--and in addition, I'm not somewhere in the middle."

I pressed you on this flabbergasting 'answer'--and you repeated it.

When I put the inquiry to you a third time, you appeared mildly riled--and accused me of "playing word games"--and made clear you would not put up with any additional unfairness.

**

Soon thereafter I emailed you--politely requesting answers to my questions.  You did not acknowledge my email.

**

Rep. Loon, I am a man of honor--a gentleman--and I do not enjoy being insulted by people aspiring to represent me in the legislature. 

Please supply me with your answers to my series of questions. 

And wouldn't some expression embarrassment be in order?

Best regards,

Gavin Sullivan
Eden Prairie

Norann Dillon's Disneyfication

The other day I used the title from an old Pogues LP--a title itself lifted from Winston Churchill's amusing three-word description of life in the Royal Navy:  Rum, Sodomy and the Lash--to call into question fantasies concerning past American Edens.

Sheila Kihne witlessly caricatured 'my' viewpoint:  '[Norann Dillon] respects the founding documents. Jefferson wrote them and owned slaves, therefore she wants to own slaves too.' 

No fair reading of my post could sustain that willful misinterpretation, though I'll clarify anyway:

At age 14 Jefferson inherited dozens of slaves--in later life he owned over 600--and didn't merely screw them figuratively.  But we shouldn't condemn him for this--say some--since he was the product of another age and didn't know that owning other human beings was mean.  OTOH many contemporaries of Jefferson opposed slavery, and the Sage [in 1784] himself wrote:

For in a warm climate, no man will labour for himself who can make another labour for him. This is so true, that of the proprietors of slaves a very small proportion indeed are ever seen to labour. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference!

The slave trade continued while early white Americans were decimating the aboriginal population:  They couldn't have known better either, of course--as their leaders set to work on their victimological Declaration against the distant [real, anti-honky] 'tyrant'--George III. 

Dillon's historical 'analysis' begins by issuing a blanket pardon upon all the Founders' crimes, allowing her to then savor their remaining splendors and issue each an A+ in time for lunch.

Of course Dillon isn't calling for a resumption of the middle passage.  But she gushes with a bumpkin's 'love of our founding documents'--sidestepping the Declaration's grandstanding hypocrisy. 

We ought to consider the national honor prior to making false assertions about our past.

Declarative Sentences

I will stand as a candidate in the state primary on August 10, 2010, seeking the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party's backing for the 42B seat in Minnesota's House of Representatives.  

Between now and then, I'll field questions here.  My email address appears above.

If you're not a regular reader of my occasional blog: I'm a liberal, an internationalist, a pro-growth libertarian, an anti-McCarthyite and an unapologetic atheist.  I am an ardent defender of reproductive freedom, gay rights and limited government. 

If elected, I will seek to restore honor and civility to Eden Prairie's voice in St. Paul.

Humbly extending the hand of friendship, I ask for my fellow Eden Prairians' support.

Rum, Sodomy and the Lash

 

Norann Dillon and The Semiliterate Dogmatist™ impeding bolshevism

Republican Norann Dillon--who's opposing DFL incumbent Terri Bonoff for state senate in SD43--has 'a deep respect for our founding documents,' thank you.  But all is not well:  The 'principles in them' are 'being ignored or even forgotten.' 

And--let Facts be submitted to a candid suburb--we are ignoring some bedrock principles governing life in 18th Century America:  Indian removal, dueling, female semi-citizenship, a docile Supreme Court, religious requirements, the pillory, banishment of dissenters, indentured servitude, fugitive slave law, no Wi-Fi &/c.

Wrapping herself in Independence Hall--Dillon asserts:

As humans, we have the gift of free will, which gives us the basic right to make decisions about our lives, liberties and pursuits; and we each have these rights equally. To deny this simple idea is to imply that another person has a higher claim on your life than you do.

So Dillon opposes acknowledging the existence of inequality:  If you do, you'll have to believe that 'another person has a higher claim on your life than you do.'  For Dillon, to acknowledge any [non-Obama-caused] flaw in America requires us to support that flaw, i.e. 

Elsewhere, Dillon expresses admiration for a citizen who considers the Obama agenda analogous to Soviet collectivization.  And she republishes a dog-eared, forward-me forward-me web 'parable': 

Students in an economics class tell their professor of their devotion to 'Obama's socialism.'  (Fair enough so far, huh?)  Sensing a teachable moment, the wise educator announces that test results for the remainder of the term will hereafter be averaged--with all students receiving the same grade.

Does utopia ensue?  (You're in for a big surprise, Reds.)

Over three successive tests, the class devolves into 'bickering, blame', 'name-calling' and hard feelings--'and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else'. 

Game, set, match, Obama!  Commie!

Dillon again--on the Declaration of Independence:

We created our government to secure these rights. In other words, the purpose of government is to protect our rights to life, liberty and happiness, as well as the other rights granted to us in the U.S. Constitution.

So Dillon seeks a return to that freer, nobler America of the 18th Century (when 'we' created our institutions)--back when government didn't:

*provide public education
*promote public health
*build or maintain transportation infrastructure
*assist the old and disabled
*protect the environment or maintain parks
*defend minorities and women from discrimination
*fund scientific and technical research

A bold new day awaits ye, Minnetonka!

Church Bulletin

Not having attended Mass in a month or so, I'm scanning through some recent bulletins:

In the April 4 issue, Fr. Greg Welch quotes 'biblical scholar' Fr. Raymond E. Brown:

“The Resurrection was no mere resuscitation of Jesus to ordinary life. When the Risen Jesus appeared, he was not easily recognizable, even to those who knew him well...he could pass through locked doors, cover distances instantaneously and yet he still pointed to his body as real. Thus there is no evidence whatsoever that the early preaching ever involved anything other than a bodily Resurrection that involved tremendous transformation.” (From Reading the Gospels with the Church.)

Got that?  Unlike Jesus' teleportation, there is no evidence whatsoever that the early preaching ever involved anything other than a bodily Resurrection that involved tremendous transformation. 

Imagine how hard-hearted one would have to be to question such compelling evidence.  (Though one would be gullible indeed to go so far as believing 'that the early preaching ever involved anything other than a bodily Resurrection that involved tremendous transformation'.)

In the bulletin two weeks later, Fr. Welch announces:

You know that we are universally against abortion. What might not be reflected on by some is that some seeming birth control devices are in fact abortifacient – for example, an IUD, a morning after pill, etc. The difference between birth control (decried by the Church) and something which causes a fertilized egg to be dispelled is huge. That’s the termination of an evolving human life.

Father Welch knows that I am a parishioner and that I do not oppose abortion.  (I also find the hierarchy's desire to make contraception illegal quite hare-brained.)  Lying in the service of the Archbishop is still deemed a great virtue in our denomination.

Cut the Crap

(This post responds to the blowback on Somebody Got Murdered.)

We should be able to discuss whether an inherited 'American hero' genuinely merits reverence--and what constitutes being 'a good American'.  I don't seek an intra-clique discussion and welcome full-spectrum participation.  We're neglecting that needed discussion now, due mainly to McCarthyism's persistence.

Those capable of rationally discussing Flight 93 must ask:  What were the rebelling passengers likely trying to do?  In the mostly-empty aircraft, knowing that three similar jetliners had already been intentionally crashed into buildings, a group of passengers stormed the cabin.  The group failed (regrettably--it goes without saying) to subdue the hijackers.

Why do you think the passengers stormed the cabin?  Two plausible explanations present themselves:

1)  The passengers knew they were going to die, but in order to prevent additional loss of life, they sought to force the plane to crash-land; or

2)  The passengers knew their prospects were bleak, but agreed their prospects were zero in the absence of counterattack.  They adopted a long-shot plan:  To subdue the terrorists and then land the plane with ground assistance.

If you're going to argue that Tom Burnett is a national hero, worthy of a [Wells Fargo & Co.®-sponsored] monument--you should have an answer to my What was Burnett trying to do?

Had Burnett and team succeeded in busting into the cockpit, killing the bastards and putting her down, he'd never pay for another drink if he lived to be 93.  Explanation #2--vastly more plausible, far more consistent with known facts--in no way presupposes any Burnettian dishonor.

Had such success come to pass, someone still should have blogged that the feat doesn't obviate the need for dialogue on the meaning of good citizenship. 

High honor should be reserved for the exceptional citizen who--in the face of hardship, adversity and public contempt--has struggled for the common good.  By these lights, Tom Burnett's death is a sorrow and a tragedy--though he no more deserves a monument than does another of America's sixteen thousand annual homicide victims.

It's important for Americans to seriously engage in a conversation on what constitutes being a good citizen--and what it takes to be a national hero.  Concomitantly, when a dead person is erroneously designated 'national hero'--in service of bipartisan propaganda, national self-delusion or cognitive bias--we need someone willing to state noisily: Cut the crap.

Meffert Wins Endorsement for Congress

I attended the CD3 DFL convention yesterday, which featured a floor fight between supporters of Jim Meffert and Maureen Hackett.  Coming into the convention, I had a hunch that Hackett was ahead.  (I hadn't been paying much attention--and even considered a Meffert trouncing a possibility.)

Hackett and Meffert were both friendly and polite with me throughout the campaign; I like both and would have happily supported Hackett in the general election, had she won the endorsement.  But having observed both candidates, Meffert is better able to state informed, mainstream Democratic positions.  He deserved to win the endorsement--and he did.

As the congressional contenders are introduced, Team Meffert makes more noise, surprising me with their presence.  The candidates then make speeches:  Hackett's rhetorical disorganization and weird body language stand out. 

Could some underlying pro-Meffert bias be leading me to score the speeches a blowout in the Ole's favor?  If you're seeking a party's endorsement for House, your convention speech is critical to insiders--who above all want a presentable, undaffy candidate capable of articulating conventional messaging, attractively and on cue. 

Looking around during Hackett's address, perhaps Minnesota's single most respected DFL leader is standing within a paper airplane's flight.  And I notice the seasoned pol (widely admired for excellent bearing before crowd or camera) appear to suppress a giggle, with 'Oh, Lord!' stamped on face, as Hackett self-immolates.  The lawmaker then shares a knowing whisper with an aide-de-camp.  We're on the same planet.

The speech cost Dr. Maureen Hackett--kind person and patriot--the endorsement.  (Forensics--ironically--do Dr. Hackett in.)

Ballots come and go; check MPP for the play-by-play.  In between votes, the weaker handshaker will seek a question-and-answer session on stage, in an effort to reverse inertia.  Delegates continue voting, with plenty of time between polls for discussion, floor-working, patience-testing and delegate-flattering--until a candidate reaches 60% or a white flag gets raised.  Running an effective convention floor fight requires expertise, strategy and sensitivity; it's a complex field that has its own experts and arcana.  Team Hackett commits a flub here, too:

Between ballots, sensing the writing is on the wall, Team Hackett has an anti-Meffert stink bomb distributed to delegates--a last ditch negative-attack piece--while simultaneously requesting a question-and-answer session on stage.  IOW, Hackett seeks to communicate negative information about Meffert to delegates while simultaneously enabling Meffert to throw the predictable thespian fainting spell on-stage.  Meffert doesn't disappoint. 

Whether fair or unfair, Hackett's floor piece is clumsily played and counterproductive. 

Prior to the first ballot, after Hackett's declamation, I put on a Jim Meffert t-shirt.  By the time of Hackett's withdrawal, the losing side is a bit bitter: I observe a beloved state representative storm out just after the concession.  The silver medal winner herself is gracious, however--though I overhear a number of Hackett supporters preparing their Nov. 3 I-told-you-so's.  The bitterness doesn't rise anywhere near 2008 levels, however.

**

Gubernatorial claimants address the convention, natch, and politicians ritualistically thank activists for their selflessness:  As the rest of America recreates outdoors on a beautiful Saturday, you're tending to the nation's future.  (The notion that the politically-active differ from others in their selflessness is one of my favorite hypocrisies--requiring a smile of Rukavina-like contagiousness, to pull off effectively.)

**

Several delegates--a blogger notes--still cold-shoulder a scribbler over a controversial post from two years ago.  (At their worst, few can outdo the hyperpolitical for petty stalinism.)  Should any care to discuss the point in contention, I'm very willing to do so, privately or publicly.

Impeach My Bish

 

Archbishop John Nienstedt has published We must heal the divisions caused by sexual abuse in his house organ The Catholic Spirit.  The Catholic Church is having to answer for various unethical and/or criminal practices in which it has long engaged.  The institution's prestige has been shaken by ever more revelations of the extent and scope of clerical sexual abuse--and the Church's enabling thereof.

Archbishop Nienstedt is Minnesota's most prominent signer of the standpatter Manhattan Declaration; he has accused President Obama of being anti-Catholic.   When a questioner at a February event asked why he doesn't just come out and say 'Vote Republican,' he explained that he doesn't need to, since '...people can connect the dots.'

He writes:

A study undertaken by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice reported last November that the height of reported sexual abuse cases by priests occurred during the 1960s and 1970s.

In the 'independent' John Jay College study (commissioned by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops) researchers examined anonymized surveys submitted by Catholic dioceses concerning reported clergy sex abuse from 1950-2002. 

The report and the survey responses make no effort to contextualize the level of ecclesiastical pedophiliac abuse, 1950-2002, within any greater historical time frame--a fact explained on page one of the study's Executive Summary.  So Archbishop Nienstedt has no basis for claiming that the abuse peaked 'concurrent with the so-called “sexual revolution”.'

Furthermore, in socially conservative countries, extensive Catholic clergy abuse occurred during the same time period, indicating that America's Swinging Sixties probably weren't the major cause, if a cause at all.

Referring to the John Jay study, Archbishop Nienstedt writes:

The report suggests that the church [sic] was not immune from [sexual revolution]  influences: “The incidence of abuse of youth in the Catholic Church between 1950 and 2002 is consistent with the pattern of social change in the USA.

(Fear not, after shifting the blame to bell bottoms and the Beatles the prelate dutifully inserts the expected 'I'm not doing what I'm doing' synonym.)

His quotation--alas--doesn't come from the initial report, but from the subsequent Causes and Context report (apparently still not in final form), which 'seeks to explain the rise in incidence of sexual abuse by priests in the late 1960s and 1970s and its subsequent decline after 1985'.  (Did the 'high incidence of sexual promiscuity, divorce and drug use within our culture' rapidly decline just before 1985?)

So why does evidence indicate extensive sexual abuse from a minority of priests--1950-2002--in the US?  ('The survey responses make clear that the problem was indeed widespread and affected more than 95% of dioceses and approximately 60% of religious communities,' as the study says.)

Well, we have no reason for assuming the US was alone--or even unusual--among nations with significant Catholic populations. 

A more plausible reason presents itself:  During this period, the preservation and sharing of information got much cheaper, faster and more permissible--and social sanction against criticizing 'moral leaders' radically diminished. 

The clerical sexual abuse problem likely extends
into history's mists.  There is simply no reason to assume that--back when the Church had vastly greater  unaccountable dominion, priests abused children less.

Archbishop Nienstedt continues:

Moreover, recent attempts to insinuate the involvement of Pope Benedict XVI with all this are, to my mind, both misguided and unfair.

I beg to differ, Your Eminence:  People aren't arguing this point based on half-truths and elementary misunderstandings, they're pursuing the facts.  Those facts thus far known amply justify a very close look at the Bishop of Rome.

Don't misunderstand me:  The permissive, individualistic, self-realizing, self-interest-pursuing culture has long been on a collision course with any institution claiming--at its core--infallibility and oneness with the author of the universe.  That inevitable pileup is manifesting itself in the [reality-based] clergy sexual abuse dispute.  It's difficult to pity the institution.

**

Henry Farrell and Brink Lindsey--two Bloggingheads that I greatly admire recently discussed the challenges to the authority of the Catholic Church, and have taught me much.

I have discussed Archbishop Nienstedt previously here.

Materialist Bob v. Puritannical Bob

The following comment was posted in the forum on Bloggingheads.tv, in response to this diavlog:

Bob accepts a materialist explanation for how we got here--and that values and cultural practices are themselves products of evolution.

Culture and biology shapes human desires/values: Some portion of sexual desire is biological in origin. Values and desires are intensively monitored and inculcated by one's social environment.

Disgust-for-excrement evolved to improve homo sapiens' contamination-avoidance--and expanded into other arenas for additional advantages.

To describe one's 'disgust' increases a preference-expression's visceral quality, placing a demand on the listener to assent, so as to demonstrate one's non-depravity.

Millions of men fantasize about having wild/varied sex; many women were delighted to boink Tiger Woods (complaining primarily of the infrequency).

Bob expresses 'disgust' for Woods' ejaculatory generosity on instrumentalist grounds but later condemns Woods' tastes for their 'socially reactionary' valence.

Bob's 'disgust' amounts to a status-grab: With it, Wright seeks to emphasize his own supposed purity and class (just as, quite oddly, one might have oneself videotaped behind to wheel of one's Volvo, awaiting one's off-camera daughter, while engaging in that defining upper middle class parent-child rite-of-passage 'the Ivy League college tour'). Status, status, status.

Perhaps Bob ought to consider a more communistic remedy, if he really objects to the consummation of Woodsy appetites.

Bob thinks his golf-appreciation grants him elevated insight into Woods' psychology, but I think it does the opposite. (Bob clearly engages in an intense fantasy-relationship with Woods.)

Robert Cullen's supposedly Zen-master/tough-love BS is also a bit much:

Having waited around for hours and hours on numerous occasions, Tiger finally allows a word with Cullen. Cullen's gutsy query? 'Isn't it true that [golf journalist X] doesn't have any right to describe your internal monologue?'

Sorry, Cullen--but that's an effing pussy question if ever I heard one.

None of Woods' sundry sexual snacks comes across quite as slutty as do the 'golf journalists'.

Somebody Got Murdered

Tom Burnett is Minnesota's all-purpose 9/11 hero:  The non-controversial MBA has become a dependable applause-vacuum for politicians.  (The Wells Fargo-sponsored memorial to Burnett--above--abuts the escalator between Nordstrom's and Caribou Coffee at the Mall of America.)

After United Airlines Flight 93 was hijacked, passengers learned (by phone) of the other planes--and of the attack on the World Trade Center.  Some passengers organized, voted and adopted a plan--and then stormed the cockpit.  The plan failed, the passengers did not gain access to the aircraft's controls [per the 9/11 Commission Report]--and in response to the charge, the terrorists aborted their mission, nose-diving the Boeing 757-222 into a field.

Americans accord hero status to Burnett because they've been sold the narrative that--knowing he faced certain death--he exhibited savoir faire, giving his final effort to saving the White House/Capitol from attack. 

A second, more obvious, self-interested explanation for the passengers' actions isn't often discussed:  Observing just three hijackers (Ziad Jarrah having escaped the passengers' notice), the alpha-male executives conclude they can await certain, imminent death--or they can attempt to subdue the hijackers, remove them from the cabin and then try to land the plane themselves, presumably with ground assistance. 

So the goal was almost certainly to save their own asses--a perfectly good (though unheroic) thing.  One of the last recorded passenger utterances [<3 min-to-crash], near the cabin door:  "In the cockpit. If we don't, we'll die". 

In pursuing their self-interest, the passengers inadvertently saved America from an even worse 9/11. 

Sixteen thousand people are murdered each year in the United States.  Murder is a grave offense upon the individual and against civilization; our compassion and assistance ought to be extended to victims and their families.  Simultaneously, we should resist the urge to award national hero status to murder victims, absent any compelling claim. 

In some less supine year in Minnesota's future, the Tom Burnett memorial should be removed, recycled and replaced with a memorial to an actual 9/11 hero.  Deciding whom to so honor, we should start with a clean slate, with the proviso that no corporation should participate in the discussion--or the funding--of the new memorial.  (We should sooner have kindergartners pay for it.)

Perhaps we should consider a person who strenuously (at considerable personal cost) opposed both Saddam Hussein and our 2003 invasion of Iraq--or an innocent Iraqi or Afghan killed by us.

Praying for the Cameras

 

It is above discussion--says the prevailing false consciousness:  Religious believers are better people than non-believers.

Erik Paulsen mines this popular credo with greater emphasis than a Star Tribune-dependent citizen would be aware.  Paulsen frequently communicates his 'intense Christian conviction' and seeks to strengthen the folk belief--reified weekly by The Eden Prairie News and elsewhere--that a credulous person makes an ethically superior American.

If you reject this tenet of American folk wisdom--and don't look down on atheists, and don't prefer superstition to reason--and then assess Erik Paulsen's character afresh, you'll be far more critical of the Congressman than either the somnambulating paper of record or the CD3 public is.

Concerning Hobbes' view on religion in politics, David Runciman says that since the masses will cling to superstition, a sensibly ambitious politician may communicate religious conviction to voters (even if false) as a concession to this inextinguishable mass wont. The sincerity of the politician's unfounded belief is unimportant, as she will be judged upon results.

Given the prevalence and intensity of the American dislike for unapologetic irreligion, it's sensible for skeptics to fudge matters from time to time--and for non-believing political aspirants to misrepresent their religious beliefs, to placate the bamboozled masses, blasphemy being a victimless crime. 

How should a smart DFL Paulsen opponent deal with this issue?  Ashwin Madia decided not to comment upon his religious identity; I never observed Terri Bonoff calling attention to what I assume to be her mainstream Jewish religious belief. 

(While Christians in CD3 quite openly deplore atheism, antisemitism among the churchgoing is 'too explosive to be discussed openly,' and so people conspire in silence, pretending it's not there.) 

Madia was in a supposedly no-win situation, given the GOP effort to exoticize him, though perhaps lying should have been more seriously entertained, so that the electorate might perceive Madia and Paulsen as equally pious Christians, removing a stupid distinction from the electoral calculus.  In the event, Madia essentially conceded the superstitious vote.  Might it have cost him 8%?

Remembering Sept. 11, 2009

Kurt Zellers introduces Erik Paulsen, then the latter thanks Zellers, a fine state representative who 'treats his constituents as well as I do mine'.  The Dullard™ bestows this ass-slap as dry reality-acknowledgment, nothing more. 

Paulsen views Paulsen as the untainted voice of head-down, anti-individualistic Republican common sense--swinging his club without self-doubt:  The anointed one, his personal and professional elevation amply prove God's good intent.

 '...and I appreciate the privilege and the honor of representing his backyard,' Paulsen continues, ostensibly for Zellers' benefit, as if deploying a witticism.  Paulsen--young fogy--exudes business executive and is not funny; an ambulatory libidoless gray minivan.  (He's in this line of work to defend shopkeepers and the Son of Man from apartment dwellers, remember.)

Perceiving his expertise to lie in the sly manipulation of the district's put-upon small business community (among whose number he includes little fellas such as Morrie Wagener) Paulsen battles an unseen, antirational liberal nemesis on behalf of the church-going. 

He introduces the minister who will lead the audience in submission before his politically-favored fictional character.  Were the prayer-squeezer really an afterthought, why would Paulsen proffer his 'discussion-ending' justification--that praying belongs here because that's how Congress does things?  (This 'value neutral' cleverer-than-thou move is our Congressman's favorite.)

By his own life philosophy, Paulsen's frequent religious dog-whistling ought to be blasphemous--were a person to take religion as something other than organized hypocrisy.  Preening 'Christian religious conviction' remains a favored Republican cudgel in CD3, however.  Paulsen hands the mic to Wayzata Evangelical Free Church's Carroll Miller (cloyingly listed on the website as the church's 'Connecting and Spiritual Growth' expert).

Miller's invocation, Paulsen--Jesus-loving civic leader--says, 'will be especially fitting on 9/11'.  Why?

Paulsen introduces Eric Burnett--Tom Burnett's brother--who will lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance--and afterward announces a moment of silence for the 'twenty-seven hundred Americans [sic] who were fallen [sic] that day'.  On this--our second prostration to the same Master of the Universe who didn't find preventing the attack worthwhile--one might ask what benefit the 'moment of silence' is going to be, to anyone murdered at the WTC eight years prior?  (The benefit to Paulsen is obvious enough.) 

The Pledge of Allegiance--technically, a means of excising the disloyal from the nation's public life--Team Paulsen can't fathom a reasonable objection.  We pledge.