The Pro-Abortion Convention

For lack of anything good to talk about (I had to get myself ready early this morning, so I can't remember what I dreamed about last night), I did watch John McCain and Rudy Giuliani last night on the television. No lover of Kerry myself (note my Nader support a couple posts back), I still find the Republicans' self-righteousness revolting. No, that's not entirely it either. The Republicans, at least in their public face, seem to assume that nobody listening knows anything about global politics. McCain inveighed against those who underestimated Iraq's threat to the world barely minutes after he sang the praises of Pakistan, the one nation we know has sold nuclear technology to Iran and North Korea. And what exactly happened in Spain? An enemy attacked, and they changed their policy towards Iraq. The Republicans call that capitulation to terrorism. What happened in Libya? Iraq got attacked, and Qadhafi changed his policy towards the United States. What do the Republicans call that? Capitulation to terrorism, right? No, they call that good foreign policy. If they're going to act like Don Corleone, I wish they'd at least talk like Don Corleone. For all of Clinton's faults, at least he talked like Don Corleone when he was acting like Don Corleone. No "good versus evil" stuff. No, he told the country that "they" had messed with one of his people, and now he was going to mess their faces up. No crusading facade. No biblical verses. Just "we're going to mess you up." Badda boom badda bing.

Moreover, the Republicans know that the "single issue" voters are too scared to soil their purity by voting for Democrats, so they trot out three heavy-hitting pro-abortion politicians in their first two nights. This is what infuriates me most about national politics--otherwise intelligent people pretending that this or that national party is going to do something about abortion. Of course, the so-called "single issue" crowd voted for Dole ( a pro-abortion Republican) in '96, so I've been suspicious of the self-imposed label for at least eight years. My fear is that persecuting gays is going to become the new "social" issue, freeing the RNC to ignore abortion and become in all respects the party without a conscience.

In personal news, Mary's next doctor's appointment is today. I'm told that this is the "hear the heartbeat" appointment, so that ought to be good. I'm not sure when they're going to need to take my blood, but I hope that my phobia of needles relaxes enough that I don't embarrass myself by puking in their office. But if I do, so it goes.

I'm taking on Analogical Imagination by David Tracy now. His thesis so far is that all theological work is public and that properly describing the public is the first task in understanding what theology itself is in any given era. Sounds solid. As I read more of it, I'll post more of what I learn here.

Augustine's Bad Rap

First, in the dream recollection department, I remember quite distinctly that my dream involved driving between my grandma Quick's house and grandma Gilmour's house. Of course, in the dream, that involved getting across a swamp, and that in turn involved getting the car into two foot deep swamp water. Of course, midway across, Dad dropped my brother Ryan and me off so that we could sneak into the back entrance of a giant underground shopping mall (in the middle of the swamp) and sneak through the physical plant to emerge in an expensive clothing shop. I still can't remember why we wanted to do that. All I remember is that the physical plant featured giant, quasi-Gothic clock tower gears and security guards that asked Ryan and me not to tell anyone that they were stealing Gucci clothing.

In the waking world, I finished Augustine's City of God yesterday, an undertaking that began two months and 1100 pages ago. As often happens when I read famous writers, I found that certain "Augustinian" stereotypes didn't hold up. For instance,

• Augustine respects Plato as the pagan philosopher closest to figuring things out (other than Plotinus), but he differs from both thinkers to a degree that makes the label "Neo-Platonist" a hair misleading. Moreover, his primary complaints involve the Platonists' and Neo-Platonists' not being Jewish enough. John Milbank's Theology and Social Theory is far more a Neo-Platonist book than is Augustine's City of God.
• Augustine is not the despiser of the human body and matter that my medieval literature class made him out to be. One of his primary beefs with Plotinus is Plotinus' denial that the body is good. God said material creation was good, so Augustine tends to agree. Moreover, postlapsarian sex is fallen in Augustine's mind not because it involves pleasure (he's no despiser of pleasure--just read his chapters on the resurrection) but because the male sexual apparatus functions apart from the will, rising at inopportune moments and refusing to rise when good moments arrive. In Paradise all parts of the body were, as they will be in the Resurrection, extensions (pun intended) of the human will. Resurrected bodies will need neither cold showers nor Viagra. Moreover, women in the resurrection will remain physically women; he counters vigorously that "perfection" of women will involve their turning into men.
  
• He is not the humorless theologian of sin and doom that he's sometimes made out to be. I suppose this stereotype better fits with Calvin's reputation, but I've heard it nonetheless. Augustine has a vibrant sense of wonder, and on occasion he even cracks a joke.
  

If anyone reads this blog, I'd recommend to nearly anyone the two- or three-month investment in reading this book. No one section is impenetrable, and the lessons in ancient history, Christian theology, and bizarre modes of Scripture reading are worth the trip. Compared to Foucault's philosophical histories, Augustine's theological history is both entertaining and clear. And you'll be able to say, as I'm now able to say, "I've finished Augustine's City of God."

Why Nader?

I suppose I had some tingle of hope while Howard Dean was the leading man in the DNC, but now that Kerry is the man in charge, I'm definitely going with Nader. Besides, I live in Georgia--it's going Republican. Even the Democrats are Republicans here. But here's why Nader is the only responsible vote any more:

• Education. Nader is the only one of the three televised candidates (I'm not sure about the Greens) who will come out and say that high-stakes testing is a bad idea. Bush is all about No Child Left Behind; Kerry thinks that the only thing wrong with it is lack of funds.
• Electoral Reform. Nader supports Instant Run-Off voting, a system in which voting one's conscience isn't "giving votes" to a bad candidate, whether that candidate be Clinton in '92 or Duh-bya in '00. The system would insure at least that a majority of people wouldn't be horrified with any given president on election day. What a president does after that is a different story...
• Taxes. Not content to see feudalism reborn, Nader actually has the guts to propose taxing the giant pools of wealth that collect around certain families. That means reducing the taxes on money worked for and increasing taxes on money that just comes to certain blessed souls. More tax revenue leads to smaller deficit. Smaller deficit means less money spent on interest payments and more to fund schools. All of this should be simple, but if it's not, take a gander at Perfectly Legal. It's a book on taxes that is readable and infuriating just because you'll know things then that you wish you didn't know.
• War. This one is important to me: Nader is the only anti-war candidate. Ask him if he would have invaded Iraq, knowing what we know. He wouldn't have. Ask him what our course of action should be. He'll tell you he would withdraw the troops, not pretending that things would be rosy once the American military left but not pretending that things are so great right now. And he'd order the corporations, Paul Bremer's real legacy, out of the country. Perhaps some of those insurgent fighters wouldn't have so much energy for insurgency if they were driving the trucks all over the place. As it stands, Bremer has made Iraq a job market for unemployed Americans. Get the unions back in America, get the unemployed Americans out of Iraq, and you'll see Iraqis and Americans with jobs and CEO's with medium yachts instead of jumbo ones. And that doesn't sound bad.

So there are probably the biggest four reasons that I'm going no-party this election. So it goes.

In the dream recollection department, I've got some pretty vivid memories this morning. I was at some kind of youth ministers' convention (I'm not a youth minister), and the people talking up on stage were throwing some hardcore evangelical cliches around. One, talking about his wife, referred to her as "my quiet rock." Another used the word "just" as an adverb for every other verb in his public prayer. In the meantime, spastic youth ministers were playing "terrorist," planting fake bombs and trying to bribe the security guards with Monopoly money and generally making everyone miserable. And every youth minister thought every other youth minister's fake terrorist threat hilarious. Just as a little background, many of my friends from college are now youth ministers, and I can't be around more than two of them at a time for more than a couple days at a time; they just find themselves too amusing, often at the expense of people who, IMNSHO, are more responsible and contribute more to humanity and often to the Church. I don't have anything against any given youth minister; it's when they get together that I begin grating my teeth.

The sad, sad world of Freud's children

I just finished reading Harold Bloom's The Anxiety of Influence, and once again, I'm glad I don't live in the world that Freud and his disciples claim we live in. In that world, it seems, happiness can either be simple material safety or it can be sadistic pleasure, but transcendence is always a simple extension of one or the other. In that world one can hold one's father in esteem, but underneath, one has either killed and replaced the father or has failed to do so. In that world only utter autonomy is success, and in Bloom's book, that usually means alienation and madness. No, I think I'd rather live in a Trinitarian world in which the Father and the Son are eternally bound by caritas rather than being locked in a struggle to kill or castrate one another.

I know I had a dream last night, but between getting the dog pooped and fed, using the facilities myself, and navigating from the bed to the computer, I've forgotten it. I know that it involved number, and I remember a sensation that the number was entirely too high, but that's all I can recall. This forgetting happens nearly every morning; I wish I could remember, but I suppose this morning's blog writing demonstrates that that's going to be harder than I anticipated...

To blog or not to blog? I'm sure many have asked the question.

Well, I've decided to do it. The folks over at The Ooze are all doing it, and they seem like good folks, so I've decided that a blog is the thing for me. I don't know how disciplined I'll be about writing, but I suppose we perform these experiements to find out those kinds of things. The interface looks simple enough; I can toggle between html and word processor interfaces. Shoot, I might just enjoy this.

I'm going to try to write in the mornings between the time I wake up and the time when Mary wakes up. That'll be the default, and it'll mean about five half-hour blocks a week. Once I start substituting more often, this might change, but I suppose I ought to start somewhere. So anyone who was looking for more, check back later. I hope I can do this!