Why Isn’t Populism Popular?

In my youth and political naïveté I often wondered why populism wasn’t what all Americans wanted. Didn’t we want “government of the people, by the people, and for the people?” Fast forward to today and we are being warned daily about the dangers of populism, and the words populism and populist seem to be used as slurs.

So, off to my go-to dictionary, Merriam-Webster I go:

populist 2 : a believer in the rights, wisdom, or virtues of the common people and
1 : a member of a political party claiming to represent the common people

Definition 1 is spot on with my original thinking, and definition 2 is also, but that’s not all there is.

Another definition is:

Populism is a range of political stances that emphasize the idea of “the people” and often juxtapose this group with “the elite.” It is frequently associated with anti-establishment and anti-political sentiment. (Wikipedia)

this too is spot-on, and

populism : political ideas and activities that are intended to get the support of ordinary people by giving them what they want: e.g. “Their ideas are simple populism – tax cuts and higher wages.” (Cambridge Dictionary)

Finally, here is why the powers that be, on the left and right (actually “above” as left and right don’t really exist anymore, having been co-opted by the oligarchs) are opposed to populism. Although one could claim that the oligarchs are in favor of tax cuts and higher wages, for the rich, but the assumption here is “for ordinary people” so since such things reduce profits and thus the salaries and stock earnings of rich people, they’re agin’ it. We are supposed to be creating government structures “of the people, by the people, and for the people” but the rich are opposed to this quaint idea. They consider “the non-rich” to be “the filthy poor” who just can’t wait to get their hands on the money the rich people have piled up by hook or crook, so it is unthinkable that “those people” would be in charge. (This is why Franklin Roosevelt was declared to be a traitor to his class. He did way too much for ordinary people (even supported labor unions, eww!), at least according to the oligarchs.) Their idea is government of the non-rich by the elites (the rich and those chosen to represent them, e.g. paid for politicians).

One of their tried and true tactics is to demean the things that they want their followers to hate. They turned the term “liberal” into a slur. Social Security and even the Post Office became socialism. Church-state separation became a war on Christianity and now populism is a dirty word. The message underlying all of this is “you don’t want this, move along.” Apparently they think it is a Jedi mind trick.

What started me off on this post was a single sentence (I don’t have triggers so much as short fuses): “Populists always say popular things, so judge the man for what he’s done not for what he says.” WTF? Only populists tell us what we want to hear? Apparently they were thinking of politicians, not just populists.

The Correct Response to Book Ban Demands

The Pine-Richland School District in Pittsburgh, PA will keep more than a dozen books in its library after they were challenged by community members. Superintendent Dr. Brian Miller said the district will keep all 14 books. Miller said he read all of the titles and they were reviewed by a 10-person committee.

“Because library books are optional for students, the stance that I have taken is that every book in the library should be suitable for some students but no book in the library has to be educationally suitable for every student,” Miller said, pointing out the differences in age and maturity between an incoming freshman and a graduating senior.

How about “No book in the library has to be educationally suitable for every student” being a foundational principle for all school libraries? This means a request for removal could be vetoed by any single parent asking for it to be retained, in effect stating that the book is suitable for their student.

Religious Exemptions to Vaccinations

Recently the State of Connecticut has eliminated the so-called “religious exemptions for vaccinations.” I argue that such wouldn’t exist if there weren’t a box on some forms to be checked. Connecticut has decided to remove such boxes from its forms. Hooray.

How can there be a religious objection to vaccination when the vast majority of the world’s religious belong to religions formed before vaccinations were devised. Since they didn’t exist, none of these religion’s holy books could forbid them or even comment upon them, no?

And I think that if you asked any person claiming such an exemption to support it with documentation, the most you would get is the claim that some cleric said so, as I can’t imagine such a point would get mentioned on any sect’s statement of faith.

As one doctor put it:

“On its face, the phrase ‘religious exemptions to vaccination’ is a contradiction in terms. All religions teach us to care about our children and our families and our neighbors. Choosing to put our children and those with whom they come in contact at risk is the opposite of a religious act. Further, about 9 million people in the United States, because they are on immune suppressive therapies for their cancers or transplants or autoimmune diseases, can’t be vaccinated. They depend on those around them for protection. Do we have a responsibility to love our neighbor?”

The Importance of Religious Values

The title of this piece is a phrase I read last night; that’s it. We are getting near the minimum stimulus it takes to set me off.

So, buckle your seat belts, because here we go.

Just what are the values of a religion? And here I mean not just the social values of the religion, but all of them.

The first goal of any religion is to survive then thrive. History teaches us that there is an arc. If a religion is founded, then flounders, then dies, its arc is short. Consider the Quakers in the U.S. The Quakers originated in England during the mid-17^th century, and suffering real persecution (not the Trump kind), they took root in Pennsylvania, a land that promised religious freedom. From being about one in five of all Christian Europeans in 1700, they are now number at about 75,000 out of 330,000,000 Americans (1 in 4400). Quakers survived but ultimately didn’t thrive.

In religions that thrive, they tend to accumulate wealth and influence and then strive for political power. They form coalitions with secular governments trading support for the government for things like special treatment in courts and with regard to taxes.

So, what are their values. The Quakers believed in, for example, the equality of all persons, rejecting all social hierarchies based upon sex, race, ethnicity, etc. Clearly they would be accepted into today’s Republican Party. They also rejected church hierarchies, believing instead that each and every one of us had access to the divine. (You can see why they often got run out of town.)

But what of religions which are flourishing now. This is hard to tell because there are so many sects of any religion. Even Islam, growing as it is is divided into two major parts: Sunnis and Shiites. There are smaller denominations in numbers but we don’t hear as much about them in the West.

Let’s start with your ordinary church on the corner in your neighborhood. What might its values be? Clearly there is a not well-hidden disdain for other sects. Many evangelical sects say out loud that Catholics are not “True Christians™.” Being a True Christian™ apparently means “agrees with us” and is a back handed way of saying, they are Christians In Name Only or not Real Christians™.

Members of that church are given documents like statements of faith that outline what members of that church are supposed to believe. They don’t come out and say explicitly that you cannot join and be a member without believing everything in that document, but it is implied. Even so, most of the “religion’s values” are transmitted culturally. Most churches have an unofficial dress code. You can find out what it is by violating it. For example, I attended an art exhibition that was held in a church. I was asked to remove my hat as it was considered disrespectful to the god they worshiped. (Gods can’t see through hats? Add that to the list with the iron chariots on it.)

For that church to survive it must maintain a certain number of members and attenders of services. Currently in the U.S. the median number of members per church has descended to about 65 (down from 137 two decades ago), which seems to indicate the below average churches are in deep, deep trouble.

To make sure that members stay “in the fold” (why do people not object to being characterized as sheep?), members are discouraged from attending services of other churches. If another church has better music, a more charismatic preacher, swifter services, more amenities, etc. such “shopping around” can result in membership losses. So, attending other services is a no-no on the list of “religious values.” I am sure it would be put positively as “supporting our church” or otherwise.

Being generous to the church is a clear religious value, and I believe that Saul/Paul was the only founding father that harped on preachers being fed and houses by “churches.” (Back then a church was what we now call a congregation as there were no church buildings per se. Christians met in private homes.) The practice of tithing is clearly Old Testament, which the evangelicals say has been superseded by a New Covenant, but tithing is part of every Christian religion’s values in this country.

Talking back to church leaders is not allowed, nor is asking difficult questions of church leaders because the church’s values indicate that they are not looking for answers, they already have all of those.

Clearly, Christian church values doesn’t include reading the Bible seriously. Even if a church offers Bible study groups, attendance is not mandatory and the group leader cherry-picks the verses to be studied. If you believe in a god and also believe the god caused a book to be written, shouldn’t you be reading it obsessively, like Orthodox Jewish men?

All social arrangements evolve. In the case of a church’s values (again, not the ethics they preach, but the values they practice) have to lead to the church surviving, they will be weeded out. If they don’t lead to the church thriving, they will be weeded out, but less so than the survival values.

Churches have to be self-serving. If they aren’t, they end up on the list of “No Longer Churches,” a list getting longer as we speak. There are estimated that as many as 100,000 churches may meet their demise in a generation, aka thirty years. You can’t hold it against churches that they are trying to survive., that their survival values take precedence over the social values they claim are the reasons they exist is open for criticism.

And I must add that defenders of churches are deliberately conflating ethical/moral values a church might emphasize with the church’s self-serving values to defuse the actual issue. This is intellectually dishonest at a minimum. But, this is hardly surprising. They also conflate religious beliefs with ordinary beliefs in statements such as “atheists don’t believe anything,” which is clearly untrue because I believe I will have breakfast . . . right now.

Numinous My Ass

You probably have twigged to the fact that I am a philosophy buff, although I could claim to be a philosopher in that historical that simply meant anyone who studies philosophy, but I don’t. I read philosophical works almost constantly.

Recently I have been made aware of a cadre of serious philosophers who claim that atheists, like me, live only partial lives because we lack the numinous or transcendent aspects that religious worship provides.

numinous: : supernatural, mysterious. 2. : filled with a sense of the presence of divinity : holy. 3. : appealing to the higher emotions or to the aesthetic sense : spiritual. (Thanks Merriam-Webster)

transcendent: 1. : superior to or going beyond the usual : extraordinary. 2. : going beyond the limits of ordinary experience. (Again Merriam-Webster)

They argue that humans around the world feel the feelings they associate with divinity, the supernatural, etc. so the need those things fulfill must be significant.

Really?

I suggest that people all over the world frequently feel the need to take a shit, so is that super special too? Oh, that is ordinary. But if all people around the world fill some need as claimed, is that not ordinary, too?

And how transcendent can such things be if the need is fulfilled by imaginary entities? There are currently over 3000 gods being “worshipped” on Earth and at least 4000+ over human history. There are myriad religions. In the case of Christianity over 40,000 sects, or denominations if you will, have been characterized, each claiming to be unique, not like the others, and in effect superior to the others. (Note—the correct term is sect but many people think that term is negative when it is, in fact, neutral and denomination is just a name or designation like a name, i.e. a named thing: from Latin dēnōminātiōn- (stem of dēnōminātiō “calling something by other than its proper name, substitution, metonymy,” equivalent to dēnōmināt(us) + -iōn-; denominate, -ion).)

Now, “going beyond the limits of ordinary experience” . . . imagination . . . hmm. What is imagination but a mental ability to . . . wait for it . . . go beyond the limits of ordinary experience. So, imagining gods, pixies, sprites, cherubs, angels, gods, etc. seems like just manifestations of imagination and nothing real.

And imagining is not just a rational exercise. We can imagine up emotional reactions, too. We can imagine the terror of being bombed from the skies, or catching a deadly fever, or being bitten by a poisonous snake or the terror of having a heart attack with no medical help nearby, or . . . I think you get the idea. (Many very well-to-do Americans are terrified of dying, for example, which of course has to be imagined because no one alive has experienced it (in toto, anyway).)

The whole benefit of imagination to our species is we don’t have to try out every hair-brained idea that comes to mind to figure out if it is viable, e.g. “If I run and jump off of this cliff I will be able to fly!” Running this scenario in your imagination results in your body in a broken heap at the bottom of the cliff, so . . . bad idea.

So, are we capable of imagining “appealing to the higher emotions or to the aesthetic sense.” And then imagining that feeling coming from a deity who loves and protects us? Easy peasy, I think. As I have argued before all of this is supported by the very human need to feel “special,” all evidence from the Church Lady to the contrary.

“Now, isn’t that special!”

And how important can the need for transcendence in our lives be if the need is easily fulfilled by imaginary entities? Are we not just worshipping our imaginations and the imaginings of others?

And, trust me, I have a cartoon mind. I am not missing out on transcendent thoughts. As to “numinous,” this word is an expression of an industry, the religious industry, which sells worship, gods, afterlives, for the low, low cost of . . . ten percent of your income, your time, effort, obedience, etc. This is a made up word describing a sense also made up, all with a sales pitch in mind.

I used to love sojourns into the Sierra Nevada mountains. Once alone I always felt small, but part of something very large, called nature. That I had a place in nature. I could be food for a hungry mountain lion, or pick up some seeds in my boots and carry them to places where they can geminate and thrive.

I wonder how many philosophers were raised with no religious indoctrination, indoctrinations which told them how and what to feel, how to act, etc. Part of the manipulation involved music, especially communal singing. All jokes regarding the quality of singing congregations aside, communal singing is a powerful bonding exercise for any group, as is communal chanting, a practice around the world of religious acolytes. Just the communal activities undertaken with members of a “special” group (you were told it was special by your parents, so it had to be, no?) results in bonding to the group. Members of religious groups are often forbidden from attending religious services of other groups, or any activities of those other groups, because everybody’s bonding techniques are roughly the same. The differences between the new experience and the old ordinary one in your own church may make the “new” seem superior.

While these philosophers can argue, they really have no ammunition in their guns to fight out disagreements, because we are talking about the realm of the imagination and it possesses no bounds.

They also tend to roll out the tired old “meaning of life tropes.” No one has yet established that life has any meaning outside of what individuals create for themselves, nor do they establish how it is that religions have any better perspective on such questions than, for example, philosophy. (Maybe, “I was having a beer with God the other night and He told me. . . .) Philosophy was created around hashing out such questions and philosophy has never satisfactorily answered any of these so-called “big questions,” so why do they think imaginary religions can?

Must See TV?

If you, as I, grew up as a Beatles fan, there is a fabulous interview of Paul McCartney on Hulu. It is called “McCartney: 3, 2, 1” (cute, counting in the interview)

There are tidbits galore, mostly about McCartney’s creative process and the Beatles process as well. You can learn what “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” actually referred to (Hint: it wasn’t lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD).

I found Paul McCartney forthcoming, even singing a bit of the first song he ever wrote (at age 14). He shared his fears, his loves, and all in between but mostly he shared his love for music. Numerous songs were played on a multi-track editing machine and using master tapes (copies, I hope) they were able to dissect various parts of the songs they attended to. I was, at first puzzled by strips of tape laid across this deck but finally realized that those tapes, when laid across the bottom row of “buttons” labeled what each track was on each particular recording.

It is clear that PM still loves music, loves his music and never reached the “I am so sick of this song” stage so clearly accessible to other artists. His enthusiasm and honestly were on clear display.

If you are a Beatles fan or just interested in the process of creativity you will love this extended interview of a musical icon.

Find the Meaning (It’s Right Next to Waldo)

Consider the following claim: “Society has always looked for meaning in the stories we are told. Why wouldn’t we do the same with holy texts such as the Bible?” Why indeed?

When we, as a species, started telling stories, every story had a “moral” or “lesson” embedded in it. As Daniel Quinn suggests, stories were taught to us when we began to track prey when hunting. The tracks left behind by a prey animal told a story. If the animal had a limp, the track would tell. If the track had blood droplets, the animal was probably wounded. If other predator tracks joined the trail, following the animal, then that part of the story was there to be read, also.

These stories grew over time as we became more adept at winkling out what we were seeing. If we could identify that trailing predator, it might be worthwhile to continue because even if that predator killed our prey, they might be able to be intimidated out of their kill. (Lions do it to hyenas all the time.)

And, I am sure, fathers wanted to pass on their skills and knowledge to their children. Maybe this took the form of grunts and pointing, and hand waving, but soon language entered the scene and the stories it could convey had already been told.

Stories that were entertaining were told around campfires at the end of days. Hunters might share stories, humorous in nature, that pointed out how much of a crapshoot hunting was, so the hunters could not be just blamed as being incompetent if they didn’t bring home a kill. Some stories were limited to the men, protecting their “proprietary” knowledge, as I am also sure some stories were only told by women to the women. Women, often mostly gatherers (but also hunters we now know) wanted to pass on knowledge of what was good to eat and what was lethal to their children, so they formed stories, too.

But none of the stories were just tickle and giggle stories, they all had a point, some teaching they were meant to convey. And of course this went on for millennia. And, today we are still primed to learn better from stories than from anything else.

An Aside I grieved when college textbook publishers weeded out the stories of chemists and chemical discoveries to make room for “relevant” information. It was those stories that got me interested in chemistry in the first place. Eliminating them made textbooks even more dull, and even less effective in many ways.

The first stories we have discovered archeologically, such as Gilgamesh, etc., all had points to be made, but over the past 5-6000 years we have learned how to make stories that are just entertaining, they had no points at their core, so of course, we insisted they did, resulting in Tolkien being accused of hiding Christian lessons in his books, and Star Wars being about family values and other nonsense.

Today, when we find meaning or morals in stories they are more reflective of us than the author’s messaging. And finding the messages in Bible stories is very, very problematic for Bible believers. Modern day Christian apologists are on record saying that the extermination of the Canaanites by the Israelites, as described in the Bible, is perfectly acceptable and not an abomination that we all recognize it as such. If God ordered it, they say, it had to be warranted.

Talk about being on the wrong side of reality. The Conquering of Canaan has been shown to not have happened, certainly not as described in the Bible. The invading people were not millions freed from slavery in Egypt. The slaughters described didn’t happen. Now, the people who came up with this story had their reasons, I am sure, but clearly they felt that their god ordering the slaughter of men, women, children, unborn children, farm animals, aka anything that breatheth, made their god look good. Those modern day apologists are manufacturing approvals of the fiction’s authors account of their god, they are not finding the “meaning’ embedded in the story, if there ever was one. The only meaning I can find to support the writing of such a fiction is to bolster the spirits of a downtrodden people, who have been conquered over and over by more powerful peoples to look back at how glorious their (fictional) past was. They do not always lose, they won a whole bunch of times, see.

As actual meanings go, it sucks as much as the manufactured meanings of modern apologists, which means appallingly.

The Complete and Total Destruction of Christianity

Just from the title, who do you think is responsible for this horrendous act? Atheists? (Hardly.) Communists? Satan worshippers? Who?

Well, clearly it is Christians.

Hordes of people are leaving Christian churches in Europe and the U.S., but many claim to not be leaving Jesus. They claim now to not be associated with any religion, but are still “followers of Jesus.”

So, they claim to “follow” Jesus, but what does that mean? The only source of Jesus information seems to be the New Testament, aka Christian bible. That is if you don’t include the myriad folks who put words into Jesus’s mouth in speeches, books, Internet posts, etc. Like the self-proclaimed Apostle, Saul/Paul, these people seem to claim they are getting direct revelations from Jesus. The fact that many of them are telling us this or that preacher needs a third private jet plane tells you exactly which voice in their heads they are listening to . . . their own.

So, to follow Jesus what must you do? The message portrayed in scripture is pretty straight forward and actually makes sense. Jesus recommended a three-step program (not even close to twelve). Step 1 was to repent, that is to confess your sins (and there were no confessionals at the time). Step 2 was to baptize yourself to get a clean start on your new life. This does not involve the washing away of sins, just a cleansing of mind and body. Step 3 was to obey “the Father,” aka Yahweh, aka God by obey all of His Commandments. (There are only to be found in the Hebrew Bible, since that was the only scripture at the time that listed this god’s commandments.

If all of the people were to do this they would be living in a “Kingdom of Heaven” on Earth. The “king,” of course, is Yahweh, so a theocracy for sure. And if people actually lived obeying those commandments, there would be little need of things like police and other social institutions to correct deviants. There would be no discord in society because it would be so much easier to love your neighbor, and to not murder them, when they are so much like you.

Let us not leave it there. It is clear that whatever Christianity is today, it is not what Jesus taught, not even close and I don’t think any blame for that state can be placed upon outsiders. All of the damage has been done from the inside by “Christians” who are far from being “True Christians™.”

So, if God were real, what would have happened after the creation of this realm? First of all, unwanted outsiders would not be allowed to enter this kingdom. They would be travelers on foot, or donkey back heading down a road into the Kingdom and find themselves heading away instead of toward and no matter what they did, they could not reach the Unpromised Land. Merchants sailing to the shores of the Kingdom in boats would dock, unload, do their business and leave as swiftly as they could because while the profits were nice it was clear they were not to stay.

Protected from outside influence, the Chosen People will have built their own ghetto, protecting themselves from outsiders.

Now, missions might be sent into the surrounding “nations,” with the message of how to get God’s bounty in their lands, but I don’t think Yahweh would send armies to enforce His Will elsewhere. After all, the “others” might have iron chariots.

What The Fuck is Going on with the News Media?

Recently I have seen multiple “journalists” getting their exercise by jumping to bizarre conclusions. For example, anyone who is critical of the actions of the Israeli government is an anti-Semite. WTF? What does criticism of the government have to do with “hostility to or prejudice against Jewish people”? If you are a MAGA Republican does criticism of the current Democrat governing bodies equate to criticism of the American people? Would anyone think that?

I saw Columbia University students protesting the Genocide in Gaza (their words, not mine) equated to “Friends of Hamas.” Really? Not wanting to see innocent civilians suffer and die makes them Hamas supporters? On what planet?

Why have we gone all tribal in this issue? It seems that the guiding principle is “you are either for me or against me” and there is no middle ground, no nuance, nothing other than that. (Thanks Republicans for promoting tribalism so hard for the past two decades.)

News organs are flinging incorrect labels around willy-nilly indicating they have agendas they are not supposed to have. Even declaring the legitimate government of Gaza to be a “Terrorist Organization” is suspect. Hamas was labeled a terrorist organization, in the past, but so were Zionist groups. A government might employ guerilla tactics, but that doesn’t make them terrorists. I guess journalists do. But by any such definition a government performing terrorist bombings of civilian populations, either though suicide vests or dropped by fighter-bombers would make the Israeli government a terrorist organization.

In Canada, section 83.01 of the Criminal Code defines terrorism as an act committed “in whole or in part for a political, religious or ideological purpose, objective or cause” with the intention of intimidating the public “…with regard to its security, including its economic security, or compelling a person, a government or a domestic or an international organization to do or to refrain from doing any act.” Activities recognized as criminal within this context include death and bodily harm with the use of violence; endangering a person’s life; risks posed to the health and safety of the public; significant property damage; and interference or disruption of essential services, facilities or systems.

Sound familiar?

If Hamas is a terrorist organization, the current Israeli government (which I do not equate to the Israeli people) is one too.

Oh, the Irony, the Irony!

Are the Christian Nationalists deluded? Well, yes, but they have had help. I recently ran across this statement in a post in The Guardian:

“And in recent years, that Donald Trump – a thrice-married, profligate cheater with too many character scandals to name – is, if not a true ‘Christian’, a divinely sanctioned ‘King Cyrus’ figure sent to disrupt the secular order.”

According to Jews and Christians, it was King Cyrus of Persia that enabled the “Return” of exiled Jews from Babylon to Jerusalem (ca. 539 BCE), along with providing funds to rebuild the temple to Yahweh in Jerusalem. They refer to the “Cyrus Cylinder” as proof. This clay cylinder was found buried in the foundation of a building near Babylon. It was the habit of the powers that were to place such cylinders in those places, much like we do time capsules now, but back then these were a form of propaganda, so if the building were demolished, who built it in the first place would become known.

If you read this “scroll” it refers to a pronouncement of King Cyrus to rebuilt the temple . . . of Marduk, and not only that but the temples of many lesser gods in the surrounds of Babylon. It does not even mention the Hebrews or Jerusalem.

From its earliest times, the Hebrews were prolific liars and Christians adopted the same practices. Facts were made to be spindled, folded, bent, mutilated, or whatever to fit the company line. Propaganda was invented as an advertising technique in the early 1900s. It had been practiced for all of human history.

So, it is fitting that Mr. Trump, one of the most prodigious liars and supporters of fake news is supported by the Christian nationalists who come from a long line of liars and shapers of history to fit their desires.

They deserve one another.

Postscript The Christian nationalists are a real danger. They want to replace our democracy with a theocracy. They base this claim on the “fact” that the creators of the Constitution were Christians. By this logic, if makers of horse harness were Christians, that would make those harnesses Christian harnesses. If your baker was a Christian, that would make the bread he made Christian bread. And, if your abortionist were a Christian that would make your abortion a Christian abortion. No?

These people are dangerous liars and are to be weeded out of our society. If conservatives want to weed out Muslims carrying signs “Death to America!” then they should also be opposed to Christian nationalists carrying signs that say “Death to Democracy.”