Girls' State Meets Legally Blonde

Aside from the expletive in the flow-chart (my apologies for that...but this was just too priceless to let pass), this flow-chart is highly apropo to Palin's debate style.

I believe she's a bright woman. She's better than all of this. But unfortunately, she's forcing me to take that position on faith. I like faith when we're talking about life's purpose. I don't like it when we're talking about politics.

Bo Gritz and Mormons Gone Mad--MUST we claim him?

As I was meandering about last fall at the Vietnam War conference at the University of Kentucky, I began chatting with a historian about his work on POWs and how non-state actors came to play a role in U.S. foreign policy in the post Vietnam War era. Normally, this would be another airy conversation that academics do for a living. Just then (and not coincidentally, given the topic material), I had a flashback.

(insert dream sequence)
As a youth, a man tells me he's voting for a man named Bo Gritz.

"Sir, why are you voting for him?"

"Because he believes in liberty, my boy! And he's a Mormon."

I never forgot that name...

(Imagine me reading alone in a library...subtly creepy music playing in background...the kind you might hear on Bourne Identity):

The name lingered among the articles. I learned that after serving in Vietnam, he embarked on a "Save the POWs" campaign that consumed a goodly part of a lifetime. He organized big big time, big show commando expeditions into Burma and Laos to save former POWs in Laos and North Vietnam. One counterterrorist Delta Force coordinator noted that they were geared to launch POW rescue missions until Bo Gritz would come onto the scene and make some major announcement.

It gets more bizarre. According to Gritz's account,William Shatner, Clint Eastwood, and Ronald Reagan had joined in planning of the rescue operations in Laos. Shatner and Eastwood saw the makings of good movie material, you see...so they agreed to pay for the mission provided that they get the copyrights for making a movie. Reagan supposedly even told Gritz that he would "start World War III to get them out." The story gets fuzzy around here, as the story goes that Gritz was ambushed by anti-communist militia. Did these hardened anti-communists (probably leftovers of the Hmong mercenaries) just let Gritz walk away after he kindly explained that he was just trying to be Rambo? It's very hard to say.

Gritz went on to live in a grand netherworld of Christian militantism and the hard right-wing: "Guns, God, and Gritz" was his campaign slogan in 1992 (when my father voted for him). He had a legitimate achievement...he helped to negotiate an end to the Randy Weaver stand off in Ruby Ridge, Idaho (Weaver was another hard-right winger who was basically armed to the teeth...let's just say the FBI was getting suspicious). He made a name for himself by insisting that the CIA was selling drugs to fund its in Laos (old news btw...that charge had been made by Alfred McCoy in 1973). He began teaching paramilitary tactics in a program called SPIKE (Specially Prepared Individuals for Key Events) on his utopian ranch called, "Almost Heaven" (also armed to the teeth with weaponry). After all, the U.S. was on the verge of moral and economic collapse.

And he, my friends, was one of our own...he later left the Church. The precise reasons are not clear...the rumors range from a refusal to pay taxes and therefore the Church's withholding of a recommend to the Church's stance against his paramilitary activities. I think an all of the above would fit well...the gospel net is wide indeed.

(Snapping back into reality)

"So," I ask the historian, "you talk to manyveterans/POW activists" (remember, activists by their nature try to jar you a little).

"Quite a few, yes."

"Have you ever talked to Bo Gritz?"

"No way, dude," says he. "He's scary"

Gospel Memory, Fallible Beauty

While I hardly want to be schmaltzy, I had a powerful experience this evening involving memory... this governing variable of my mind. I have often noted to my acquaintances that the genius of the gospel is its ability to co-opt and integrate. Let's say I've been staring down a rather vexing personal conundrum for several years (and I'll spare you the ranting...no really, it can be really obnoxious to the uninitiated). It's one that has, quite honestly, taken a toll on my testimony. Strangely enough, it has almost no relationship to the great ambiguities of our age. Not Joseph Smith, not Brigham Young, not terminal illness or the priesthood ban, not even crass local leaders or uncomfortable political positions. But it did erode my faith just the same, and all the more because it rubs me right where it hurts.

So I'm sitting in my car tonight eating my beef baja chalupa and feeling annoyed at planet earth for no particularly good reason. I begin to listening to an old song that I heard often during a difficult period of my mission...and it struck a resonant chord with me then.The song is not impressive by any traditional standards. Its lyrics were cliche and well-worn. But its content appealed to the emotions of my mission...in some ways, I felt as though I were on my mission again. And suddenly, I felt as though I were facing the same problems I had faced on my mission, only in a different form. The result? I stare at myself in the mirror, look myself in the eye and honestly believe that I can handle this. My painful conundrum was suddenly recast in terms I had once known and loved. It's become sadly cliche to speak of how "remember" is one of the most commonly used words in scriptures. I don't speak of the data kinds of memory...but of the personal kind. You know, the kind that will bring men to blows, to marriage, and to causes greater than themselves. So I ask...in an era when memory is disparaged, Is there a place in the gospel for a recognition of both memory's power and its vulnerability?

In the world of academia, memory is, at best, smiled condescendingly upon as an interesting element of identity-formation in some developing nation. It's fallible and fickle, malleable and manipulatable. Yes, we acknowledge, we all must deal with it, but no one should like it. It's something to be deconstructed and re-trained to comply with the tenets of the academy. If you dare use to promote any kind of agenda whatsoever, the professors suggest, be prepared to be wrong. The popular conclusion often drawn from these realizations is essentially a nihlistic agnosticism.

Dabble in the esoteric with me for a moment. Compare memory a bit to Platonic thought. In Plato's Tmaneus, he spoke of a concept called khora, an utterly abstract reeptacle of sorts through which the divine virtue was transmitted into material being. Most significantly, according to Derrida, khora must be by its very nature formless and without definition. Timaneus tells us that if we were to look at khora, we look at like we would a dream. Essentially (barring some serious divine intervention), no one can see khora or know its nature. It only functions as a governing regulator between the ideal and the real. I submit to you that in a gospel context, the memory serves a similar function--with the significant qualification that the holder of the memory can access it much fuller ways that Plato could with khora. I would suggest that our memory and our testimony are intricately related and almost synonymous.

Where is testimony equated with memory in scripture? Where is it not? How often do we hear the newly-converted speak of how they suddenly "see" God's hand working in their lives even when they didn't recognize it? How about where Christ tells us that the Holy Ghost will "bring all things to your remembrance"?

Yet scholarship would tell me that since memory can be so manipulated, how could I ever seriously let such nostalgia influence me in any meaningful way? If state-makers can create a common identity with monuments, marching bands, and banners, why can't my own mind be fooling me into making sense out of an irrational situation? Indeed, Maurice Halbwachs, the patron saint on the sociological study of collective (and by extension) individual memory, noted that collective and even individual memory derives from the social sphere.

How do we protect our memory from these polarized pollutions of both misinformation and information overload? Perhaps we can suppose that memory, as the mind's most fragile instrument can also be its most beautiful work of art. Perhaps memory's beauty, as God would have it, is as at least as much in what it ignores as what it remembers. A perfect awareness of the thoughts, words, and actions alone of every man, woman, and child would not effectively give one a perfect understanding of one's place in the cosmos. Love just might.

Homosexual Marriage and World Poverty

My friends, a common refrain we hear from critics of the Church's position on gay marriage is that the money being spent on this endeavor could be used in so many other worthwhile pursuits such as poverty, literacy education, and elsewhere (to be sure, the Church already is actively involved in these things). Of all the criticisms of the Church's position, it is this one to which I am most sensitive. It churns my stomach to hear of the funds spent on most political campaigns. It's not surprising then to hear that I might cringe at the sound of millions being poured into sound bytes and banners...most of which, in my experience, use misinformation and distortion to promote even a worthwhile message. Yet I support the Church's fundamental decision.

But how? Cognitive dissonance? Provinciality? On the monetary issue, those who do accept the Bible as in any way indicative of good morality (and I recognize that not all do...gosh, even I am not comfortable with the conquest of Canaan) might recognize the story where the women washes Jesus' feet with spikenard...a luxurious ointment that could have brought a year's worth of wages. Jesus reprimanded Judas for not recognizing the symbolic significance at work.

Therefore...as I see it, there are two reasons:

1) Organizational agency
2) Societal trends

Alas, what I am about to say might smack of the dreaded "fear tactics" so loathed by those on both sides of the aisle. However, when the state begins to approve of a policy that a special interest group fundamentally opposes, it is not unreasonable to suppose (as has happened in other cases) that the government will, as a matter of political necessity, stop associating with that special interest group in matters related to the point of disagreement. In other words, it would not be unreasonable to suppose that, as has happened previously in Mormon history, that the government would impose penalties on the Church for refusing to fall in line with the government support for same-sex marriage. The worst case scenario plausible could be that LDS bishops could no longer conduct marriages. In more a dramatic (and far less likely) situation, the government might even cease to recognize LDS marriages as legally binding. It's an extreme situation, I recognize. Given the past relationship between the Boy Scouts and various institutions, however, I am somewhat skeptical that the Church could retain its autonomy in matters marital.

2)
As far as the superiority of homes with a father and a mother to homes where only a single parent is present, the research is solid. Proponents of homosexual marriage maintain that a homosexual couple can effectively replicate the male/female roles. This, however, is based on a tremendous assumption that gender, as opposed to biologically sexual makeup, is a construct that can be pieced together at one's will. One can become an effective mother in behavior if not in biology (see Michel Foucault's History of Sexuality work for some of the philosophical underpinnings of the homosexual agenda's argument). The other response is that so many children need homes and don't have them; why don't we let them at least have a loving homosexual couple?

True, a "homosexual couple" can adopt right now, but only one of them can act as guardian. The other is no different from a boyfriend/girlfriend. Marriage adds leverage to whomever is trying to adopt; by granting marital status to homosexuals, we would therefore be putting them on the same level as another competent heterosexual couple in terms of gender. However, two gay men would have more earning power than a heterosexual couple would. Suddenly, all other things being equal, a homosexual couple could win custody of a child based on their ability to financially provide.

This is a difficult issue for me, for I do not want to be the blindly-driven ideologue who refuses to consider the needs of children. I am not among those who suggest that children will be more likely to become homosexual...evidence suggests that they are not at all more likely. However, to say that we won't be sending a message to the children would be incorrect. One very significant message would be that men/women are expendable as genders. According to this line of thinking, neither women nor men have significant contributions to make that can't be made by their counterpart. So while it might solve an immediate problem of providing food and shelter for children, it would come at a societal price of engineering a new model of gendered parenting?

Are we willing to pay it?

Grace Works

So a question to mineself...the snide remark d'jour of critics of the Church concerns the Church's supposedly recent campaign to emphasize 1) their Christianity and 2) the centrality of grace in their theology (hence the recent addition of the subtitle, "Another Testament of Jesus Christ" to the Book of Mormon). They argue that it's all an effort to placate Christian conservatives who insist that we believe in "do-it-yourself" salvation,

Now whatever the merits of that criticism (I, for one, am skeptical...if there has been an increased emphasis on Jesus Christ, it is more a response to secularization than to Christian conservatism), I must concur that upon listening to some testimony meetings, one might wonder precisely where Jesus fits in our theology. On the issue of faith/works, we are all too often intent on "not being Protestant," so we might get a little uncomfortable talking about how it is only by grace we can do good works or about how depraved we are without the Atonement. We much prefer our bicycle analogies where we can at least earn a few pennies on our own.

We also tend to compartmentalize the gospel into principles, convenient, easily packaged, spiritual MREs that are have little sense of interconnectedness. Thus, we can talk about the law of tithing, the law of chastity, the laws of mercy and justice...even bear our testimony of them, all without remembering that w/o the Atonement, we should not be fond, but fearful of these laws. We forget who it was that stared these laws in the eye on our behalf...and won.

So ultimately, we must bow to the cross and the tomb with every gospel topic. I don't think anyone would disagree with that, but nor do I think we do that. This is the kind of idea that will spur a lot of head-nodding, and "how true, Brother Stevensons" and "Absolutely." But such responses, I've found, end discussion and might even serve as a mechanism wherein we keep a subversive idea at arms length.

If we are speaking of a true principle, we simply cannot isolate it from the Atonement. Whether we speak of evolution, love, gravity, tithing...all must hinge on the Atonement. It is therefore pointless to talk about how wonderful tithing is without discussing how wonderful Jesus is. One might as well compliment an opera singer on her make-up, a first-rate mechanic on the quality of his car jack, or a chef for his toque.

The Raw Nerve: Palin and the Politics of the Visceral...

I love those moments when we see a collective societal nerve whacked dead on...the ramifications, however ugly, are also quite revealing and even educational. Indeed, individuals with complex sociopolitical identities are wont to do this (Reed Smoot...the first legitimate Mormon politician; Jack Johnson, the great black boxer who defeated Jim Jeffries; Andrew Sullivan, the self-proclaimed Reagan Conservative-Irish-Catholic-Gay). When you cross societal boundaries and refuse to be categorized, the results will not be pretty or pleasant...though there might be a touch of fun in them just to keep the viewing public from getting burned out from all of the societal experimentation. Sarah Palin, like other great transformers of American politics, is challenging the status quo for better or for worse and has received her due attention for doing so. As a cultural symbol, she should fascinate the turtlenecks and latte sippers...even if their fascination is of a bemused, condescending kind...such as a 19th-century British anthropologist might have engendered towards colonial India.

The actual response has been much darker. We learn precisely how knee-jerk the intellectual structure of power can be when its values are mocked. And Palin indeed does mock them and takes delight in doing so. When she should be worried about the mental strain of child-rearing and overpopulation, she has five. When she should be waxing eloquent about gender identity and how her run is realigning women's place in the world, instead, she talks about "her hunk." When she should be telling her kids to use birth control, she's telling her kids to make families. How obscene.

The response? As Dana Nelson has pointed out, the intellectual elite are far better at self-analysis and "woe is us" than organization; here, they seem to have transcended their immobilization so that they can unleash the full fury of their discipline upon her. Deconstructionism--"she's not really a woman." Theology--"she's Pontius Pilate." Feminism--"No, you don't understand...she's REALLY not a woman." Absurdly, she is depicted as out-of touch with the problems of American women...you know, that giving birth business is so out-of-vogue. And blue-collar work? Religion? All esoteric abstractions...now gender constructs...*sigh of longing* now that's practical. Whoopi Goldberg opined that Palin's speech reminded her of the Nazis. That's not to mention that Whoopi is apparently afraid that McCain would enslave African-Americans

Oh...and let's just stop the nonsense about experience in foreign policy. Henry Kissinger was nothing nigh of brilliant of matters of foreign policy...could navigate the bureaucracy masterfully...and in so doing disenfranchise various populations in the process (whether we speak of East Timor, Taiwan, the Bangladeshis, or the Allende regime). And Kissinger is loathed by the Left (and justifiably so). So when we talk of experience, we mean the correct

Silly season indeed.

No, when you control the means of production (hat tip to Marx), you determine the dissemination of the products sold. Alas, the cultural left have decided to mobilize their tremendous opinion-making power against this affront to their values, this moose in the Left's china closet.

PC Unplugged: I love Islam, but seriously folks...

SO my friends, it pains me to write this...after all, I have a deep and abiding respect for the Muslim people. I believe that Muhummad was a great figure who performed a great service to the peoples of the Middle East in helping to root out polytheism (though the militaristic edge is not exactly comforting...). So I run the risk of being associated with the camo. wearing right-wing nut jobs when I say this...

The British legal system has lost its collective mind and any sense it has of state sovereignty...http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3522 (a decidedly opinionated piece about it). Whatever the merits or lack thereof found in Sharia law, the snowslide is being opened widely to radicalism and ultimately, the British state sanctioning of domestic abuse. What if another London bombing takes place? To whom will the Sharia court be subject? Can the Supreme Court of England/Wales declare primacy? If so, then why allow such a contrary legal body within the structure's midst?

Will the judges be strict constructionists or broad constructionists? What about if a British person commits a crime against a Muslim? Who will be the legal experts?
Worst of all, does Britain think so little of its own tradition of domestic freedom (even if that freedom was exclusively domestic and middle/upper-class) that it's telling what few ideals it had to take a flying leap? In the name of multiculturalism, the British gov't has just levied an enormous blow against the legal integrity of Britain's structures. All in the name of the multiculturalism.

And trust me...I know a little something about cultural sensitivity. You can't survive in a Hmong community without it. It's essential for civility...but you can't have competing legal structures and still call yourself a state that believes in equal protection.

Absurd.

The Mormons Who Munch

OK, so I'm as guilty as the next guy for being so Mo-centric (as opposed to ethnocentric). But just do a compare/contrast with me on how this song checks against Mormon conceptions of "being a woman."

Your insights would be much appreciated.

Tactical Morality: A Different Model of Obedience

I revisit an old topic that is becoming increasingly relevant, especially in a culture where not only is bad called good and vice versa, but where neither is called anything. Indeed, we see this same element in part within our own theology where, as Joseph taught, "some things that are right under once circumstnace might be wrong in another." Our theology needs (and fortunately, has) a set of "inner controls" to keep its wild force in check and therefore, retain its usefulness to the world.

Being a Latter-day Saint graduate student in liberal arts can make for some interestingly awkward (or awkwardly interesting) conversations. Most of my effort is spent demonstrating to them that I can read WHOLE books and speak in complete sentences, that I don't care for the Left Behind series, that I find C.S. Lewis to be only occasionaly insightful, and that I don't believe Jesus drives a tank. And yet I am willing to believe that a prophet of God came out of the upstate New York woodwork. Their thoughts probably vacilate between, "Radically instense!" or "Shouldn't you be fixing moonshine somewhere?" Except that I don't drink moonshine. Always full of surprises! So then there are all of the classic accounts of awkward moments at pubs, strange looks about the reason I know Hmong ("cultural imperialist," they mutter under their breath), and various other oddities.

So at the end of the day, I ask: "Why?" The discussions about the reasons for the Word of Wisdom rage ad nauseum. Tit-for-tats continue about why we dress modestly, go to Church on Sunday, or do anything that we do ad absurdium. Is it written in the heavens, my heart crieth out, that one glass of wine a month is worse for you than two gallons of soda a day? Yet one earns sharp talk about health habits whereas the other gets a temple recommend thrown in the batch.

My answer? Postmodernism. Image politics. Divinely-inspired PR. Perhaps it sounds a little too Karl Rove-ish for some folks' tastes, but it is well founded in scripture and modern revelation. Elder Maxswell taught: "We will find that not only are there strategic signposts of morality, but there are also tactical standards of morality with which we must be concerned if we are to preserve our identity in the way that is most helpful to us and to our fellowmen." He cites Sampson's long hair; there was nothing inherently strengthening about hair. He notes Paul's injunction to the women that they keep their heads covered; there is no theology in Jewish or Christian that tells us anything about the goodness or evil inherent woman's hair. What were these images for? Tactics...and seldom are tactics a reflection of eternal principles. Sampson needed to distinguish himself from the otherwise unrighteous Phillistines. The women, feeling a sense of equality from the Pauline epistles ("Ye are all one in Christ") felt reasonably inclined to shed a certain aspect of their gender. Paul counseled against it if only to keep them distinct from the ladies of loose morals who were also known by their refusal to wear a head-covering.

How much of what we do is dictated because we want to be "peculiar"? BYU's honor code? The Word of Wisdom? Modesty? perhaps BYU's honor code (what's better looking to the press than 30,000 clean-cut, modestly-dressed 18-25 year olds)? Notice, this possibility should not be used delegitimize the commandments. After all, Elder Maxwell continued that the "prophet would help us set the tone of tactical morality when such is needed."

Can image politics be the latest way to articulate the message while staying in touch with the postmodern tone of the times? What think you?

A Moment of Reflection on 9/11

Welcome to Never-land...where that odd September day (waving hand) "never happened." Sure, if you do google news, you'll find a few memorials, speeches, calls to remember the dead, etc. But that's hardly the deep-seated, visceral pain that we knew all so well seven years ago. The fixation on the television. The inability to even reason clearly. Believe it or not, I gave a speech in high school on Bin Laden (whose name I pronounced, "Bean Lah-Deen"--betraying my folksy heritage. Hey, we all have our skeletons).

Yes, Steven Jones and his crowd claim that Bush knew about it beforehand, even planned it. I highly doubt it, if only because, as Benjamin Franklin said, the only way you can get two Americans to keep a secret is by shooting one of them.

But neither am I the all-seeing eye, nor does it particularly matter as far as how I feel about it. We learn the same lesson...evil is real, there are conspiring men, and even a war-hater like me who wants out of Iraq recognizes that it would be a greater injustice to sit back and pontificate on the "decline of the West" and American imperialism coming home to roost while people are dying. Intellectualism, at such times, is not just distracting...it's nigh unto criminal.

If by some freak chance a family member/friend of the 9/11 victims visits this blog, I salute you...just for taking a few in the jaw simply because you're American.

God bless.