Cherish every word of this one, kids, because that’s all he wrote--Swami closes his doors with this column, though I will return to Beliefnet from time to time in the persona of Jesse Kornbluth to opine on matters spiritual. I’m stopping for a very simple reason: I’ve said it all.
I’ve said it all, and it’s worked out pretty much the way I said it would, and by now that’s certainly clear to most of you who show up here, so why not get out of the way and let someone else have the floor before I bore you--and myself?
Which is to say: We have finally devolved to about the 14th century.
In a single week--last week--we saw the Pope make an ill-advised historical reference to Islam. And what did he get for his erudition? One dead nun and some bombings. Who knew these Muslims were so sensitive? Now the Pope has had to issue a first-ever contemporaneous apology--or spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder to see if he’s being stalked by a suicide swordsman on a flying carpet. Score one for the 14th century.
Also last week, George Bush confessed his love of torture, a l4th-century art. He wants to know--like a frat boy on a date with a girl from a junior college--just how far he can go. Can he squeeze the testicles…just a little? How much water is too much? And is Megadeath cruel and unusual? The right answer, of course, is that all of this stuff is against everything we believe. (And, worse, that it doesn’t work.) But that answer only applies to those with an appreciation of the soul--the torturer’s as well as the so-called terrorist’s. If your head is in the 14th century, however, who cares? Score two for the 14th century.
And the war. You may have seen it in the news: They’re going to dig a ditch around Baghdad, the better to keep the bad guys out. But that’s just preamble. They’ll need water. And gates. And, later, helmets (not that the Bushies will actually get them to our soldiers.) And then we’ll have a perfect Middle Ages kingdom inside those walls--with children rushing out to swim in the moat during the day. Score three for the 14th century.
Kinda depressing. Especially for those of us who said, again and again, only crazy people turn the clock back. Not that it would have mattered if the entire nation had shouted--these guys are not just wrong, they’re cracked. They could give a damn about you (and that includes the idiots among you who voted for them).
Bush, for the record, may not be entirely committed to the 14th century. Last week, he seemed pretty rhapsodic about re-creating the 19th century….which lasted until l960, as he and I both recall.
As Bush put it:
“A lot of people in America see this as a confrontation between good and evil, including me. There was a stark change between the culture of the '50s and the '60s--boom--and I think there's change happening here. It seems to me that there's a Third Awakening.”
And there we complete the circle. Some of you think I have sex on the brain--and why not? It’s a good place for sex to start--but I come back to my theory that these dull white Christian men are a bunch of lousy lays, and they know it, and they want revenge on the world, which would take the form of making sure nobody gets any.
The jihadists hate women. So do far-right Christians in America.
The jihadists see only one path to God. So do far-right Christians in America.
And so on.
A long time ago (the '60s), in an institution far away (Harvard), I learned that enemies tended to resemble one another. Well, it took Bush almost six years, but he’s now made it clear to pretty much everyone who’s not too scared to think: He hates your freedom--of every kind--just as much as the people he says he’s trying to protect you from.
Frankly, it demeans me to write a column, week after week, about a guy that addled and damaged.
And yet I have. Didn’t plan to--I showed up, hoping to explore what committed Buddhism would look like in the millennium--but once I saw what was happening to my country, I had to change focus. You can’t have a spiritual conversation in a language that’s debased. Ideas and words must match.
But the White House and the Religious Right have declared war against language and ideas, so I joined the battle in the place where it was being fought. And I could go on and fight that battle some more in this column--I’ve got items of interest about Scholastic and that dreadful ABC 9/11 movie, and a new documentary about camps for Christian kids, and Katie Couric’s spectacular calves (kidding; just wanted to see if you were really reading)--but why? Those items are merely anecdotal. You get the big picture. If you don’t by now, no way can I help you.
I’ve decided I’ll do better fighting a culture war in the culture itself. I’m going to throw more energy into HeadButler.com. And I like to think I’ve got some other tricks up my sleeve. Please contact me there if you have thoughts to share, or even the random hello.
“There are few things about which one can say with pleasure, ‘This is the end,’ ” Samuel Johnson said, and the dictionary-maker and moralist was never wiser than when he wrote those words. Even when I’ve been in a blind rage, I’ve enjoyed this forum. Thanks to my saintly Beliefnet editors and enablers--so you don’t get sent to Gitmo, I won’t name you here. Thanks to Mrs. U and the Little One, who got turned into copy fodder far too often. And thanks to you, who are the reason I came. Here’s hoping we all make it through, safe and healthy and sane. And loved, loved more than we know, by a God we can dimly perceive. That, yes, most of all. Hugs. Amen.
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