Saturday, December 29, 2012

Postscript to Minor Rant on Conspiracy Theories

Blog Song for the Moment

Angelo Badalamenti, "Dance of the Dream Man," Twin Peaks (1990)

Perhaps some of the few who read this blog may wonder why I often have a knee-jerk reaction to conspiracy theories of this sort, and why I rarely can keep my satirical scorn in check.  I have been asking that of myself today, and I think I've boiled the answer down to these points.

1) A significant part of my occupation and vocation is research and writing (though I've done more of the former than the latter), as well as passing on my learning about research methods and writing to students.  The conspiracy theories that get passed on to my Facebook page, or that I run across while wandering through the web, violate the rules of evidence and logic that govern my work  (admittedly, not always successfully).  Anecdotal evidence is not sufficient; nor are generalizations from an individual experience.  Claims about this or that should be based on two or more sources.  Sources should be read with their origins and context in mind (not only who produced it, but for what, under what circumstances, for what audience, etc.).  So theories about things such as President Obama's origins, or his intentions, that are based on evidence ripped out of context, or are based on syllogistic logic, won't get the time of day from me.  Actually, I consider them an effrontery.  Fear-mongering without merit.  Hence my mild outrage.

2) An idiosyncratic reason: I immediately discount any conspiracy theory that I've noticed before in the history of our country, e.g., dangerous, diseased, immoral immigrants; a non-Christian fifth column in the country (Catholics, communists, Muslims); the US succumbing to some other power, whether a secretive elite, those Rothschilds, the Trilateral Commission, or the UN.

3) Another idiosyncratic reason: I also tend to dismiss claims made by pundits or bloggers who affix "Dr." before their name, often a PhD not related to their topic at hand, a sign of intellectual insecurity to me, and an effort to legitimize otherwise shoddy reporting and investigation.

4) But more important, these conspiracy theories distract us from real problems and challenges at hand. Think of all the intellectual energy spent on them rather than current issues such as balancing civil liberties with national security (Congress just renewed the Executive's foreign surveillance powers), or assuring long-term economic stability while addressing grievous economic stress in the here and now (the "fiscal cliff"), or reconciling the claims of marginalized groups with the values of the majority (e.g. gay rights).

All that said, it's not just been President Obama's race that has encouraged them (though clearly many of the theories about him share the premise that he's not one of us, not a part of "real America" as Sarah Palin put it).  There have been small cabals of the powerful that have done measurable damage to our polity, economy, and foreign affairs--I'm thinking Vietnam, Watergate, the Savings and Loan crisis, the Iran-Contra affair, the Enron debacle, as well as the 2003 invasion of Iraq.  I imagine some think, well, if that can happen, why not this more grandiose "X" conspiracy theory?  The difference is, though, these were ill-advised or ill-intentioned policy choices, ones challenged rather quickly, though not ameliorated very well at all.

And finally, I realize that there are left-wing conspiracy theories, too, that are equally specious. Off the top of my head--Oliver Stone's JFK assassination as attempted military coup (JFK), the US empire engineers everything bad in the world (e.g., Empire's Workshop), to the alleged sympathy of the Bush II administration towards right-wing Christians advocating theocracy (here, for example).

So, professor that I am, I'm asking those who repeat conspiracy theories--please do your homework.

MoJo's summary of Obama conspiracy theories


Blog Song for the Moment

Tom Waits, What's He Building in There?  Mule Variations (1999)

A couple of months ago, Mother Jones created a venn diagram summarizing all the wingnut conspiracy theories about Obama (below, or you can access the original article here)
 
My favorite: President Obama is actually a "lizard overlord" (just can't believe people buy this--clearly, he's an aardvark).

MJ could have added the viral rumor that the Obama administration handed China "eminent domain" rights in the US as collateral for debt owned by China (another one that's obviously untrue--the evidence is that all the Chinese restaurants are actually the collateral).

Or there's the one about Obama's intentions to give up US sovereignty to the UN (intentions?  It's already happened folks!  We're already duped!  That's the power of Obama.  Don't look into his eyes the next time you see him on TV unless you've covered your head with foil.)

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Letter to Governor Snyder: Please Veto SB 59


Dear Governor Snyder,

I urge you to veto Senate Bill 59, recent legislation permitting Michigan gun owners to carry concealed arms in public places.

I teach at Grand Valley State University, and in no way will I feel safer with armed amateurs around me--I'll instead feel more insecure.  The eight hours of extra training proposed in the legislation hardly eases my mind.  The undependable benefit of an armed amateur stopping a mass slaying, itself a minute possibility, does not match the costs of multiplying the chances of accidental or intentional gun violence on campus (I'm thinking: alcohol + irritability over grades or noisy neighbors or just the angst of youth + gun = possible horrible result).  A 2011 New York Times article surveyed the data on the relationship between crime and concealed weapons in states with permissive laws: “...Ian Ayres and John J. Donohue, economists and law professors, concluded that the best available data and modeling showed that permissive right-to-carry laws, at a minimum, increased aggravated assaults.”  As well, the article further reports, loose oversight of the law in places such as North Carolina has resulted in a spate of violence by permit-holders with records of felonies, substance abuse, and mental illness (Michael Luo, “Guns in Public, Out of Sight,” December 26, 2011).

More generally, this law means we both succumb to fear and increase it, hardly the basis for a healthy civil society.  I agree with Jill Leporte's point made in an April 2012 New Yorker piece ("Battleground America"):
Gun-control advocates say the answer to gun violence is fewer guns. Gun-rights advocates say that the answer is more guns: things would have gone better, they suggest, if the faculty at Columbine, Virginia Tech, and Chardon High School had been armed. That is the logic of the concealed-carry movement; that is how armed citizens have come to be patrolling the streets. That is not how civilians live. When carrying a concealed weapon for self-defense is understood not as a failure of civil society, to be mourned, but as an act of citizenship, to be vaunted, there is little civilian life left.
Please, Governor, do not give in to those who think the answer to social ills is a gun, to those who have twisted the ideal of liberty into a right to assuage their individual, and often exaggerated, insecurity with concealed weapons, and thereby contribute to public insecurity.

Sincerely,
Andrew Schlewitz

Sunday, December 16, 2012

Why, God, oh why another mass murder? Because He's peeved...

In the wake of the news of the horrific mass slaying Friday in Newtown, Connecticut, I saw this image posted on Facebook:




My reaction was to think that whoever was posing as God here must think God's pretty weak and capricious.  Despite his power, he can't get into secular schools, and since he can't, it's people's fault if they suffer a horrific tragedy.  Talk about 'blaming the victim.'  And it seems grotesque to me to think that God would make the killing and traumatization of a school and community--which no doubt included many of his believers--an object lesson for the rest of us.

But maybe I'm wrong.  The author of the universe, the all-powerful God, according to the far-right evangelical, Bryan Fischer, will not go where his invitation has been revoked, not because he's a vampire, but because he's courteous. There is a strict etiquette, after all, governing divine providence:
We kicked God out of our public school system.  And I think God would say to us, 'Hey, I'll be glad to protect your children, but you gotta invite me back into your world first. I’m not going to go where I’m not wanted. I am a gentleman.  You know, I think back to when I was in elementary school, we had prayer in schools, and we...didn't...need...guns. I'm gonna repeat that. Back when we had prayer, the Bible, and the Ten Commandments in schools, we...did...not...need...guns! (you can find this excerpt here, about eight minutes into the broadcast)
A more well-known and sedate evangelical, Mike Huckabee, agreed, in a Fox News interview:
“We ask why there’s violence in our schools, but we’ve systematically removed God from our schools...Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?”
I suppose I should be used to this by now.  Chatting with Pat Robertson on the 700 Club, the late Jerry Falwell blamed 9/11 on "the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way..."  Pastor John Hagee, infamous endorser of John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign, told Fresh Air's Terry Gross that Hurricane Katrina was the "judgment of God" on a city that had a "level of sin offensive to God." And, turning back to the 700 Club, Pat Robertson attributed the devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti to a Haitian deal with the devil back during the revolt against the French at the beginning of the 19th century.

So the logic here is that when a people disobey God's will--that is, do not follow fundamentalist Christian tenets--then God visits them with natural disasters or mass slayings, or permits them to occur.  Conversely, then, the more prevalent fundamentalist Christianity is in a given community, or among a people, there should be fewer disasters and mass slayings.  There should be fewer violent casualties in general.


If true, then why do Cubans, under a harshly secular communist regime, suffer significantly less from hurricanes and tropical storms then nearby Guatemala, where evangelicalism is flourishing? (See report on Cuba here, and news story on Guatemala here).  Why do Western European countries, far more secular than the US, experience far fewer mass slayings and gun-related deaths than the US?  As the Washington Post's Ezra Klein noted, "15 of the 25 worst mass shootings in the last fifty years took place in the United States. . .in second place is Finland, with two entries."  And as is obvious in the numbers below, there's a lot more bloody gunplay in the US than in countries that former presidential aspirant, Rick Santorum, once described as "dead from a faith perspective."


Country                   Homicide Rate by Firearms (per 100,000)

Belgium                     0.68
Denmark                    0.51
England/Wales           0.07
Finland                       0.45
France                        0.06
Germany                    0.19
Netherlands                0.33
Norway                      0.05
Portugal                      0.41
Spain                          0.20
Sweden                      0.41
United States              2.97
Source: The Guardian "Gun Homicides and Gun Ownership by Country"

I suppose, though, that a theology that poses a vindictive divine providence doesn't require empirical support.  After all, there is that convenient rebuttal: God works in mysterious ways.  And it's not a surprise that this kind of perspective on God's character should be prevalent among some Christians, like Fischer and Huckabee, who take a literalist approach to the Bible.  Think about how Moses had to talk God out of destroying his people for their idolatry (Exodus 32: 7-14), or how God helped the ancient Hebrews slaughter tens of thousands in their conquest of the Promised Land (Jericho, among other examples in the book of Joshua).  Or there's Jephthah vowing to God that, in exchange for divine help in the battlefield against the Ammonites, he will sacrifice the first thing he sees when he returns home.  God helps him win, and the first thing he sees turns out to be his daughter.  And he fulfills his vow (Judges 11: 29-40).  Really, the body-count at the hands of God or his human instruments is pretty incredible.


I know, though, that there are other sides to God's character in the Bible--his mercy and lovingkindness extolled in Psalms 145, for example, or his commitment to what today we would call social justice (see my favorite prophet, Amos), and there is, of course, the God of the New Testament, and the repeated lessons in the Gospels and the Epistles about loving one another, and being vehicles of God's love: "A new commandment I give to you, Jesus said, "that you love one another, even as I have loved you" (John 13:34), "Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13), "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Mark 12: 31), or the well-known passage from 1 Corinthians 13, "Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous..."

And I am sure that Christians such as Fischer and Huckabee would not reduce God to moments where his providence allegedly results in slaughter.  I imagine they would agree with this evangelical's take:
It is true that the Bible contains graphic stories of sin, evil, and death. But it also includes the overarching grand story of love, redemption, and grace. It showcases a God who asks us to not criticize Him about His acts of justice, but instead One who kindly encourages us to come alongside Him and grieve over a world that has misused the gift of freedom given it to do wrong instead of right. When that happens, and God acts in His righteousness, the world discovers that consequences exist for evil behavior, which is something the prophet Isaiah speaks to: “At night my soul longs for You, Indeed, my spirit within me seeks You diligently; for when the earth experiences Your judgments the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness” (Isaiah 26:9, excerpt from "Is the God of the Old Testament a Merciless Monster," by Robin Schumacher).
Still, when Christians turn calamities such as the Sandy Hook school massacre into a proof, unverifiable though it is, of their religious critique, I am not chastened, much less edified.  I hear only a self-righteous, smug 'This is what you get and deserve for not agreeing with my particular religion.'

But I am grateful for the many Christians I know who do not share this smugness. I don't share the faith, but appreciate how they live out theirs, and I'll close with words of Paul Duris, a Foursquare pastor and my brother-in-law, posted on Facebook last Friday:
This is a day of mourning for all of us. I feel numb. But I've been thinking about the words from Romans 12:21, "Do not be overcome by evil...overcome evil with good." We can't stop hate, but we can be the ones that do good. We can raise the bar of kindness and love with the next person we talk to. We can be the ones that overcome evil with good.