Context is Everything

Like Jacob S. I'm not a huge fan of politics during election time. Most of all I don't like the misrepresentation of candidates and policies through "news" and paid advertisements. Although some of them kind be pretty funny, like this one from our friends to the north.



I've never heard of this guy before. I don't really know if he goes around kicking the random 14 year old in the face, but my gut says that the video of him in full soccer drag, swinging at a ball, is a bit out of context in terms of representing his political ideology. Sure, his attempt at trapping the ball looked more like something from MMA, but it would be nice to see the before and after to know this politicians intention and response.

Likewise, the media is adept at spinning benign comments into dangerous political fodder. In a recent interview with RollingStone magazine, President Obama was asked about his current taste in music. Fox picked up his response in full, but spun the headlines just so to make it, em, intriguing.

"President of the United States Loves Gangsta Rap"

Fox has since taken down the heading, and brushed it away as editorial privilege under the claim that Fox Nation is not the same as Fox News, and is therefore not responsible to the same level of truth in reporting. Obama's full answer:

My iPod now has about 2,000 songs, and it is a source of great pleasure to me. I am probably still more heavily weighted toward the music of my childhood than I am the new stuff. There's still a lot of Stevie Wonder, a lot of Bob Dylan, a lot of Rolling Stones, a lot of R&B, a lot of Miles Davis and John Coltrane. Those are the old standards.
A lot of classical music. I'm not a big opera buff in terms of going to opera, but there are days where Maria Callas is exactly what I need.
Thanks to Reggie [Love, the president's personal aide], my rap palate has greatly improved. Jay-Z used to be sort of what predominated, but now I've got a little Nas and a little Lil Wayne and some other stuff, but I would not claim to be an expert. Malia and Sasha are now getting old enough to where they start hipping me to things. Music is still a great source of joy and occasional solace in the midst of what can be some difficult days.
So, while we can indeed see that Obama admits to having some Rap in his collection (Lil Wayne and Nas), I don't know that I would go so far as to say that he LOVES rap. It would be like saying that likes a California roll every now and then LOVES sushi. The point is, a half truth can be as misleading and detrimental as a full lie.
I haven't visited Utah for a while now. I wasn't present at the recent protests regarding President Boyd K Packer's remarks on homosexuality. I did hear the remarks, in context, and definitely didn't take them as anti-gay. The LDS Church's stance on homosexuality is clear, and we have hashed through it many times before. I feel that one of the fundamental reasons that so many people were so distraught by the speech is because of the way the statements were taken out of context. Read the entire speech for yourself and make your own decision. More of that talk is on the importance of strengthening families than anything else.

Score another one for the misrepresentation of taking things out of context. Check the primary source, especially when it comes to important issues, be it political or otherwise.

I Hate Election Season

It's been a little slow around here and I can blame life being busy and tumultuous and, ironically, election season.  A political blog should be hoppin' during election season but I find that elections make me disillusioned and sad for America.  While we don't practice the most honorable politics in non-election seasons, during elections the level of political discourse on all sides plummets and candidates compete in a race to the bottom.  Perhaps the worst aspect of democracy is the elections.

The candidates believe, correctly, that Americans care more about wedge issues and digestible soundbites than substantive discussions of the issues.  They know by now that Americans like to be reaffirmed in what they believe as opposed to being challenged by new and novel ideas.  They know that Americans are tribalistic and like to think in terms of "us v. them" as opposed to finding ways to come together for the common good.  They are more interested in not making a gaffe than in saying or doing something truly memorable and inspiring and taking chances, because any little gaffe in this era of 24-hour cable news and the internet will be magnified beyond all reasonable limits of logic and decency.

From a partisan point of view this election season is also frustrating because of articles like this from Slate:

A. Recent polls have found that the economy is uppermost in the minds of voters ahead of the midterm elections. They have also found that many more Americans attribute the dismal economy to the former Bush administration than to the Obama administration. Gallup tells us that 71 percent of all Americans blame Republican policies for the bad economy, while only 48 percent blame the Obama administration.

B. Americans dislike congressional Republicans more than congressional Democrats. A recent Washington Post-ABC poll shows that while disapproval of congressional Democrats stands at 61 percent, disapproval of congressional Republicans stands at 67 percent.

C. Republicans are heavily tipped to wrest control of one or both houses of Congress from the Democrats in the upcoming midterms.

What's the explanation?  The article suggests that maybe Americans are just trying to get to divided government, which they like.  Or that Democrats are in office, the economy stinks, so vote out the Democrats.  Both are reasonable explanations, but my theory is that Republicans are better at talking to the Americans in paragraph two above than Democrats are.  Democrats are trying, don't get me wrong, they just aren't good at it.  For them, it takes something akin to George W. Bush trashing our country to find the right message and win some elections, which is a rare occurrence indeed.

Perhaps the most depressing thing you could do during this election season is browse through politifact.com.  Here you have a non-partisan look at the truthfulness of political commercials (now funded largely by anonymous groups and donors; so much for accountability and open governance), statements, and arguments.  The results aren't pretty and serve to reconfirm our suspicions that most politicians are liars.  But Americans aren't really interested in facts, they're interested truthiness.  Take it away, Mr. Colbert:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Word - Truthiness
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes 2010 Election March to Keep Fear Alive

Donald Duck and Glenn Beck

Andrew posted this on facebook and I thought it was awesome enough to post here, as well.  It starts a little slow but picks up steam after about two minutes.



The best part, though, is Beck's reaction on his radio show.
He goes off on a rant about communists and socialists and "dare I say, progressives" without a single hint of irony in his voice.  So, in response to a parody of him as a fear-mongerer he serves up a big dish of blatant fear-mongering.  The man is creative wonder and a genius, whether wittingly or unwittingly so I cannot tell.

Between a Cult and a Hard Place

Here's a fun little question:  Which major American political party is friendlier to Mormons?  Just like the question I asked before about which party is more likely to nominate a presidential candidate, this one isn't as simple as it seems.

Now, we at the Mormon Left have spent a couple years showing that Mormonism and liberalism are just as compatible (more compatible, in my opinion, but that's just an opinion) as Mormonism and conservatism.  This post is not about which major ideology is most compatible with Mormonism.  It is about which party is more friendly to Mormons.  The simple answer is that the bases of parties both think we are a cult, but with their own twists.

Take the recent story about Sharon Angle.  Ms. Angle is the delightfully bizarre Republican running against Harry Reid.  She regularly immerses herself in overtly Christian memes as a way to appeal to her base (and also, presumably, because she has deep religious beliefs).  The pastor of her church recently went into some detail explaining that the LDS Church is a cult.  That link is to the liberal online magazine, Salon.com.  If you take a moment to peruse the comment section you will find that the most prevalent response from the liberal commenters is, "Yeah, so what?  All religions are cults."

The big difference, though, is how institutionalized the Mormons-are-a-cult meme is in each party.  I don't think I've ever heard someone considered a liberal leader single out Mormonism as being a cult (If I'm wrong, I'd be happy to admit it).  Such comments are made by many rank-and-file liberals, to be sure, but institutionally I don't think liberals have gone there.  On the other hand, influential conservative leaders say or imply it often.  For example, all of your run-of-the-mill extremely influential Christian Right leaders have made the case.  Mike Huckabee, former and future serious contender for the Republican presidential nomination, famously made it a part of his campaign against Mitt Romney.

So here you have the basic conundrum of being a Mormon trying to be actively engaged in partisan politics.  Would you rather be courted for your vote while snickered about behind your back and singled out among Christian religions as a cult, or openly sneered at as a cult and lumped in with all the other religions?  An appetizing decision to make, no?  Either way, you have a political party that doesn't respect your religion and discounts your role in public discourse automatically based on your religion.

In the end, Mormons in both political camps need to push back against those that consider us a cult.  We should absolute embrace and celebrate those doctrinal and practical differences that separate us from evangelicals and other religions, but the overt negativity from the political bases of both parties is harmful to our church.  We should be magnifying the call from Elder Cook in the latest General Conference: "In our increasingly unrighteous world, it is essential that values based on religious belief be part of the public discourse. Moral positions informed by a religious conscience must be accorded equal access to the public square. Under the constitutions of most countries, a religious conscience may not be given preference, but neither should it be disregarded."

Restrained and Intelligent Foreign Policy

In keeping with a recent tradition of writing an entire post just to announce I'm adding another link to the sidebar on a blog that very few people actually read (ahh! self-deprecation is nice!), I'm announcing that I'm adding a new link to the sidebar and I strongly suggest you click on this one.  The link is to a blog on the website Foreign Policy by Stephen M. Walt.  If you're interests range outside of domestic politics at all, and they really should, then Walt's blog is a must read, in my opinion.

In response to the odious Bill Kristol's recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal which uses fear-mongering to lobby for continuing the current insane level of funding for our bloated military-industrial complex, Walt gives several reasons why cutting "defense" spending is necessary but unlikely.  He concludes with this:

Which brings me to my main point. Although it is mind-boggling to realize that five percent of the world's population (the United States) now spends more on defense than the other 95 percent put together, this situation is hard to avoid when you see threats emerging virtually everywhere and when you think all of them are best met by an ambitious and highly interventionst foreign policy. If Americans want to be able to go anywhere and do anything, then they are going to have keep spending lots of money, even if all that activity merely reinforces anti-American extremism and makes more people want to come after us. (And for more on that latter point, read this book).

If you want to cut defense spending significantly, in short, you have to make some non-trivial adjustments in U.S. grand strategy. As some of you know, I think the United States would be both more prosperous and safer if we had a more restrained grand strategy and a more intelligent foreign policy. Until that happens, however, reducing defense spending itself is going to be an uphill fight, and our defense expenditures will be closer to the views of Kristol et al than to mine. Unfortunately.

By a more restrained and intelligent foreign policy, he means this, from another recent post of his:

The solution is not to retreat into isolationism and cede the initiative to others. Rather, the solution is to remind ourselves what American power is good for, and avoid taking on tasks for which it is ill-suited. The United States is very good at deterring large-scale aggression, and thus good at ensuring stability in key regions. (That assumes, of course, that we aren't using that same power to destabilize certain regions on purpose). We are sometimes good at brokering peace deals -- as in Northern Ireland and the Balkans -- when we use our power judiciously and fairly. And we've often done a pretty fair job -- in concert with others -- at encouraging intelligent liberalization of the world economy. The United States is not very good at governing foreign societies, especially when the local inhabitants don't want us there and when we have little understanding of how they work. And if we keep trying to do this sort of thing, we're likely to look inept far more often than we look effective.

In short, regaining an aura of competence isn't just about trying harder, or restoring the work ethic and "can do" attitude that we associate (rightly or wrongly) with earlier eras. It also entails picking the right goals and not squandering time, money and lives on fool's errands.

What a refreshing look at American foreign policy, and way more in line with my sense of Christian peacemaking.  Instead of destabilizing regions and starting wars and occupying foreign societies, all of which make us less safe, we should focus our resources on deterring large-scale aggression, brokering peace, and spreading democracy through peaceful means, all of which would make us more safe.

This idea of restrained foreign policy also ties in nicely with the idea that we, as members of the church, should espouse practices and ideas that lead us to more moderation.  We are taught to exercise restraint in everything from consumption to debt to ideology.  But as Americans, we are taught to believe that the world is our playground, that we have a right to create a world, by force if necessary, where Americans are free to go anywhere they want with no restrictions at all, that everyone should love us and laud our positive influence in every region.  The reality is that we simply aren't going to make friends with everyone, there will be places Americans can't go, and we can only improve those conditions through peaceful and patient means.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are disasters.  They have cost thousands of American lives and hundreds of thousands of civilian lives.  They will end up costing in the trillions of dollars.  They have no objective end point and there is no hope of meaningful victory.  They have increased terrorism and hatred towards our country.  Our foreign policy is in the hands of people who will not likely learn from these disasters and continue to bluster about military force against Iran, Yemen, and other unfriendly countries.  We are not a country that practices a Christian foreign policy, but it isn't too late to change.

Mormons Rock

U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey

I find this bit particularly interesting:

"This survey and previous Pew Forum studies have shown that Jews and atheists/agnostics have high levels of educational attainment on average, which partially explains their performance on the religious knowledge survey. However, even after controlling for levels of education and other key demographic traits (race, age, gender and region), significant differences in religious knowledge persist among adherents of various faith traditions. Atheists/agnostics, Jews and Mormons still have the highest levels of religious knowledge, followed by evangelical Protestants, then those whose religion is nothing in particular, mainline Protestants and Catholics. Atheists/agnostics and Jews stand out for high levels of knowledge about world religions other than Christianity, though they also score at or above the national average on questions about the Bible and Christianity. Holding demographic factors constant, evangelical Protestants outperform most groups (with the exceptions of Mormons and atheists/agnostics) on questions about the Bible and Christianity, but evangelicals fare less well compared with other groups on questions about world religions such as Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism. Mormons are the highest-scoring group on questions about the Bible."

Early Mormon Cooperatives

I've been reading Building the City of God by church historians Leonard Arrington, Dean May, and (kind of) Feramorz Fox.  I wrote a post about the Law of Consecration and Stewardship here.

Not long after the saints arrived in the Great Basin, "gentile" traders and merchants arrived and started making huge money off the saints.  Brigham Young was against trading of any sort, but especially among the members.  His thought was that a man should be making something, or producing something, and that work in shops was okay for women, but not for men.  What's more, he was against the idea of a man gaining wealth at the expense of the producers.

Because members of the church were strongly discouraged from getting involved in trading, the gentile merchants had the market to themselves and became very rich at the expense of the saints.  This became very alarming to many members, who petitioned Pres. Young to allow the members to get involved in trading at a cooperative level.  At first he balked, but eventually relented.  Here is how the authors of the book describe the evolution of his thought process:

Finally, it is important that Brigham Young believed strongly in social equality.  Ideologically opposed to gradation of wealth and status among his people, he sought instinctively for a scheme that would prevent aggrandizement of a few at the expense of the many.  His opposition to the first association of Mormon traders proposed to him in 1860 was based partly upon these grounds.  He consistently encouraged the widest possible ownership of the new cooperatives, to prevent the establishment of a wealthy privileged class.  The cooperative movement was, thus, wholly consistent with his own social philosophy.

The cooperatives were set up to be community owned.  Since the Brigham City cooperative was particularly successful and well-known, we'll use it as an example.  At first the citizens of Brigham City would buy inexpensive stocks in the cooperative.  The cooperative would then purchase goods from the east or, probably more likely, from the big Salt Lake cooperative which purchased goods from the east.  The saints would buy exclusively from the cooperative, essentially running the gentiles out of business.

As the cooperative gained strength and money it would start getting involved in "home industries" such as tanneries, shoemaking, raising cattle, blacksmithing, and so on, until the community was entirely self-sufficient.  Since it was community owned, the cooperative tended not to enrich any one person above any other, and Pres. Young's quest for self-sufficiency and social equality was met.  At the end of the year big dividends were paid to members or reinvested in the cooperative.

In practice, however, there were some drawbacks.  Some of the cooperatives were funded almost exclusively by two or three big spenders.  And instead of voting by the one-man-one-vote model of some European cooperatives, they voted by one-share-one-vote, which meant that big shareholders were given big voting advantages.  Also, while the initial stocks could only be purchased by tithe-paying members of the church, there was no such restriction on their subsequent transfers, which meant that shares ended up in the hands of those not exactly operating with the same basic assumptions as tithe-paying members.

Nevertheless, the cooperatives were generally very successful:

In 1875 there appeared an apostolic circular that summarized clearly considerations that led the church into cooperation and praised its progress.  Cooperation, the leaders explained, had been a means of countering "a condition of affairs . . . which was favorable to the growth of riches in the hands of a few at the expense of the many."  Fearing that a wealthy class might arise with interests "diverse from those of the rest of the community," the church officials concluded that such an occurrence "was dangerous to our union; and, of all people, we stand most in need of union and to have our interests identical."  The ZCMI had been opposed by the wealthy and the established, but since its founding had established a solid reputation while paying substantial dividends and paying a church tithe on all its profits.

Practical considerations such as a world that is smaller and more interconnected than in the 1860s and 1870s, and members of the church being encouraged to stay where they are and build up the kingdom, make cooperatives essentially impossible.  But more fundamentally, this is a mentality that simply doesn't exist in our society today, and I don't think it really exists in the church anymore, either.  We are no longer interested in smoothing out wealth and power inequalities, and if the prophet and apostles made statement like those above today they would be branded as communists or socialists and threats to the Constitution.

In the early years of the church, however, complete social equality was an express goal of the priesthood leaders and it could still be today if we had the same will.  Joseph Smith's Law of Consecration and Stewardship was the first effort to make it happen but failed as the saints were driven from state to state.  Cooperatives were the second effort and were successful enough to lead to the United Order, which will be the next installment.