Jed I. Knight
I haven't gotten around to writing about Jeff Sharlet's The Family as soon as I'd hoped. But I remember wanting to write about one particular anecdote in it that I found very striking: its description of how Ted Haggard's devotees reacted to the revelations a few years ago about his fondness for gay sex and crystal meth. I'm sure there were some who realized that this self-righteous crap is not what it's cracked up to be--people who left in disillusionment. But for others the revelations merely reinforced their beliefs. If Ted Haggard craved hard cocks and hard drugs, it just showed how important his work for Christ was. The Devil wouldn't try that hard to tempt just anyone. So old Lucifer pulled out all of his tricks to lure Ted Haggard away from the path of righteousness. There are some people who are so anchored in their irrationality that you simply can't argue with them. And that's why I'm not a pacifist. (Of course, although I'm not a pacifist, I think nonviolent resistance is usually the best route anyway....but I'll save those musings for another entry.)
Another thing that made me stop, but the book down for a moment, and sort out my thoughts was this passage:The Christian conservatives of his day, [Rousas John] Rushdoony believed, had let themselves be bound by secularism. They railed against its tyranny but addressed themselves only to issues set aside by secularism as "moral"; the best minds of a fundamentalist generation burned themselves to furious cinders battling nothing more than naughty movies and heavy petting. Rushdoony did not believe in such skirmishes. He wanted a war, and he summoned the spirits of history to the struggle at hand.
I can't help but wonder if Rushdoony's sentiment is a glimpse into what Christian fundamentalism in America could be like if, in the U.S., fundamentalists weren't busy with their smaller battles against biology curricula, medically accurate sex education, and gay couples at senior proms. I don't see Christian fundamentalism in the U.S. as being much different than Islamic fundamentalism as it's portrayed in the mainstream media ( which has a lot of the qualities of right-wing propaganda; ergo I tend to expect distortions in favor of us and to the detriment of them). If our Ted Haggards could farm out a lot of their bigoted agendas to the state to enforce, they could focus on the larger battle--and they would likely sound a lot like those aficionados of Korans and Kalashnikovs that we get to see on TV.
On a lighter note, I went to Tucson Meet Yourself for a while this evening. I tried Somali food for the first time and really liked it. I didn't expect it to be so much like Middle Eastern food. The only African foods I've had have been Gambian and Ethiopian, and I guess I expected something like that. After eating, I saw a bunch of people gathering around a street corner in front of the Joel D. Valdez Main Library. It turned out to be a breakdancing show. I'm not sure whether it was officially a part of Tucson Meet Yourself or not, but it fit the diverse theme of Tucson Meet Yourself. The breakdancers were Korean-American and Mexican-American. And they were good enough at their dancing that for a while I could imagine that I was at a street corner in New York, ten or more years ago when I was more enamored with hip-hop culture.
I think Saul Williams captured how I feel about hip-hop today:[Hype Williams] asks me if I listen to hip-hop. I tell him that I study it, but that I cannot listen to it in most cases for the same reason I don't eat meat: I don't like how it feels in my system. I tell him that I can't listen to it because it seems to betray the hip-hop that molded me. He wants to know if I remember Public Enemy, KRS, Rakim...I tell him that I have difficulty listening to contemporary hip-hip because I can't forget.
Another thing that made me stop, but the book down for a moment, and sort out my thoughts was this passage:The Christian conservatives of his day, [Rousas John] Rushdoony believed, had let themselves be bound by secularism. They railed against its tyranny but addressed themselves only to issues set aside by secularism as "moral"; the best minds of a fundamentalist generation burned themselves to furious cinders battling nothing more than naughty movies and heavy petting. Rushdoony did not believe in such skirmishes. He wanted a war, and he summoned the spirits of history to the struggle at hand.
I can't help but wonder if Rushdoony's sentiment is a glimpse into what Christian fundamentalism in America could be like if, in the U.S., fundamentalists weren't busy with their smaller battles against biology curricula, medically accurate sex education, and gay couples at senior proms. I don't see Christian fundamentalism in the U.S. as being much different than Islamic fundamentalism as it's portrayed in the mainstream media ( which has a lot of the qualities of right-wing propaganda; ergo I tend to expect distortions in favor of us and to the detriment of them). If our Ted Haggards could farm out a lot of their bigoted agendas to the state to enforce, they could focus on the larger battle--and they would likely sound a lot like those aficionados of Korans and Kalashnikovs that we get to see on TV.
On a lighter note, I went to Tucson Meet Yourself for a while this evening. I tried Somali food for the first time and really liked it. I didn't expect it to be so much like Middle Eastern food. The only African foods I've had have been Gambian and Ethiopian, and I guess I expected something like that. After eating, I saw a bunch of people gathering around a street corner in front of the Joel D. Valdez Main Library. It turned out to be a breakdancing show. I'm not sure whether it was officially a part of Tucson Meet Yourself or not, but it fit the diverse theme of Tucson Meet Yourself. The breakdancers were Korean-American and Mexican-American. And they were good enough at their dancing that for a while I could imagine that I was at a street corner in New York, ten or more years ago when I was more enamored with hip-hop culture.
I think Saul Williams captured how I feel about hip-hop today:[Hype Williams] asks me if I listen to hip-hop. I tell him that I study it, but that I cannot listen to it in most cases for the same reason I don't eat meat: I don't like how it feels in my system. I tell him that I can't listen to it because it seems to betray the hip-hop that molded me. He wants to know if I remember Public Enemy, KRS, Rakim...I tell him that I have difficulty listening to contemporary hip-hip because I can't forget.