The NY Times magazine has a fantastic piece on the presidential race in Mexico and the left-wing candidate.

Something to consider while reading -Mexico is at the same economic stage the Spain was at when it joined the European Union. If Spain could improve rather quickly- so can Mexico.

Go read the article.

The Kid has a pretty severe fear of heights. Tall buildings and bridges make him dizzy.

I have 2 really unusual phobias. When people hear about them they are shocked that a relatively fearless girl could be afraid of something so mundane. The 2 are related though.

I am afraid of walking barefoot in grass. I can walk barefoot on just about anything else, but grass freaks me out. Even feeling it tickle my ankles when I am wearing shoes makes me squeamish. I am also afraid of swimming in water that is not in a swimming pool or Lake Tahoe (which is where I grew up mostly and is as familiar to me as my own hand ). I get freaked out by the thought of something living in the water touching my feet- like the sting rays on the Gulf Coast of Florida.

Neither of these things will send me into a panic attack, but I avoid them. I think very carefully and have to steal myself before taking a step on grass, and if it’s more than a few steps I will find another way to go, even if it’s longer or more difficult.

So Kids- Is it just me with the fucked up phobias or is there something really ridiculous that freaks you out.

First- to keep me from getting headaches trying to follow the marriage equality comments, please post all comments on the last post by DeeK: Gay Marriage and Color part II.

The rest of the posts regarding gay marriage are:
Red Queen: Veil of Ignorance
DeeK: The Left, Gay Marriage and Color
And the one that started it all (though DeeK I think has been spoiling to have this debate for months)
Red Queen: The Tyranny of the Christian Right

I am not gay, and the likelihood of my ever marrying anyone, male or female is about the same as the likelihood of Cary Grant returning from the grave to pop the question. But my ambivalence towards marriage is mine and not forced on me by legal restrictions.

I am also not Black or Latino or Asian or Arab and the chances of my race changing are even worse than the chance that I’ll ever marry the ghost of Cary Grant in a Venetian elopement.

I come to my opinions on equality using what John Rawls called “the veil of ignorance”. The idea is that when designing a just society, the only way to do it is to imagine a veil that shields you from knowing what your place in the society you create will be.

So when I say you either believe people are equal or you don’t, it is because I have used that veil. If I came into society as a Muslim, I would want to be judged on my own behavior and not automatically presumed to be a violent terrorist. If I came into society as a black man, I would want to be given the same opportunity to work that everyone else gets. If I came into society as a gay man, I would still want to be free to elope with Cary Grant to Venice. I would not want to be handicapped by “civil unions” which are not real marriages and do not provide the same benefits, like healthcare or pensions or social security or tax breaks.

I don’t believe in compromise when it comes to equal rights. I know, there’s always supposed to be a middle ground- but not when it comes to basic equality. People deserve the right to live, love, fuck, work and believe however they wish as long as their living, loving, fucking, working, and believing doesn’t impinge on someone else’s right to live, love, fuck, work or believe.

Marriage equity does not impinge on straight marriage. There is nothing about giving gays the right to marry who they want that prevents straights from marrying who they want. Nothing. But straights not allowing gays to marry does impinge on someone else’s right to live, love and fuck.

So yeah, I think it is cowardice to back away from equal rights issues because they are not politically popular. It assures us that we will end up with the worst sort of “politicians” instead of the better sort of “statesmen” because only the cowards will get pushed through.

As you all know, there is a battle going on in my backyard between the Morning Glories and the Blackberries. After what I thought were successful negotiations last summer and a quite winter, the two plants were back at it with a force this spring.

This weekend, after hostilities were no longer tolerable to peaceful neighbors, my trusty crew of rake, weedeater and I initiated UN style peacekeeping operations. The only way this was going to work was by cutting back both sides to a bare minimum. I am proud to say that after much struggle, peace has been achieved.

Alternet has an excerpt from Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism by Michelle Goldberg. It’s a strong call to arms for secular humanists and she makes some good points.

“The top three ‘gainers’ in America’s vast religious marketplace appear to be
Evangelical Christians, those describing themselves as Non-Denominational
Christians and those who profess no religion,” the survey found. (The percentage
of other religious minorities remained small, totaling less than 4 percent of
the population).

This is a recipe for polarization. As Christian nationalism becomes more militant, secularists and religious minorities will mobilize in opposition, ratcheting up the hostility. Thus we’re likely to see a shrinking middle ground, with both camps increasingly viewing each other across a chasm of mutual incomprehension and contempt.

Maybe, the loss of the middle in this context is exactly what is needed. Maybe it’s time we brought the battle to a head. I’m not one of those people that believes there is always a middle ground, there are certain things that are either true or not. If we were reduced to a country of Christian nationalism, then those of us who are fiercely agnostic or atheist would be forced to worship a religion we do not believe in. The converse is not true. If we are a country of secular humanists, then anyone can worship or not worship however they choose, but they cannot inflict their choice on someone else.

I know there are quite a few of you who are religious progressives, and my declaring that the loss of a middle ground (which would include religious progressives) may seem like I wish to discount your beliefs. I don’t and honestly, the only way you all will be able to continue being religious progressives is to side the secular humanists. It is not just us non-believers that will be forced into the tyrannical religious mold of the right, but if you have a different view of Christianity from the right wing version, you are going to be forced to practice religion in a way that goes against your beliefs.

Let me give you an example of what I mean. After reading John Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven I discovered that Mormonism is the fastest growing religion in the western hemisphere, there are now Mormons on the planet than Jews. Because of their rapid growth, and within 60 years it is expected that it will be impossible to govern the United States without the cooperation of the Mormons and the Church of Latter Day Saints. If polygamy is a central tenet in the fulfillment of Joseph Smith’s religious ideal and it was outlawed by the church only because of political pressure, then polygamy and forced marriage becoming legal is a definite possibility with an increase numbers and political influence.

In her article, Goldberg suggests that the solution is to fight the “anti-urban bias built into the structure of our democracy”. Sounds like someone read The Stranger’s Urban Archipelago article after the last presidential election and took it to heart.

The Stranger:

The Republicans have the federal government–for now. But we’ve got Seattle,
Portland, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Diego, New York City
(Bloomberg is a Republican in name only), and every college town in the country.
We’re everywhere any sane person wants to be. Let them have the shitholes, the
Oklahomas, Wyomings, and Alabamas. We’ll take Manhattan.

Goldberg:

According to Steven Hill of the Center for Voting and Democracy, the combined
populations of Montana, Wyoming, Nevada, North and South Dakota, Colorado,
Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arizona, and Alaska equal that of New York and
Massachusetts, but the former states have a total of nine more votes in the
Electoral College (as well as over five times the votes in the Senate). In
America, conservatives literally count for more.

I’m tired of conservatives counting for more. Aren’t you?

Esphyr Slobodkina (Rus. 1908-2002) Levitator 1950 oil on masonite 25″ x 35″

Actually, most of Esphyr Slobodkina’s paintings make me swoon. For mid-century abstracts, her paintings are geometric while still being loose and free. If you think of other geometric abstracts, say Mondrian’s boxes, there is rigidity that cannot be loosened every by the addition of bright colors. Slobodkina’s paintings feel more organic because of the use of muted colors and her creation of depth by layering shapes and colors is fantastic.

I love this particular piece for the strong diagonal lines. She uses an interesting trick here. T shapes usually imply stability, diagonals imply movement. Slobodkina takes a T shape and twists it into a diagonal so you have movement to each corner of the painting with a firmly anchored center.

Ruthzilla (who likes to get me drunk and make me a rock star groupie) sent me this little bit of happy.

So earlier this week we had “Organic Sex” (otherwise known and the oh holly fuck please let my period come sex topped with a layer of crunchy granola in a yogurt vat of sperm).

Then I ran across this annoying bit- The Crunchy Con Manifesto. The funny thing is, except for a few things this guy sounds like a progressive. Let’s have some fun and tear it to shreds.

1. We are conservatives who stand outside the conservative mainstream;
therefore, we can see things that matter more clearly.

Huhm- I’m gonna beg to differ on that one. Let’s wait till the end and come back to it.

2. Modern conservatism has become too focused on money, power, and the
accumulation of stuff, and insufficiently concerned with the content of our
individual and social character.

Conservatism has always been based on the continued accumulation of wealth and power- that’s the nature of conservatism. To be conservative is to approve of the power structure as it stands and to keep it that way in the future. Character is a ridiculous word thrown out by people who cannot speak to their own good acts and so use a fuzzy, non-descript word like character or morals. Everyone has character, except maybe those in a coma.

3. Big business deserves as much skepticism as big government.

Uhm- PROGRESSIVE- duh. We don’t trust big government either, but as long as we have free and fair elections at least we can fire government when it screws up. You can’t fire big business.

4. Culture is more important than politics and economics.

Culture is only more important than politics and economics when everyone has equal access to political and economic foundations. Culture becomes really unimportant when you can’t feed your family.

5. A conservatism that does not practice restraint, humility, and good
stewardship—especially of the natural world—is not fundamentally conservative.

Progressive- progressiveprogressiveve. Good stewardship of the natural world iparticularlyry and fundamentally progressive.

6. Small, Local, Old, and Particular are almost always better than Big, Global,
New, and Abstract.

How are you applying these terms? Small houses, local produce, recyled materials=Progressive McMansions, slave-labor foreign produce, new disposable Walmart products= Conservative.

Though you could look at it this way: Small-minded, local corruption, old boys club = Conservative. Big tent, global respect, netechnologieses= Progressive.

I’ve got to wonder about the inclusion of particular and abstract. I smell a little bit otoilette water. It means not making grand abstract statements like “All men are created equal”, and instead judging wich particular men are your equal, or better, or worse.

7. Beauty is more important than efficiency.

Dude, the stupid generalizations are getting silly. I need an efficient toothbrush, I could care less about how it looks if it works. I need beautiful music, I could care less about how efficiently it was produced.

8. The relentlessness of media-driven pop culture deadens our senses to
authentic truth, beauty, and wisdom.

Couldn’t agree with you more. So fund more arts programs, libraries, music programs- Progressive progressive progressive.

9. We share Russell Kirk’s conviction that “the institution most essential to
conserve is the family.”

There are 2 ways of looking at this one, depending on how you use conserve. Now progressives would agree if conserve means to protect from loss or harm. Progressives think that harm is done to families by poverty, forced pregnancy, and refusal to grant legal status to families because they do not meet “traditional” standards.

Now if conserve means to limit, then family must not be as esential an institution as you say it is. If you want to limit families, then their value to society must be small while their cost to society is great. Why elese would you want to conserve them, they aren’t an endangered species.

10. Politics and economics won’t save us; if our culture is to be saved at all, it will be by faithfully living by the Permanent Things, conserving these ancient moral truths in the choices we make in our everyday lives

Culture is the collection of beliefs, ideas and practices of a society. It is always changing to accomodate the politics and economics of the time. Culture is not, nor has it ever been, a stagnant set of rules and mores. By conserving these “Permanent Things” you are trying to put the cart before the horse. Culture follows politics and economics.