Absurdities and Atrocities

One hears, not infrequently, a remark to the effect that "one who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." It came up this very evening, as we were preparing a sermon, and we wanted to ascertain the authentic form of the the phrase.

Turns out to be a loose translation of Voltaire. He admits that there are things a person may believe by faith, and then proposes that a wise person will not "make the sacrifice of reason in the conduct of our lives." At which point, he admits:

Il y a eu des gens qui ont dit autrefois : Vous croyez des choses incompréhensibles, contradictoires, impossibles, parce que nous vous l’avons ordonné ; faites donc des choses injustes parce que nous vous l’ordonnons. Ces gens-là raisonnaient à merveille. 

Certainement qui est en droit de vous rendre absurde est en droit de vous rendre injuste. Si vous n’opposez point aux ordres de croire l’impossible l’intelligence que Dieu a mise dans votre esprit, vous ne devez point opposer aux ordres de malfaire la justice que Dieu a mise dans votre cœur. (Questions sur les Miracles, 11ieme Lettre)

In English, that is something to this effect. 

"There have been people who thought otherwise [saying]: You believe incomprehensible, contradictory, impossible things, because we have commanded you believe them; so do unjust things because we command do you now." These people reason marvelously!

Certainly, whoever has the right to make you act absurdly has the right to make you act unjustly. If you do not oppose the command to believe the impossible with the intelligence God has placed in your mind, then you ought not to oppose the command to do evil with the sense of justice God has placed in your heart.

Walter Olson credits the more familiar phrasing, about absurdities and atrocities, to Norman Lewis Torrey in Les Philosophes (1961). I cannot find it there. In any case, the translation may be loose, but it is not wrong.

How did this figure in our sermon, preached on the Fourth of July in this semi-quincentenary year. Well, we were mixing up a number of images -- Zechariah calling the Judahites "prisoners of hope;" Paul escaping Damascus in a basket; Jesus promising that his "burden" of Tarah interpretation is "lighter" than that imposed upon their disciples by the Pharisees. There may have been something in there from Philippians, as well, about our true commonwealth.

Bit of a stewpot, to be honest. But that's not the point.

I was thinking about the peculiar role of religion in American history, and in America today. In particular, I was thinking about the strange phenomenon that these days calls itself "American Evangelicalism."  The name is, of course, misleading; the people of whom I am thinking are far more deeply invested in law than in gospel, and the law in question is by no means always God's.  In fact, "American Evangelicalis" often seem to use Christian language and imagery to tell an entirely different story, one more like an ethno-nationalist Gnosticism.

But they certainly do impose absurdities upon their followers, don't they? Has there ever been a time in American history when science -- the method and the results alike -- was held in such disrepute? Flat-earthers, anti-vaxxers, and their ilk are having a field day. Never mind the measles outbreak and the soldiers sidelined by flu. In place of observation, experiment, and hypothesis, the order of the day is to proceed based upon appeals to the leader's "gut," or to the undocumented (and unexpressed) will of "the American people." Neither of these is an effective antiseptic.

Those who have begun espousing the absurdities then commit, if not outright atrocities, acts of staggering folly -- Voltaire's choses injustes. These sycophants gut the senior military leadership, shrivel the diplomatic corps, abandon the combination of soft power and military alliances that were linchpins of American influence, and on and on. All the while, they punch downward, hard, often and publicly, at the most vulnerable people they can find -- Haitians, the transgendered, pregnant women, and black voters in the South.

Most surprising is that many of the people doing these things do them in service to a man who has publicly humiliated them, personally, along with their families.  He insults their fathers and their wives, he calls them names in public, and yet they stand by, offering him and endless string of effusive compliments, as he violates the law over and over, sets criminals free in almost-certain exchange for cash, and starts an utterly pointless war with a major strategic adversary, which reveals American weakness and leaves us in a weaker tactical position afterward.

Obviously, these are difficult times for America, and especially for the ideals of the Founders.  But they are especially difficult times for classical Christianity, of the sort represented by creeds and confessions, by ecumenical dialogues and collaboration on works of mercy. The Christianity represented by, say, the World Council of Churches scarcely registers with the politicians, the press or even its own members as a vital force in public affairs. Even Roman Catholicism, barring a scandal, a schism, or a creative misappropriation of its theology by the Vice President, gets shoved to the side in the public square.

In place of anything recognizable as historic Christianity, we get the Prosperity Gospel, the New Apostolic Reformation, and Trump-as-Jesus memes. 

Perhaps I was mistaken, when I allowed that our leaders have not yet committed "atrocities." There are certainly some dead Iranian schoolchildren whose corpses argue against me. And although far less grave, I wonder whether history may not see the setting aside of Christianity and the lifting up of a vile pretender as an atrocity of its own kind.

The Morning After ... Blues

 As we write, the newsboys are standing on the corners shouting, "Wuxtry! Read all about it! Blue wave swamps billionaires' yacht! Getcha morning paper!"

Which is to say the the November 2025 election appears to be good news for the Democratic Party and correspondingly bad for the Republicans. This appearance is purely arithmetical, in the sense that it is attested by votes counted and estimated. While no doubt encouraging, it is by no means clear -- nor could it be at this preliminary stage -- that the results will actually conduce to strengthening the Democratic Party or weakening the grip of Trumpism on America.

Two of the most heralded victories of the moment, for example, are those of Zohran Mamdani in New York City and Abigail Spanberger in Virginia.  Neither of these is surprising in itself. Mamdani was the Democratic nominee in a city where Democrats enjoy a powerful historic advantage, notwithstanding the Giuliani years. Spanberger was the Democratic nominee in a state where governors must stand down after a single term, and are most often chosen from the party that does not hold the White House. (She was also running against a Black woman in the South.) So neither victory was inherently unpredictable.

The more interesting point, as pundits observed often during the campaign, is that these are two very different varieties of Democrat. New York's mayor-elect is conspicuously young for the job, at 34. Although born in Africa, he was raised in the cushiest and New-Yorkest of confines, among the Upper West Side's academic and artistic elites.  His politics certainly lean left, as reflected by his decade-long affiliation with the Democratic Socialists. He is a Muslim. Also -- and perhaps most interesting to both readers of this blog -- he worked on the unsuccessful 2017 campaign of our friend and seminary classmate, the Rev. Khader El-Yateem.

Spanberger is 12 years older than Mamdani. In matters of faith, she is something called "Protestant Unspecified," which we imagine means as religious as her constituents need her to be in the moment. Born in New Jersey but raised in Virginia, with a background in federal law enforcement and intelligence, she has cut a considerably more conservative pose. After the Dems' 2020 election losses, she famously argued that they had suffered because Republicans were able to accuse them of "socialism," as well as because of the poorly-phrased call to "defund the police." She went so far as to propose that no Democrat should ever use the word "socialist" again.

Clearly, these two Democrats are shaped differently, both by their life experience and by the constituencies they serve. While it is certainly true that America's two principal parties are by nature complex and often unwieldy coalitions, it is also fair to ask how easily these two leaders, or their respective supporters, will be able to collaborate on policy and governance.  This is not a new question; the co-existence of conservative Democrats and liberal Democrats is as old as the party. But in a time when Republicans are so very ascendant, and so very averse to be caught compromising with the other party, it will be impossible for Democrats to make headway except by working closely with each other, even when their convictions and constituencies differ deeply.

Looking for analogies on the other side of the aisle, we recall that the Paleo-Cons and Neo-Cons of old managed reasonably well despite some fundamental differences. Yes, the Tea Party was the bane of John Boehner's life, but he was also able to make common cause with them against the ACA, and even to promote the career of a TP leader.  More recently, though, there appears to be an impassible chasm between the radical Republicans aligned with President Trump and virtually the entirety of the party's old guard.  Even the late Dick Cheney, than whom few Republican leaders could be called more Republican, and whom this blog pilloried with zeal during his vice-presidency, cast his last vote for a Democrat. 

Put plainly, Republicans unwilling to endorse both Trump's extreme policies and his chaotic personal style find themselves as impotent at the moment as Democrats, if not more so. Democrats are feeling good indeed this morning, as well they might -- but their ability to continue feeling good, and above all to govern effectively, may come to depend on their ability to do what the Republicans currently cannot and do not need to: work closely even when they disagree.

A River of Joy and Peace

In one of his letters (Epist. 2:1-2,4-5,7: PL edit. [845,] 879, 881), St. Ambrose of Milan writes:

There is a stream which flows down on God's saints like a torrent. There is a rushing river giving joy to the heart that is at peace and makes for peace. Whoever has received from the fullness of this river, like John the Evangelist, like Peter and Paul, lifts up his voice. Just as the apostles lifted up their voices and preached the Gospel throughout the world, so those who drink these waters begin to preach the good news of the Lord Jesus.

May this dreary winter day (at least here in northern Virginia) be one in which you drink from the river and lift up your own voice to preach.

"One Last Hour of Serenity"

Unsurprisingly, JFK was a member of the Mile-High Club.  Also unsurprisingly, it appears very likely that he and Jackie exercised their membership during his ill-starred flight to Dallas.

So, yes, John Kennedy had sex on a plane the day before he died.

We're not quite sure why, amidst all the reflection which accompanies the fiftieth anniversary of the president's assassination, this particular fact has garnered so much attention.  Perhaps because the biographer William Manchester felt a need to report it through a gauze lens in his 1967 book The Death of a President, because you didn't talk about those things back then the way we do now.

Except, of course, that you did:  it was 1967, for pity's sake.  The Summer of Love, and "Love" is a euphemism here.  LSD, Janis Joplin and Allan Ginsburg at the Avalon Ballroom, Loving v. Virginia.  The National Organization for Women was a year old.  If you weren't talking about drugs or Viet Nam that year, you were talking about sex.

Plus, we've seen Mad Men.  So we know what it was really like.

The real reason that Manchester soft-pedaled this, as well as various other tidbits about Kennedy's sex life, is that Jackie had sued him before the book was published.  She sat for ten hours of interviews, revealing inter alia what Manchester would obliquely call "one last hour of serenity" onboard Air Force One, and then cried foul.  Manchester was ordered by the court to throw a fig leaf over his research, which cannot be removed legally until 2067.  We only know about this little incident because Manchester, now dead, spilled the beans to another biographer, Philip Nobile -- who chose this month to publish it in an appropriate venue, the New York Post.

To be honest, we aren't trying to criticize Jacqueline Kennedy for clutching at any last bit of privacy, but whatever means were available to her.  Nor do we judge Manchester, either for trying to include the racy tidbit or for passing it on to somebody else.  Anybody who has ever done serious research knows how natural it is to fall in love with your own facts, and how eager you are to show them off.

We just think it's a weird reflection both on the lasting Kennedy mystique and on American society's love-hate relationship with sex.  Is it, after all, in any way surprising that a young married couple had intimate relations?  Or that they did it on a plane, when they had the chance?  Of course not.  It would have been surprising if they hadn't.  The only surprise is that, fifty years later, there is still a hint of scandal attached to the fact.

Gnesio-Republicans?

Among Evangelicals of the Lutheran persuasion, there is a ratty old saying which regularly makes the rounds: Nihil est adiaphoron in casu confessionis et scandali.  That's the long form, attributed to Matthias Flacius Ilyricus.  More commonly, we are prone to look daggers at one another and mutter "In statu confessionis," letting the rest trail off ominously.

What we mean when we say this is, "No," to whatever has been proposed, with the implication that "If you try to make me do anything, then I am required by my faith to disagree with you about everything."   It is an incredibly stubborn position, one which virtually shuts down conversation.  And yes, it is written into our confessions of faith (e.g., SD 10).

Properly, this principle only applies in times of genuine persecution, when violence is used or threatened as a tool to suppress the Gospel.  In practice, it is thrown around somewhat more freely.  Episcopalians make the historic succession of bishops a condition of full communion?  Status confessionis!  The ELCA recognizes same-sex unions?  Status confessionis!  It is an easy knee-jerk reaction, just one of the many that earn us our reputation for stubbornness.

In statu confessionis.  These are fighting words among our tribe.  They go back to the 1540s, when -- in a somewhat quixotic effort to reunite the broken Church -- Melanchthon and some other Lutherans agreed to permit any number of ceremonies which had been cast aside by the Reformation.  They argued that, so long as the central teaching of salvation by grace was allowed to stand, ceremonies instituted by human beings ought not be allowed to divide the Church.

This seemingly reasonable position aroused immense resistance from other Evangelicals.  The resistance was, we suspect, largely emotional.  Every pastor has at some point attempted to introduce a widespread ecumenical practice into the congregation's worship, only to be told "That's too Catholic."  That's what it boils down to.

Melanchthon was abused mercilessly, as were his followers.  To this day, Lutheran folk history accuses him of "weakness" or "indecision."  In fact, he was among the finest Patristic scholars of his age, and also among the most passionate ecumenists.  Her struggled mightily to do something that Protestantism still struggles with:  articulate the role of the redeemed person's will in living a godly life.  Had he been given the respect and support he deserved, it is entirely possible that the main Reformation schisms -- not only German, but Swiss and English -- might have been healed.  But he was not.

Melanchthon's vitriolic opponents, called the Gnesio-Lutherans, may have been driven by emotion, but they also had a point.  The tentative agreements of the 1540s, called the Interims, were made under threat of violence.  If the Evangelicals did not capitulate, the result was likely to be war.  So although the Evangelical party had professed (from the preface of the Augsburg Confession forward) its deep desire to keep Western Christianity united, as well as its desire to retain the ancient polity and practices so far as they were consonant with the Gospel, it is easy to argue that the negotiations which resulted in the Interims were not made in good faith.  They were the result of coercion.

So one part of the Gnesio-Lutheran argument was that you can't negotiate with a sword pointed at you. Sound familiar?  Of course it does; this is just what President Obama said at the beginning of the present political crisis.  And it's the truth.

In that specific sense, Obama's position does echo Flacius.  And conservative critics are doing their best to argue that, like the Gnesio-Lutherans at their worst, it is the Democrats who are being needlessly stubborn.  After all, they aren't "negotiating."  Never mind that "negotiation" here means capitulation under coercion -- to an electoral minority, at that.

The ACA is a reasonably popular law -- nobody's first choice of solutions, either on the left or the right, but at least a viable compromise.  Shutting down the government is wildly unreasonable, an act of wanton destruction growing from a refusal to compromise.  Insisting that a good law be put into abeyance is bad government; shutting down the government if you don't get your way is somewhere between childish and insane.

So in fact, it is the Republicans who are acting like the dumbed-down modern version of Gnesio-Lutherans:  stubborn asses who want things their way, and will not be moved by any amount of reason.  Their fight, especially as they scale back their demands, is about preserving their image, both among themselves and among the voters.  They're like a congregation saying, "Well, chasubles are okay, but if you light incense, we'll burn the church down."

And the Democrats are like Philippists:  smarter, milder, more pragmatic.  Only this time, the Philippists are not caving.

Is the GOP Shutting Down?

Time has not permitted us to blog about the current clusterboff in the nation's capital (and, specifically, its capitol).  This does not mean we aren't following it all with interest.

We serve a congregation filled with government employees and contractors, many of them directly and personally affected by the shutdown.  We also serve in what is said to be one of the most deeply Republican counties in the state -- although a party leader has confessed to some concern that the Democrats are gaining ground recently.  We can only imagine that this trend is about to accelerate.

Because who, being in their right mind and not obsessed by ideology, would ever vote for a Republican again?

The GOP has long been perceived to be running out of time, as its core constituency of old, white men gradually loses its hegemony in American culture.  Periodic efforts to broaden its base have been half-hearted and unsuccessful.

Now, Republicans in the House have allowed themselves to be driven by their extreme fringe -- driven, that is, right over a cliff.  A month before an election, the party and its leaders have made themselves immensely unpopular. Their poll numbers have never been lower, while the President's are up ever so slightly.  Although it appears that the extremists themselves are largely safe from re-election challenges, it is hard to imagine that the party will not lose some of its clout next month, and more in the Novembers to come.

Losing favor with the electorate is bad.  What may be worse for Republicans is the possibility of losing favor with their sugar daddies in the world of business.  A recent BusinessWeek article described the growing distance between the fiery ideologues and the practical minds of the business world:

If Republican lawmakers were as responsive to business concerns as they once were, the chance of a prolonged shutdown would be slim. But that’s no longer the case. “Republicans are not the party of business anymore,” says Robert Shapiro, chairman of the economic advisory firm Sonecon. “They’re the party of antigovernment.”

 A Times article yesterday revealed just how angry the business lobby is about the shutdown.  They are losing money, and lots of it, with no end in sight.  This is, to put it cynically, not the government they paid for.

And they do put it cynically.  Here's the money quote:

“We ask them to carry our water all the time,” said one corporate sector lobbyist, who demanded anonymity in order to speak frankly about the relationship with Republicans. “But we don’t necessarily support them 100 percent of the time. And what has happened is the rise of an ideological wing that is now willing to stand up to business interests.”

It is hard to know whom to hate more in a situation like this one:  the corporate fat cats or their Congressional water-boys, who chose the wrong time to show a rebellious streak.

In a sense, America's corporate oligarchs are a little like the House of Saud.  They have sponsored the raving of ideological extremists (Tea Party, Wahabists, whatever) as a way to distract the masses from their own corruption -- and now they have to face the fact that these radicals may actually believe their own nutty rhetoric.  Worse, they are willing to act on their belief in ways that threaten to bring down their masters' cushy palaces -- along with the rest of a the country.

The GOP is divided against itself, and in danger of losing its connection to both mainstream voters and corporate money.  Meanwhile, its core constituency continues to dwindle.  How long can this go on?

The New Republic is fantasizing when it offers up a headline about "the death throes of the Republican Party."  Outright collapse, represented by a prolonged period of political impotence, seems as unlikely as Karl Rove's dream of a "durable Republican majority" ever did.  For better or worse, America is deeply in love with its two-party system, even if it does not love the parties themselves.  Voters will simply switch back and forth until they arrive at the balance that they want.  These two parties have dominated the landscape for 150 years, and it is hard to imagine they they will stop dominating it any time soon.

Of course, somebody might have said that about the dinosaurs.

The Generals Are Revolting, Part I

America's problem in the Middle East, as in so much of the rest of the world, is that our nominal friends don't share our values -- and the people who share our values are so rarely our friends.

At least on paper, our core values are individual liberty, democracy and the rule of law.  But -- because we have historically also valued things like stability, security, the oil industry and a bulwark against Communism (or latterly Islamism) -- we have often made friends with regimes that emphatically reject our core values.

There is a cost to this. The CIA has recently declassified documents which detail just how it organized the overthrow of a democratically-elected regime in Iran, and replaced it with a friendly dictator.  This meant that when our cores values manifested themselves -- when the people of Iran actually demanded democracy for themselves -- the party that came to power was and remains deeply suspicious of America's intentions.  Perhaps you've noticed.

The present turmoil in Egypt provides a brutal example.  For decades, we supported the dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak.  In exchange for billions of dollars of weapons, Mubarak suppressed the Islamists and provided a safe southern border for Israel.  We got safety and stability at the cost of liberty and democracy.

The election of Mohammad Morsi, a member of the long-banned Muslim Brotherhood, reversed the situation.  It was an expression of our core values, but came at the cost of stability and security.  Morsi's overthrow removal by the army, in a move that the US has not yet agreed to call a coup d'etat, appears to have been an attempt to regain stability at the cost of democracy.

The attempt has failed; Egypt is a mess.  Today's reports include a thousand dead, and Christian churches attacked and burned by enraged mobs.  The army can hunt down terrorists in Sinai all it wants, but there is no way that this shambolic disaster can be associated with either stability or security.

Strangely, the US is at the moment doing something wise -- largely by doing very little.  The law would not permit us to provide foreign aid if the Egyptian regime had come to power in a coup.  Therefore, we have not legally declared this coup to be a coup.  In theory, we could still cough up some money -- and in theory, we are going to.  But at the same time, both Congress and the administration have started dropping hints that we may not.  The generals, if they are paying any attention at all, are on warning.

In contrast, Saudi Arabia, Israel and the UAE have stepped up their financial commitments to the new and counter-democratic rulers of Egypt.  You could argue that their support for the new order will weaken America's clout; but for our part, we can live with a little less clout if it keeps us from surrendering our core values once again.

Roosevelt on Sheep and Shepherds

we saw this years ago, in Edwin Morris' magnificent The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt.  The blog Mountain & Prairie sources it to TR's 1885 Hunting Trips of a Ranch Man, p. 121:

Cattle-men hate sheep, because they eat the grass so close that cattle cannot live on the same ground. The sheep-herders are a morose, melancholy set of men, generally afoot, and with no companionship except that of the bleating idiots they are hired to guard. No man can associate with sheep and retain his self-respect. Intellectually a sheep is about on the lowest level of the brute creation; why the early Christians admired it, whether young or old, is to a good cattle-man always a profound mystery.

Try not to think of it as you write your Sunday sermon.  Stick to Austin Farrer, for mercy's sake.

How Are People Murdered in America?

The short answer is guns.  The long answer is handguns.

Among the loony claims floating around the Internet, you occasionally come across some variation on this one:  "More people are murdered by hands and feet [or knives, or pressure cookers] than by guns!  Check the statistics!"

We did, and that particular claim is false.

However, we can see where it comes from, and what rhetorical purpose it serves.  According to the FBI's tally of murders in the US from 2007-2011, numbers vary from year to year but the rough outline remains the same.*  In 2011, there were 12,664 murders.  Of those, 8,583 -- almost 68% -- were committed using guns.  In comparison, knives or other cutting instruments accounted for 13%, and "personal weapons" -- hands and feet, perhaps the occasional savage head-butt -- for about 6%.  (Explosives murdered 12 people in 2011, a huge increase from the previous years but still less than a tenth of a percent).

So what's going on?  The false claims start with inflammatory articles like this one, posted at the Daily Caller.  Here's the headline:

You are more likely to be killed by hands and feet than by a shotgun or rifle

It claims, more or less correctly,** that

Total murders by hands and feet in 2011 exceed the total number of murders by shotgun and rifle. Does that mean gloves and shoes need regulation because they are concealing deadly weapons? No, but it does mean that there is no need for any further regulation of long arms

You can see what happened.  The article is about long guns -- rifles, shot guns, and the much-ballyhooed "assault weapons."  And strictly on its own terms, it is accurate.  But excitable readers may fail to ask "What about handguns?"  Then they click all over the web, spreading their own misinterpretation of the story -- a misinterpretation which is all too easily come by, since the Caller article never mentions handguns.  

Here's the fact:  of those 8,583 gun murders in 2011, 6,220 -- 72% -- were committed with handguns.  In 2011, 49% of all murders in the US were committed with a single class of weapon:  handguns.  This is an extremely important fact, of which nobody should lose sight in the current debate over gun laws.  Handguns kill 8-10 times as many Americans as do rifles and shotguns.

Which means that while a ban on automatic rifles might very well make it more difficult for killers seeking mass casualties to commit their crimes, the place to begin, if we are serious about reducing the overall number of murders in our country, is with a dramatic reduction in the number of handguns.

____________________________________________________
*Note that the FBI reports murders, not deaths.  This means that cases in which a death is ruled "accidental" -- father's loaded pistol kills boy in truck; toddler shoots woman at household party, and so forth -- are not included.   
** We say "more or less" because the FBI's numbers also include several hundred "other guns" murders, and over a 1500 "firearms, type not stated."  If as few as 50 of those murders were committed with long guns, the Caller is mistaken.

George W. Bush Can Read

He mentions this surprising fact in an interview with the Dallas Morning News, which has been picked up by Politico.

In addition to being surprised that he can read, Mr Bush says, many people are surprised that he has some talent as a painter, which he describes with a little self-deprecating humor.  He makes it sound like a kind of sissy-sounding hobby that he took up in retirement only because Winston Churchill said it was okay.  (That said, we really do like his paintings of his dog).

In other news, recent polls suggest that his administration is still better-loved than Nixon's.  However, its popularity appears to be dropping retroactively.  James Buchanan had better look to his laurels.

President Goes to Church; Right Wing Freaks Out

On Easter Sunday, President Obama and his family attended St. John's Episcopal Church, in Lafayette Square.  It is, we are told, one of the churches they frequent.  The rector preached a sermon, as you might expect, and then all hell broke loose.

Hate speech!  Preaching politics instead of religion!  Does Obama ever go to a church where they talk about God, or only to the ones where they attack his political enemies?  Does the President personally inspire racist sermons?

It is apparent at a glance that the president's political foes hope, whenever he worships, that they will be able to score the sort of propaganda victory that they did during the 2008 election, when they dug up some poorly-phrased remarks by his then-pastor, Jeremiah Wright.  Have they succeeded -- and if so, have they done so fairly or unfairly?

At the moment, it is nearly impossible to say, because neither a transcript nor an audio file of the entire sermon has been released.  Sermons from St. John's are normally posted on the parish website, and we suppose this one will be as well.  (Click here to check.  By the way, his Laetare sermon is pretty good.) At this writing, however, the only document in circulation consists of notes made by the press pool.  Here it is, as posted by the Washington Times:

Highlights from the Rev. Dr. Luis Leon’s sermon:

Opened with a welcome and a joke about people who came to church just so they could tell their parents or people they’re having lunch with later that they did.

What God wants of every one of us is to believe as much as we can at a given moment … it’s all right to have doubts.

We often want things to go back to the way things used to be, before “work got difficult and faith got confused, and life got more confusing,” but when we dwell on the “if only” of life we forget that “God addresses us in the now.”

As Jesus told Mary not to hold on to the past, “You cannot go back.”

“It drives me crazy when the captains of the religious right are always calling us back … for blacks to be back in the back of the bus … for women to be back in the kitchen … for immigrants to be back on their side of the border.”

“The message of Easter is about the power of love over loveless power.”

“Easter vision” will allow you to see the whole world in a different way. “There is no injustice so insidious that there can be no truth … no war so deep that there can be no peace … no enemy so bitter that they can’t become a friend.”

“Easter vision” means recognizing reality in a new and wonderful way.

“May God bless you with Easter vision now and forever.”

The sermon was followed by the prayers of the faithful, led by Rev. Patrick Williams, which included prayers for “Barack, our president,” and for “leaders in Afghanistan, Haiti, and the Middle East.

Next on the program was “The Peace”(during which members of the congregation shake hands and greet each other with “The peace of the Lord be with you,” etc.)

This was followed by the Holy Communion (along with its accompanying collection, hymns, and recitation of The Lord’s Prayer).

Pool was able to catch a glimpse of POTUS and the First Lady taking communion.

The post-communion prayer was “Hallelujah Chorus.”

Pool was ushered out at 12:39, before the dismissal. Now outside the church waiting for the president’s exit.

A correction: It was an error to assume that the Obamas were seated in the first pew. National Journal’s George Condon has pointed out that, according to the church website, it is tradition for the president to sit in pew 54.

The transcript ends there. The pool report was filed early Sunday afternoon by Jenee Desmond-Harris of TheRoot.com, an online magazine.

Obviously, this tells us very little about the service, or about the sermon.  Was the text from Luke or John?  (We gather John, from the reference to noli me tangere, but can we be sure?)  How did Fr. Luis Leon, the preacher, handle the apparent conflicts in the Resurrection narratives?  Did he treat the Resurrection of Jesus as the fulfillment of prophecy, an eschatological foreshadowing, or a symbol of the individual soul's mystical journey from sin to forgiveness?  Nobody knows except the people who were present, and then only if they were listening.

(We do have to love this commentary in the HuffPo takeout:

A person who who attended the church service told The Huffington Post there was no audible approval or disapproval from members of the congregation when León made his remarks about the religious right

Well, obviously.  They're Episcopalians.)

In any case, the freakout is entirely concerned with the single paragraph about "captains of the religious right."  Nobody seems to care much about what "Easter vision"might be, or whether Leon danced around the matter of a bodily Resurrection.

 Republicans are, understandably, sensitive about charges of racism these days, since only about 10 African Americans voted for them in the 2012 election, since their election strategy routinely includes suppression of the black and Hispanic vote, and since one of their elders recently spoke nostalgically about the good old days when "wetbacks" picked his tomatoes.  They are sensitive, in other words, because -- despite the presence of Bobby Jindal and Marco Rubio among their stars -- they are still old and white to a degree that poses serious questions about their future as a party.

Still, that begs the question of whether their concern in this case is valid.  Was Fr. Leon out of line, and if so, then how far?

To be honest, our own experience of the Religious Right suggests that, although it is home to many strange ideas about the relationship of church and state, Islam, Judiasm, women, science and history, it is not, by the standards of American conservatism, particularly racist at all -- and for good reasons.  Notwithstanding the likes of James Cone, black churches in America lean in a theologically and socially conservative direction that is familiar and congenial to the white nondenominationals.  Both groups like their families traditional, their gays closeted, and their Bible literal.  Among mainline Protestants, it is the Southern Baptists, rather than Lutherans or Episcopalians, who have been most effective at diversifying their own pews.  Racism may be at home on the American right, but the churches are not where it dwells most naturally.

So it seems to us that Fr. Leon might have chosen his words more wisely.  A lot more wisely, and more charitably to boot.  [UPDATE:  Mother A., who was raised in the bosom of the religious right, disagrees with our analysis.  She argues that racism is so deeply ingrained in American culture, and especially the culture of the South, that it is tacitly present in the life and teaching of most right-leaning Bible Belt churches.  We're still unsure, but she does know a lot more about that world than we do.]

The second, and broader, question is whether he should have mentioned politics at all in his Easter sermon.

This is tricky.  In our polarized nation, there is no easier way to divide a congregation than to treat the pulpit as a politician's rostrum, and to take firm positions on hotly disputed questions.  On the other hand, a preacher who looks away from the real world gives a poor testimony to the Incarnation or the Biblical vision of a just and merciful society.

In other words, the dichotomy between talking about God and talking about society is false, because God has quite a bit to say about how society is ordered.  (Related note of over-the-top hypocrisy:  When First Things writers argue that religion and politics don't mix.)

Our own Easter sermon, on "Why seek ye the living," etc., included this passage:

So if you are looking for Jesus, don't stand in the cemetery, reading the gravestones.  They are beautiful and touching, but they are not where Jesus lives.  If you are looking for Jesus, look among the young people held in an Italian prison, look among the victims of war in Afghanistan.  Look for him here on Long Island, among the families that have lost their homes and their savings in a hurricane.  Look for him among migrant workers, exploited because they do not know the law, or worse because the law does not protect them.  Look for Jesus in hospitals and nursing homes and hospices, where people are suffering and struggling and maybe, just maybe, making peace with their Creator and their Judge.  In Sandy Hook or Aurora, Colorado; in the Bronx or Brooklyn, any night of the week.  Anywhere there is pain or fear, injustice or violence, oppression or tyranny; anywhere that people are held captive by their own sin or by the sins of the world around them.  That's where Jesus is, because those are his people; that's where Jesus is, because it is his power, the power of love that leads to new life, that can set them free.

This may not look as "political" as Fr. Leon's sermon,  but it helps to remember that we are preaching in an area notorious for is exploitation and outright criminal abuse of Latino farm workers.  The guilty hear their sin named, while the rest barely notice.  And please do note that we share with Leon an emphasis upon the liberating power of God's love.

And let's be serious.  How many other preachers spent some time on Sunday talking about moral questions that happen also to be matters of political dispute?  We're willing to bet that more than one Roman Catholic mentioned abortion, and that more than one nondenominational mentioned the Second Amendment.  We can't swear to this, but we'd be surprised if it were not true.  For an Episcopal priest to express concern about racism, sexism and the treatment of immigrants is hardly surprising.

Mind you, we're waiting to hear the whole sermon.  We certainly hope that Fr. Leon had more to say about Jesus than the press pool cared to report, and we do wish that his one paragraph about the the backward-looking elements of American society had been phrased more tactfully.  And, for all we know, the rest of his sermon was a rousing call to sacrifice goats to Baal.

But, barring that, it must be said that by gum, our nation has more than its share of people who want black people and women and immigrants to go back to the places they used to have.  And, by further gum, these people are missing the moral mark, and badly.  If it is not a preacher's job to identify the sin, then whose?

Dear Mr. President

Dear Mr. President,

So -- two inaugurations, two potential chaplains forced to withdraw.  Rick Warren then, Louie Giglio now.  What are you going to conclude from this?

You could, we suppose, conclude that there is a vigilant homosexual lobby that watches your every move, and pounces when it doesn't get its way.  That being the case, you'd have two choices:  defy them or placate them.  So far, you've done neither very well.

However, a likelier conclusion is that you've got some bad instincts where religion is concerned.  This seems pretty likely; your Chicago pastor was ... an oddball, even within the most liberal of American church bodies.  Your party has grown so accustomed to fighting off the Religious Right that its leaders are prone to a defensive secularism.  Many don't seem to know what to do with the fact that millions of Americans vote Democratic for reasons that are inseparable from their faith.  Actually, sir, despite the faith that clearly informs your own life, you're also one of those uneasy leaders; we all remember your dumb remark about "clinging to guns and religion."

All this being the case, we applaud your effort to find common ground with Warren and with Giglio, who shares your determination to end human trafficking.  But, as you can see, his views on one of the most divisive moral questions of the hour puts him at odds with a lot of your constituency -- and with many of your own public statements.  Frankly, as far as most of your constituents are concerned, guys like Warren and Giglio are playing for the other team.

So let's make it simple for you.  If you want to honor a minister by asking him, or her, to bless your service to our nation, how about choosing somebody from your own team?

Heaven knows you have plenty of choices.  Roman Catholicism is the traditional backbone of the Democratic Party, and -- even after all these years, and after the death of Rembert Weakland -- there are still plenty of notably left-leaning bishops.  Of course, they're no help to you with the gay thing, and may well bring their own baggage, abuse-wise.

Which leaves mainline Protestantism.  Specifically, it leaves you the "liberal" side of the mainline -- ELCA rather than Missouri Synod Lutherans, American rather than Southern Baptists, and so forth.  We get a lot of abuse these days, for being "NPR at prayer," for being less influential than we were a few decades ago, and so forth.  But there are still tens of millions of us, all together; and even though we aren't, by any means, all Democrats, we certainly have a big Democratic membership.  It's especially big among our leadership; indeed, one of the problems we have failed to address is that our pastors and denominational executives frequently lean a good deal further to the left than the people in the pews.  For us, this is a problem -- for you, it is an opportunity.

You've got plenty of Democratic-voting, poverty-fighting, gun-control-supporting ministers to choose from.  A fair number of these will also marry or ordain gay people.  As a member (at least for many years) of the UCC, the first historic American denomination to marry and ordain gay people, you might very well invite Geoffrey Black, its General Minister and Church President.  Failing that, there are the presiding bishops of two other well-known churches, Katharine Jefferts Schori and your fellow Chicagoan, Mark Hanson.  And of course, there are an almost unlimited number of politically engaged lesser clergy, some with stellar good-works cred to impress your secularist cohort.

So, yes, reaching across the aisle is a display of good faith and leadership.  We get that.  But sometimes, Mr. President, it's wisest just to dance with them that brung you.

Sincerely,
The Department of Homechurch Security

Cliff-Divers

Although he has traveled a bit in Mexico, Fr. A. has never seen the famous Acapulco cliff-divers.  He regrets this for many reasons, and is therefore delighted that Acapulco seems to be his new home.

No, we haven't taken a(nother) exotic parish call.  It seems that Acapulco has come to us, as Washington's leaders gather in conclave to work out an agreement regarding tax and spending policies.  The nation is sliding toward what Ben Bernanke once -- and the mass media ever afterward -- called "the fiscal cliff."

And while most people expect a last-minute deal to be struck, we at the Egg do not.  We think these crazy-arsed sumbitches are going to run straight over the edge.  It will be like the last scene in Thelma and Louise, which is a pretty funny way to think of  Boehner and Obama.  (Still easier to think of them that way than as than Butch and Sundance, though).

The bottom line is that we don't think either side will be able to stomach, or sell to its constituents, the level of  change that is necessary.  The modern Republican party is held together by two things: fighting  abortion and lowering taxes.  Violate either of these commitments, and a national GOP candidate is doomed.  If the Democratic party is held together by anything -- a debatable proposition -- it is by a general commitment to the ideals of the Great Society, extrapolated considerably.  On one hand, the President has no future election to contest; on the other, he needs to govern for another quadrennium. Not to mention that neither Mr Reid nor Ms Pelosi has imminent plans to retire from public life.

So, yes, many Republicans in Congress have begun to repent their vow to the pagan deity that is Grover Norquist.  But we would be surprised indeed if they were willing to do what must be done -- which, in our opinion, begins with letting the Bush tax cuts expire, continues with a return of the top marginal rate to a Reagan-era 40% or so, and continues with the destruction of another golden calf, as the last decade's massive increases in military spending are rolled sharply back.

Likewise, we'd be surprised if Democrats, despite their customary spinelessness, could bring themselves to do their bit.  Government programs need to be cut, including Medicare.  And more than a little.

Fortunately, there is a way for our fearful leaders to make all this happen, and still take no personal (or electoral) responsibility.  And that is to jump right off the damned cliff.

If they do not come to an agreement, then the policy designed by the late "supercommittee" will automatically come into force.  Taxes will go up, spending (half of it military) will come down, the the US budget will slowly begin to move toward balance.  This is called "austerity," and although it's not a particularly wise or effective policy during an economic crisis, it is the policy that the IMF and other rich-world agencies have imposed upon struggling nations for decades.  So at last we Americans get to put our money where our mouth is.

Mind you, nobody will be happy.  The faithful of both parties will cry bloody murder, and not only they.  Taxes on the middle class will go up so much -- around $2,000 for a typical family -- that people will buy less stuff, and the recession will return (or deepen, if you don't think it ever went away).  If you're jobless now, you'll more-or-less certainly be jobless in July, too.

But here's the thing:  we'll have some resolution.  The government won't be paralyzed every few months by debt-ceiling negotiations that fail anyway.  Our bonds won't keep losing value.  Everybody will lose, but posterity will (probably, maybe) win.  And the key point is that the people doing the negotiating don't have to do anything, least of all negotiate.  They can stand by their guns, keep their doctrinal purity, and still even out the spending-to-revenue balance.

Once upon a time, politics was called "the art of the possible."  In America, at least, those days seem to be gone.  Our government, particularly at the federal level, is so hopelessly divided that it seems incapable of any meaningful action.  Politics is no longer about getting things done; it is about posturing in public, and scoring points for your own party -- but it is not about making deals or, bless you, actually governing.

So, since politics has failed, we only have one alternative.  Next month, we are jumping off the cliff.  Hold on to your birettas.

Bang, Zoom!

To the moon, Alice!  To ... the ... moon!*

It seems that a Gingrich presidency was never the only pathway into space.  All along, sneaky old Barack Obama has been hiding a secret plan to send manned missions to the Moon.  Now that he's been re-elected, the rockets should start flying soon.**

According to Space.com, the President has asked NASA to prepare plans for exploration of "the expansive space around the Earth-Moon system."  This seems to mean parking a manned craft at the Lagrange point, visiting the Moon and then a near-earth asteroid -- all to get ready for the push to Mars.

Sadly, the timeline for this is a little longer than we might wish.  Think parking at L2 in 2015 or beyond, Mars in the 2030s.  Still, if they're looking for a geriatric chaplain ....

The best part of the story, though, is that these plans really were kept more-or-less secret during the campaign.  Apparently, the Republican candidate might have argued that this was a big government program.  Which it is -- the kind we like.
____________________________________________
*For the record, we can't watch the Honeymooners anymore, just because of this repeated threat of spousal violence.  How infected are we by the dread virus of liberal angst?
** Sorry, Pakistan.  We didn't mean those rockets.  Sore subject, right?

On the Rectory Lawn

A week or two back, some colleagues were discussing, via Facebook, the advisability of posting election placards on the rectory lawn.

This is, obviously, a brilliant idea.  Can there be, in a society that is deeply and artificially divided by partisan politicking, any better way to hasten the decline of the institutional church than by identifying its ministers with a particular party or, better yet, candidate?

But let us say, for the sake of argument, that one does not want to destroy the church one serves, nor render it irrelevant to 47% of the population (or 53% if you swing the other way).  And yet, despite this quaint old-fashioned style, one nonetheless believes that the Church has a role to play in the world of public affairs, to shape and inform the consciences of voters.  What to do?

There are surely thoughtful, long-term ways to do take one's proper part -- by teaching and preaching in ways that stimulate reflection on public questions without choosing sides, by inviting qualified experts on public policy to discuss their specialties with the congregation, and so forth.

But, of course, none of that can be summed up in a few words and stuck into one's lawn.

So if one really cannot resist the urge to deface a perfectly nice patch of grass with a cheaply-made disposable eyesore, here is the sort of thing we recommend:

Clear, Biblical, nonpartisan.  We have some other ideas along the same line:  "Vote Your Conscience" against a waving flag background; maybe a daring "Just Say No to Usury" or a countercultural "Render Unto Caesar."  But this is our favorite.

Malarkey

It's Irish.  Check Twitter for details.

We missed most of last night's vice-presidential debate, but we did happen to overhear one exchange, on the subject of Mitt Romney's secretive economic policy.  We aren't sure of the details, but it went roughly like this:

VOICE:  ... Are there studies showing it would do this?
PAUL RYAN:  Six!  There are six studies showing it would do this!
JOE BIDEN:  [unintelligible]
PAUL RYAN:  If you cut taxes, it will stimulate --
JOE BIDEN: [unintelligible, something about John Kennedy]
PAUL RYAN:  Ronald Reagan!

And there, friends, we have the story in a nutshell.  Postgame spin doctoring has included the GOP's contention that Biden, by interrupting Ryan, smiling a lot and chuckling from time to time, was impolite and therefore unpresidential.  The Democrats have responded that Mr Romney, in his last at-bat, was impolite -- not to the President, but to moderator Jim Lehrer.

Whatever.  The man we eventually elect as president will live, daily, in face-to-face combat with global terrorism, unreliable foreign allies, a divided Congress and an openly partisan Supreme Court.  Good manners aren't the job's primary qualification.

Nor, to be honest, is a great economic plan.  The POTUS doesn't really have that much economic power.  Most government spending is ultimately determined by Congress, and the American Congress is not famous for its bold, decisive decision-making.  Or any other kind of decision-making.  Still, it is customary for the person who actually proposes the budget, organizes the Executive Branch and appoints Federal Reserve governors to offer some token of economic competence.

This is what Ryan was talking about.  Although the details of Romney's economic plan remain unknown, there have been some educated guesses about what he might do, and projections about what might happen if he did.  As Matthew O'Brien points out at The Atlantic, these "studies" -- which include, inter alia, blog posts and Romney's own campaign white paper -- don't make a convincing case.  A couple say that Romney's plan only works if you assume magically large growth rates, and others that it only works if you ... well, change it.  (At the Times, Catherine Rampell lays the artithmetic bare.)

It looks very much as though Paul Ryan stretched the truth here, a point that only matters when we remember that Ryan already has a troubled relationship with the truth.  Remember that this is a guy who lied about his marathon time.

So we still don't know much about Mitt Romney's plan for the economy, but it sounds suspiciously like more of a substance with which Mr. Ryan is already deeply familiar:  malarkey.

"Jesus Is a Monkey"

That is the graffito spray-painted on a Christian monastery near Jerusalem recently, apparently by Jewish extremists.

A story in The Australian details "a growing series of attacks" on Christian insititutions (and sometimes Christians) in Israel, and notes that despite heavy surveillance around most of the holy sites, no arrests have been forthcoming.  This is on top of the more routine stuff -- a priest told he should expect to be spat upon in public, because "it's normal," and a politician publicly tearing a New Testament apart and throwing it in the garbage.

Now, look. We don't want to make too much of what the crazies do, because every religious community has a few.   So do irreligious communities, for that matter.  Tolerating the occasional cartoon, slur or desecration of one's holy books is part of the price we pay for free speech in pluralistic societies.

But this story does bring into relief some of our own thinking about the puzzling relationship of the United States to Israel.

Several of our friends, including inter alia a comparatively liberal cleric and a decidedly conservative soldier, have said things in conversation which seem to take for granted that the US-Israeli relationship is special and mist be preserved at all costs, and includes a strong American responsibility for the security of Israel.  We're not at all certain this is correct.

There seem to be two secular arguments in favor of this thesis:  (1) that Israel is the only democratic government in the Middle East, and deserves support from everybody who loves democracy*; and (2) that Israel is a sort of protective barrier against its unpredictable neighbors, notably Iran.  The first argument is vitiated by Israel's frequent flirtations with tyranny, especially where Palestinians are concerned.  The second seems frankly spurious; surely, America would have an easier time keeping the peace with those neighbors (Iran perhaps excepted) if its relationship with Israel were not quite so close.

In addition, however, there is a third calculus at work.  American Jews and, in far greater numbers, American fundamentalist Christians, have a devotion to Israel which springs from other sources.  This devotion is not entirely religious, especially in the case of the Jews, for whom Zionism is a complex cultural phenomenon which can be found both among the religious and among the thoroughly secular. In both cases, this devotion is zealous and reflexive.

The result is that politicians, Democrats and especially Republicans, have no choice but to toe the line.  Certainly, no man or woman can hope to be elected president who does not promise to be "a friend to Israel," with everything that suggests.  Indeed, in 2008, Hillary Clinton was pressed into service to assure nervous voters that Barack Obama would be just such a friend -- and in the weeks to come, Mitt Romney will surely make a public case that Obama has not been friendly enough.

For our part, we like Israel; one of our dearest friends lives in Tel Aviv, and we have always wanted to visit. But we aren't certain that the relationship of the US to Israel is as important as our public discourse makes it out to be.  While Fox News seemed shocked that President Obama did not take time to meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu at the UN recently, we were more troubled that he did not meet with the leaders of India and Brazil, economic powerhouses with strong democratic institutions, alliance with whom over the next few years will be a powerful counterbalance to the power of China.

We wonder how the notoriously flammable passions of America's fundie-gelical voters will react to the news that their precious Zion stands among the places in the world where Christians are routinely subjected to public persecution.

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* This is how the case is summarized -- but it is a tricky case indeed.  Other states, such as Egypt and Iran, are at least nominally democratic as well.  Of course, we all understand that their "democracies" are limited, whether by the power of the army or that of the religious establishment.  But how great a stretch is it to make the same claim about Israel (or, we suppose, many other democratic nations)?

"That's Not Bull$#!t, That's the Math"

As a newcomer to  these shores -- we've only been stateside for a month or so -- we haven't had much to say about the coming presidential election.  Apparently, the Democrats are running the same guy they ran last time, which suggests a lack of imagination.  The Republicans, on the other hand, are displaying immense creativity, by running a guy they actively dislike.  We knew that their strategy involved suppressing voter turnout; we just didn't realize that this included their own voters.

Anyway.  Having proven that he will insult our allies abroad, Governor Romney recently set his sights on the enemy at home, meaning the 47% of the electorate which wouldn't vote for him if he were the last 50s TV dad on earth.

We really have nothing to contribute to the discussion which has ensued; we are just relieved that nobody has mentioned the massive tax exemption historically granted to our own employer and its cognate organizations.  It is one thing to lash out at those money-grubbing farmers, deployed soldiers, senior citizens, and milk-addicted schoolchildren.  But it will be a sad day indeed when the GOP's talking heads feel called to lead a charge against America's fat-cat churches.

As we said, though, we are a stranger in these parts, with nothing much to say on the matter.  Perhaps that's just the way these crazy Americans do it, right?  Fortunately, Jon Stewart has no such hesitance.  Here (courtesy of Gawker) are the two parts of his brilliant little video essay, "Chaos on Bull$#!t Mountain."

Part One lays out the defense of Romney by his friends at Fox News -- basically, a combination of "It's true" and "He didn't mean it."  Part Two, the far more brilliant segment, shares both some facts and a heaping spoonful of righteous indignation.  (If time is short, watch Part Two.)

Romney: Racist, Tax Dodger, or Just a Cheapskate?

Two recent developments in the Romney campaign bear watching:

1.  His recent trip abroad was, according to Politico's Roger Simon, "a disaster wrapped in a debacle inside a calamity."  The allegations of racism from Palestinians are probably par for the course in Middle Eastern politics, but our favorite moment was when, after Mitt visited Warsaw's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, his press secretary kept reporters at bay by shouting a loose paraphrase of Exodus 3:5: "Kiss my ass!  This is a holy place!"  (Perhaps this is the Mormon version).

2.  Harry Reid now claims to have heard from "an extremely credible source" that Romney hasn't paid income taxes in a decade.  After promising to look into the matter, the Romney campaign quickly announced that it would have no further comment.  This story raises two noteworthy questions:

(a)  Is it true?  The campaign's promise of silence almost certainly means that it is. This raises the possibility that the wealthiest man to ever run for president pays lower taxes than, say, a single mom from Peoria.  As Reid say, the super-wealthy have mastered the art of hiding their money, and a story like this one drives home the vast difference between the lives and values of of the haves and have-nots.  We can expect to hear John Kerry's underrated line about "Benedict Arnold corporations" recycled to "Benedict Arnold plutocrats."

(b)  What's the source?  Romney's campaign has suggested that Reid's informant is, ultimately, the white House.  If true, that raises some serious questions about the use of government agencies for partisan politicking, and virtually guarantees that heads will roll in the executive branch.  But there is also speculation that the informant is inside the Romney campaign and, specifically, inside the LDS movement, to which both Reid and Romney belong.  Remember that the Mormons are notably strict about tithing.  If Romney has been using the same tricks to shortchange his church that he uses to avoid the taxman, it is entirely possible that a  fellow-Mormon might be righteously offended and looking for justice.

Support Mitt Romney!

That, you might think, would be the message the GOP was spreading among its faithful.  Right?  Wouldn't you think they'd build up to November by telling us what great guy Romney is:  devoted family man, business whiz, years of government experience, all that sort of thing.  Sure, they might soft-pedal the whole Massachusetts health-care thing, not to mention the dog on the roof rack, but there are lots of other things they could say about Mitt.  Surely more than just, "He won the primaries, so I guess -- ho, hum -- he's our candidate."

Yeah, you'd think.

Instead, when asked by a Republican voter to "make me fall in love" with Romney, John Boehner's answer was "No," adding "I wasn't elected to play God."  Apparently, it would take God to make the Republican base passionate about their presidential candidate.

Meanwhile, Rupert Murdoch tweeted that unless he ditches all his old-time friends and advisors, Romney can't win, and the Wall Street Journal started picking on Romney for talking about the economy.  And for riding jet-skis, which apparently prove he's rich and out-of-touch.

Obviously, we now live in Freaky Funhouse Mirror World, the place where Sinead O'Connor was elected Pope and John Mason Neale used to tour with the Masonettes.  Does nobody remember Ronald Reagan's Eleventh Commandment?

Fortunately, there is Gawker guest columnist "Mobuto Sese Seko," no Republican by any means, who comes rushing to Mitt's defense, reminding us that plenty of rednecks own jet-skis.  Of course, he then proceeds to destroy both Romney and his Republican critics, in one of the funniest attack screeds we've read in a while.  (Bill Kristol is "avidly wrong about things with a compulsion we usually associate with drug addiction;" Romeny himself is "Chauncey Gardiner in reverse ... a smart man who keeps saying profoundly stupid things.")  Still, at least Mobuto's trying to help out.

Anyway: we'd fully expected that, as the election year heated up, Romney would get slapped around a little.  We just thought it wouldn't be by his own team.