Puritans, Pilgrims, and the Taliban

Wow, it's been a while since I last wrote.  I am likely not going to be getting back to a regular schedule anytime soon, but I will be able to write occasionally.

I am a fan of Dan Carlin's podcasts, especially his show Hardcore History (a terrible name for a show, but an excellent podcast nonetheless).  The most recent episode, as of the time that I write this, is about the Anabaptist rebellion in/occupation of Munster, Germany in 1534-1535.

If you are interested in this historic episode, I strongly recommend that you listen to the episode (just click the link above).  But the thumbnail is this:  The Anabaptists were one of the early Protestant sects that arose after Martin Luther posted his list of theses.  They were far more radical than Luther himself was, and the Anabaptists gave rise to numerous sub-cultures, including several that were essentially communistic doomsday cults (yep, history is often weirder than fiction).  One such group became violent, and established a short-lived government in the German city of Munster, where they managed to hold off the local authorities for a time, while establishing a miniature totalitarian theocracy within the city itself.  They were eventually crushed by the city's Bishop (a secular as well as religious authority figure at this time in Munster), and the leaders of the rebellion put to death in a rather horrific manner (though one that won't surprise students of Medieval history).

This story has echoes throughout Europe.  In England, Protestant sects gained power under Oliver Cromwell, and established an authoritarian theocracy in England (though, to be fair, many would have considered the deposed-then-executed Charles I's monarchy to be authoritarian as well, and arguably also a theocracy as Charles I was also the head of the Church of England), and then near-genocidal campaigns against Catholics in Scotland and Ireland.  Under Oliver Cromwell (the Lord Protector, a role different than, though in ways comparable to, the king), England became hostile to things such as drama, dancing, etc.  In fact, the attitude of the government under Cromwell towards the arts and entertainments is rather reminiscent of Afghanistan under the Taliban**.

Comparable stories played out across Europe, with Protestant sects rising, and committing acts of violence, including ones that we would now consider terrorism in England, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and on and on and on.

These stories fascinated me, but they do not surprise me.  They might, however, surprise many contemporary people in the United States.

There is a commonly held belief here in the U.S. that Middle Eastern violence and world-wide terrorism is a product of beliefs and ideals unique to Islam.  Islam, this belief holds, is unusual among the Abrahamic religions* in its advocation of violence.  Therefore, it is the only of these three religions that produces violence on the strength of the religion itself.  Sure, there have been evil/violent people who claimed to be Christian or Jewish, but they just used religion as an excuse to do what they were going to do anyway.  Islam actually causes the violence!

People who hold this opinion are thoroughly ignorant of history.

In part, the ignorance is willful.  People rarely want to acknowledge that the club to which they claim membership can produce bad seeds.  As a result, Christians tend to deny the role of religion in the European wars of the 16th through 18th centuries, but they are hardly alone.  Members of most ideologies that have produced violence tend to deny that the ideology produced said violence.  

In part, it's the fault of those of us who deal with the past professionally.  We have a hard time grappling with ideology, and as a result, tend to look for other causes for violence, when ideology may be the cause.  As is summed up by historian R. J. Knecht in his book The French Wars of Religion, 1559-1598:

Many people nowadays attach little importance to religion.  Consequently, they find it difficult to believe that it played a major part in the civil wars that tore France apart in the late sixteenth century.  They look for other reasons: political, economic and social.  Religion, they argue, was merely a 'cloak' used by the great aristocratic families to give respectability to their ruthless pursuit of power.  But the sixteenth century was not the twentieth: religion did rule the lives of thinking people...  

...even today religion can move people to action, as is daily demonstrated in the Middle East and India...Material interests, including brutal power-hunger and greed, were certainly present in the French Wars of Religion, but religion was also crucially important.

Although Knecht focuses on religion, it is not unique.  Any sort of totalizing ideology - a belief system that claims to encompass either everything, or at least everything that matters for living in the world - is capable of producing the zealotry and hysteria necessary to create violence.  Religious violence is nothing new, likely having been with us from a very early in our time in our history as a species, but is has at times been joined by other ideologies as a source of violence - witness the anarchist bombings of the 19th and early 20th centuries, for example.

We know that Christianity is capable of the same types of violence as modern militant Islam not because Christianity shares many ideological underpinnings with Islam (though it does), but because Christianity has produced precisely the same sort of sectarian violence, political and social oppression, and acts of terrorism in the past.  Christianity still has the potential, and a theocratic undercurrent still breathes and seethes and seeks power (look up the Dominionist movements).  The story that we often hear is that Christianity gave rise to the Enlightenment (or, if the commentator dislikes the science and necessity of doubt that came with the Enlightenment, they will try to claim that Christianity is the source of the parts of the Enlightenment that the commentator likes).  The truth, though, is that Christianity was muzzled by commerce and politics, beginning in the Netherlands during the Renaissance, where city officials and business interests realized that persecution of religious minorities could be bad for profits.  The more peaceful Christianity that we know today is a product of historic de-fanging, a religion that has been molded by social currents and mores, as much as (if not more than) it has influenced the social currents and mores.

The rise of ideological authoritarian states has happened many times before...and it sure as hell will happen again.  While religion is typically the cause (being the most common potentially authoritarian ideology among humans), it can also occur with non-religious ideologies (noteworthy 20th Century examples include Nazi Germany, the rise of the U.S.S.R., and Cambodia under Pol Pot).  Similarly, the rise of ideological violence and terrorism is also nothing new.  Essentially, all that is required is for some group to conclude that they know they absolute truth, and believe that they, therefore, have the right to impose that truth on everyone else.

But we need to not be ignorant of history.  We need to acknowledge that while the technologies and means used by ideological zealots may change, their presence seems a constant.  We need to acknowledge that our own religions and political ideologies could, potentially, lead to chaos and violence - in part we need to acknowledge this to keep ourselves humble and not demonize our opponents, and in part we need to do so in order to prevent our own creeds from becoming the enemies that we loathe.




*Worth noting: many people who hold this belief would leave out the Abrahamic religion part, as many people who believe this are so thoroughly ignorant of Islam that they are unaware that it shares a good deal with Judaism and Christianity.

**Monty Python produced a funny and informative song about the English civil war:



...or, if you have a bit of a different set of tastes, I will happily recommend Mark Steele's version to you:




***Though I would note that their own actions were a result of the overall form of communism to which they adhered, where atheism was a part, but not in any way the whole.  In much the same way, while most people are loathe to admit it, Protestant Christianity (specifically Lutheranism) was a part of Nazism, but it was in no way the whole of Nazism.

Why I Hate Election Years

Okay, I know, I haven't been writing much lately, and much of my writing hasn't been about archaeology...and this post will continue that.

It's getting nearer the election, and I am sicker and sicker not of the campaigns, but of my fellow voters.  It is a rare person that I see who is not either buying into the notion that their side (be it Republican or Democrat) has presented a messianic figure who wills ave us all...or, alternatively, that the "other side's" candidate is so reprehensibly evil that it will destroy the nation if they win the election.

If you believe either of these, then you have bought into delusion.  The truly insidious problems in our government at the moment - financial corruption, lack of transparency, a willingness to pander for votes with nonsensical policy - are not only endemic to both major political parties, but are well on display in the campaigns and records of both candidates.  That most people think that it is only the "other side" that is really, truly, unforgivably guilty is an indication of the fact that most people have insulated themselves from harsh reality - if you get much of your news from the Huffington Post, the Tea Party News, Mother Jones, Fox News, or any other such ideologically/partisan-driven outlet, then you no doubt consider yourself well-informed, but you are actually woefully and poisonously misinformed.

Both candidates are fairly standard politicians.  Romney shows signs of being a better manager (he has demonstrated extensive administrative skills), Obama of being a better leader (he is capable of inspiring and getting people to join a cause) - both are skills that a president needs in equal measure (indeed, in many governments they are split between two separate offices), and the fact that each seems to hold more of one than the other only commends that person in the eyes of those who value one more, and that is an arbitrary judgement given the degree to which both shows skills and shortcomings.  Each candidate has their deficits - Obama is willing to compromise on things where he should stand and fight, and stands and fights on things where he should compromise.  Romney's own record contrasted with his current rhetoric indicates a candidate willing to say or do whatever is needed to win the election, leaving it difficult to know what he would do in office.  Both are perfectly willing to exaggerate, lie, and obfuscate...but this is standard in current politics and shouldn't surprise us*, though it should disgust us.

There are real differences between the candidates, to be certain.  For example: Obama is more likely to support civil rights legislation to help gay people, Romney is more likely to support the privatization of many government functions.  Whether you consider these good or bad, they do show actual differences, but the differences are not as stark as most people want to think that they are.

But for most of us, in our day-to-day lives, which one is in office is unlikely to be the huge difference that we think.  Contrary to what his supporters seem to think. Romney is unlikely to actually try to repeal the recent health care law (indeed, once he seized the nomination, he began back-pedaling on many of his previous statements).  Obama is not going to take measures to shoot tax rates through the roof (indeed, even if he wanted to - and he doesn't - he'd have to get through congress).  In fact, for most of us, our lives changed little when Obama took over from Bush, and that was a much larger change in personalities and records than Obama-to-Romney would be.

And yet, most people are convinced that the election (or re-election) of one or the other of these two men would be apocalyptic.

It won't be.  The issues of corruption and government secrecy would continue no matter which of them is in office (they are both parts of parties that support the status quo, contrary to their rhetoric, and even the president would, again, have to go through congress to make any real changes...and I don't see that happening regardless of who wins).

One of the more irritating aspects to this, however, is that everyone that I know who demonizes the other side or glorifies their own also tends to talk about how sick they are of the "polarization of politics" and how "the extremists seem to have the power!"

The problem is that, to the degree that there is truth to this, it's in large part due to the fact that so many people are willing to delude themselves into seeing these huge, world-shaking differences that aren't really there...and then pass those claims on to others.  Part of this comes from media fragmentation - yeah, if you are using the sites/channels/publications listed above as significant news sources, you are not only deluding yourself, you are also feeding the monster of partisanship and polarization - and part of it comes from the fact that we have been treating our politics like sports for some time - consider that you are angry with a referee when he makes a fair call against your team and think him wise when he makes a bad call in favor of your team...we do the same thing with politics, ignoring the fair criticisms of our favored candidates, and accepting as true even the most deranged criticism of "the other guy."

Every day, on Facebook, in conversations, in the comments on news stories, and so on, I see people uncritically accepting bizarre claims about one of these two, sometimes based on mis-quotes/selective quotes from speeches, and other time just plain made-up shit: No, Obama is not trying to prevent overseas soldiers from voting; no, Romney does not think that corporations should have all of the rights of an individual; no, Obama does not think that business owners are lazy people who didn't achieve anything; no, Romney is not going to seek criminalization of homosexuality; no, Obama didn't apologize to terrorists; no Romney is not seeking to destroy the Middle class; and so on and so forth.

When you accept these claims and forward them on, you are feeding the polarization.  It's like an arsonist bitching about all of the fires in his neighborhood.  If you do this, I don't want to hear you complain about it.

You know what would help?  How about accepting that both candidates are human - both have their flaws, both have their strengths, neither is evil incarnate, neither is out to destroy the nation or world.  If you still choose to support or oppose one or the other, that's fine, but do so for reasons based in reality, not rhetoric.  If you find that both of them turn you off, vote for a third party - I know, I know, "it's a wasted vote" but it really isn't - when third party candidates get a significant number of votes - even if they don't win the office - it causes the major parties to pay attention and see what they might want to change in reaction.  Moreover, the reason that third=party candidates don't win is, quite simply, because so many people are convinced that they "have to" vote for one of the two major parties - but you don't have to.  If you vote for a third party and convince other people to follow suit, you can help to make some changes.

Regardless, at the very least, accept that the candidates are neither evil nor angelic, and stop with the bullshit.






*One of the more irritating things I keep seeing - people from each side sharing claims about the "lies of the other side", all the while ignoring that their side can be fairly accused of exactly the same sort of thing, and many of the things cited as lies in these claims are debatable.

Thinking About Guns

So, after the recent shootings, we have people once again screaming at each other over the legality of firearms.  While debate over issues such as this are healthy, much of what gets thrown about is hyperbole and vitriol, and as such it is just typical stupid politics. As there is alot of shouting and many people whop think that they have well-thought out positions, when they are actually just having knee-jerk reactions covered up by barely coherent figleaf justifications, this annoys me...and if it were likely to lead to any real policy changes, they would probably be bad policy cased on emotional over-reaction and vitriol more than on actual facts.

Before I get into the meat of this entry, I want to tell you where I stand on this issue, so that you will understand my own interests and biases:

As a legal matter, the 2nd amendment is vague regarding actual gun rights.  Yes, I know, you are certain that it states flat-out that the right to keep and bear arms must not be infrigned, or perhaps you are certain that it states that only a well-regulated militia should keep arms.  Go read the damn thing - see the placement of that comma?  That actually makes the phrasing vague.  And in legal terms, the phrasing being vague means that the law itself is vague.  Grow up and deal with the fact that interpreting the amendment is not a clear-cut matter.  If you believe otherwise, then you are reading what you want the text to say, but not what it actually says.

However, I am one of those people who thinks that, in cases where phrasing is vague, the law should be interpreted in the way that people are given a greater degree of freedom vis-a-vis the law. So, I am of the opinion that the 2nd amendment should be read as allowing relatively broad gun ownership rights to the average citizen. 

However, whatever my view of the law, I am myself not a lover of guns.  I do not own guns.  I do not like guns.  I will not have a gun brought into my home.  Unlike many people involved in this shouting match, I am mature enough to understand that people can have a legal right to something without me personally wanting to exercise that right. 

While I strongly dislike guns, I do like many people who themselves like guns. I have known enough gun owners to realize that the notion of the "gun nut" is mostly fiction.  Yeah, there are a few scary firearm owners out there, but my experience is that they are abnormalities and, frankly, the gun owners that I know do not scare me.  They are generally responsible, safety-minded, and not a threat to me or anyone else.

So, my position: I dislike guns, but they should be legal, most gun owners don't bother me and I even really respect the safety-mindedness of most of them, and I am of the mind that most of the vitriol regarding gun control is political nonsense either pushing or opposing an agenda that is calculated to motivate voters rather than forward policy.

Okay, on with the entry...

Much of what the people in favor of weapon bans worry about is dubious or just plain wrong (in other words, it's bullshit): firearm violence is actually much less common than it was even as recently as the 1990s, despite a growing population, and most of what is committed is gang-related and not likely amenable to control using standard gun control measures; most gun violence is committed not with "assault weapons*" but with hand guns; when one compares rates of gun ownership to number of gun homicides, while there is a relationship between the number of firearms and the number of homicides, it isn't exactly the tightest correlation around; events in Europe have demonstrated that mass-killings are not unique to the United States; and when one looks at the numbers and the spread of firearm violence around the world, the inescapable conclusion is that these massacre shootings are both abberations away from trends involving firearms and are not unique to the U.S., though that goes against much popular opinion.

At the same time, people who are opposed to gun control measures are known to spew their own particular brand of bullshit.  While there are incidents where the possession of firearms by the general public has assisted in ending violent attacks, there are many cases where the use of a gun against an assailant is most likely to have increased the body count (consider the logistics of people firing back at the Aurora, Colorado gunman in a crowded theater - the body count can only have gone up if people fired back), so the usual claim of "more guns = less deaths" isn't necessarilly true; while the precise ratio is open to debate, the data does show that firearms in the home are far more likely to result in death or injury due to mis-use or accident than to be successfully used in self defense (indeed, I myself once had a gun pulled on me by a family member who mistakenly thought that I was a burgular - and for the record, I was in a bedroom with the door closed and a light on light on and not skulking about a dark house sneaking up on people); and comparisons often used in rhetoric championed by the NRA is often completely absurd; for example, comparing gun deaths to automobile deaths - an automobile is built for transportation, and as dangerous as it can be, its principle purpose is to transport people and goods; a gun is a weapon, it is designed specifically to kill or injure either a human or an animal [in the case of hunting rifles] - these are not at all the same things and comparing them is mind-bendingly stupid.  Similarly, the phrase "guns don't kill, people do" is as sophomoric and half-witted a slogan as one can have - the tools available influence people's decisions, and that guns make killing easier and more prone to quick impulses can not be ignored.  The tools influence the people just as people use the tools.


But here's the rub.  Both sides are partially wrong, but tend to act as if they are entirely right.  The end result, both have taken up office space in a house of cards. Most people probably don't have a particularly strong view on this subject, but of those who do, there is a polarization into increasingly irrational camps, and advocation of positions that often make little sense.

If there is going to be any meaningful steps taken towards curbing gun violence, they will need to account for the legal realities of gun ownership within the United States, they will have to account for the culture of gun ownership, they will have to account for the real facts of self defense vs. accidental gun deaths, and they will have to be based on the real nature of gun violence - both the truth regarding it's prevalence (ignoring media panic) and regarding how guns play into it (ignoring the NRA's slogans). 

Until and unless we are able to ignore the noise, admit that "my side" can by wrong, and look at the truth of the matter, we shouldn't expect to make any progress regarding gun violence.




*The more time I spend around people who are into guns, the more I come to realize that the term "assault rifle" or "assault weapon" means very little in a technical sense, and as such isn't very useful in actually understanding the issues.

Thinking About Politics and Cultural Identity

In reading more about what occurred in Norway last week, it becomes clear that, whatever else was going on in Anders Behring Breivik's mind, he seemed focused on a notion of cultural/ethnic purity, obsessed with being a cultural Christian (meaning that he didn't necessarily believe in the supernatural claims of the religion, but did feel a connection to the church and the ethical code claimed by the church) and was obsessed with Europe expelling the Muslims - referring in his writings to the previous expulsions in the 11th and 15th centuries*. It would probably be best to describe his views as politically right-wing with religious overtones, and not "religious fundamentalist" as is often described.

Common in many right-wing political ideologies - especially in Europe but present in a slightly muted form in the U.S. - is an idea of an allegedly threatened ethnic white/European/Christian (which of the three is used depends on the individual) identity. The reality is, of course, that ethnicity and religion are fluid and are changing. Rather than give support to the belief that this means that they are somehow "under attack" as so many of these people claim, it is simply a statement of the realities of human history.

In the late 19th and early 20th century, before we heard of a Muslim threat to some sort of pan-European identity, we heard about German threats to French identity, Russian threats to German identity, etc. etc. Ethnicity was conceived of more narrowly, and an Italian was generally believed to be fundamentally different than a Briton. Over time, and especially after WWII (when this nationality=ethnicity view was most strongly espoused by the Nazi regime), this mellowed so that there is no a recognition of nationality and cultural differences between, say, Italy and Sweden, but it is not necessarily viewed as an ethnic difference. So, in the sense that all are considered to be of a "white European" ethnicity, or even more narrowly as regional ethnicities, the definition of European ethnicity has still changed dramatically from what it was as late as the 1940s.

Even if you are going to go the route of trying to define ethnicities as the regionally-centered complex of genetic frequencies (that is a group of people from a given area who have a higher statistical likelihood of having particular genetic traits - such as skin tone, hair color, etc.), you are still stuck trying to attach a concrete label to something that is fluid and constantly changing. If one reads the Greek or Roman accounts of western Asia, you see descriptions of people who sound as if they would be more at home in other parts of the world - tribes of red-headed middle-Easterners, blond Asian Tribesmen, etc. The reality is that many of these people belonged to groups that migrated into Europe or North Africa, or (less often) were so thoroughly crushed by the Greeks or Romans or Persians that there were few left to carry on their lineage. We are left with this notion that the genetic groupings we now see in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East or not the same as the ones that were present 1,000 or 2,000 or 3,000 years ago. They have shifted, changed, re-arranged.

Basically, no matter how you try to define ethnicity, an honest person is forced to admit that it is fluid.

What, then, of cultural identity? Many of the right-wing folks, especially here in the United States, don't talk in terms of ethnicity, but rather of cultural identity - it's okay for people to come from the outside so long as they adopt our ways, language, mode of dress, etc. etc. Isn't cultural identity under attack by allowing people to become part of our society without becoming acculturated**? There is alot to be said for the necessity of integration - where a person new to a society learns how to negotiate and contribute to that society (this requires that the receiving society allow them to integrate and that the emigrant be willing to integrate, so it's a two-way street) - but acculturation is the abandonment of one's cultural heritage in order to adopt the cultural identity of the new place wholesale...which even people who are actively trying to do it never actually seem to manage. The reality is that people move - they migrate between nations and regions within nations - and they bring their own cultural traits and ideas with them when they do. This does change the cultural identity of a region, make no doubt. But, contrary to what many people claim, this is not an assault on the existing cultural identity, which itself is nothing other than an accumulation of other such changes and additions over time. This is one of the major processes by which cultures work and change, and it has been since our early ancestors began to develop what we would understand as culture.

I don't want to get all kum-ba-yah on you. This process is not always easy, and historically has often been violent, though it is also often peaceful. But the notion that we will preserve some ethnic or cultural identity in perpetuity is absurd in the extreme. Humans never have, and even the attempt to do so itself causes changes in ethnic and cultural identity. We will change, no matter how we try to fight it. The question is, can we decide to do so in ways that benefit us?






*It should be noted that while these are often referred to as the Muslim expulsions, other groups, including the Jews, were also pushed out of various European countries during these episodes.

**Many people will use the term "integration" when they should be saying acculturation. Integration implies that the individual becomes a part of the broader society without fully shedding their previous identity - so, they learn the local language, customs, laws, etc., but they don't need to dress differently or stop speaking their native language altogether. Much of what you hear from people such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, etc. is that they want people to "integrate" by completely abandoning their previous cultural identity rather than modifying for their present circumstances, which isn't actually integration.

Insanity or Belief?

In a departure from the usual archaeology nonsense, I just wanted to write briefly about last week's events in Norway. When news of the bombing and shootings initially broke out, many people believed that it was Muslim terrorists - unfortunately there is precedence for this assumption not only from 2001, but from both before and after that. However, it soon turned out that the bomber/shooter was neither Muslim nor Arab, but is a Norwegian who identifies himself as a Christian. And the attacks were prompted by his belief that Muslims were taking over his country - a commonly held belief amongst right-wing political circles in Europe, and increasingly in the U.S. as well.

Much of the talk went from discussing how the attacks were clearly the work of "Islamic extremists" to discussing how the actual terrorist "is simply a madman." But the fact of the matter is that nobody who I have heard dismiss him as a "madman" has actually bothered to see if there's been a psychiatric assessment done of the man. People who were perfectly comfortable blaming the attacks not on insanity but on Islam are now loathe to admit that the attacks could have been the work of anything other than a sick mind. As afar as I can tell, the reason for wanting to consider him a madman has less to do with any actual assessment of his mental health than with the fact that the political/religious views on which he acted are shared by many people in both Europe and the United States, and nobody who holds similar views or beliefs wants to admit that they might lead to violence (in this sense, they are no different than the Muslims I have met who want to insist that Al Queada is not an Islamic organization - just because it's not the religion as you practice it doesn't mean that it isn't the religion).

The man may, in fact, be insane. I don't know, and neither do any of the people who I have spoken with. He may also, however, simply be acting on political and religious views* that are held by many, but not held quite dearly enough for them to carry them through to their logical conclusion. Whether we like it or not, this is not necessarily insanity, it may simply be the well-known power of beliefs to shut off our ability to empathize with other people, and to see them as less than human. We saw it in the creation of Japanese internment camps during WWII, in less violent ways with the passage of Proposition 8 here in California, and with the bloodshed that accompanied the Soviet Revolution in Russia. While each of these was very different in a number of ways, in each case, political or religious beliefs served to make some group of people less human, less worthy of rights or respect, and deserving of mistreatment - whether simply the denial of legal rights and creation of slanderous claims all the way up to violent acts perpetrated against them.

Every belief system has the ability to do this. Whether or not this man was insane, his actions did not require insanity, just fervent belief.







*One interesting thing about his religious views, as shown in his own writing, is that they don't seem to be straight-forward Christian so much as a weird mix of Christianity, latter-day Nordic paganism, and supernatural justification for political views. So, there is another narrative also forming that this man is a right-wing Christian terrorist...the "right wing" part is probably correct, but the "Christian" part is much more complicated.

Arizona Shootings and Jumping to Conclusions

You have likely heard about Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords having been the target of a shooting that also left six other victims dead including Federal Judge John Roll and a 9-year old girl. The Congresswoman is in the hospital, not in good shape, but may pull through. In the immediate aftermath, there has been much made about the fact that the congresswoman is a Democrat in a state in which the Tea Party holds a good deal of sway, that the apparent shooter posted politically-oriented videos online (though it should be noted that he apparently also produced a number in which he ranted about grammar for no apparent reason), and this has led to people, including the local sheriff, arguing that the increasingly toxic and divorced-from-reality political rhetoric in the U.S. has been a factor in the shooting.

I understand why people are feeling this way, but I think they're looking for an answer that doesn't exist. While the current nature of political rhetoric is toxic to us as a nation, based on what I have read, I rather sincerely doubt that it had all that much to do with this particular crime. What little information has been released on the shooter (or, I suppose I should say shooting suspect, as he has not yet been convicted), Jared Loughner, indicates that while he would go off on rants similar in nature and content to what one hears from many Tea Party members, he is likely mentally ill. Perhaps political rhetoric directed him in a way that he would not have otherwise gone, and perhaps it did not. At this point, all of the shouting about the role that Fox News and right-wing talk radio played in the crime is premature*. We know little about this individual, and less about his motives.

Still, the narrative seems to be forming: the right-wing radio and television networks are dangerous, and must be stopped before they kill again! I have heard it repeated, and it might become part of the mythology surrounding this shooting. Interestingly, the only outlet that seems to be stepping back and placing trying to actually make sense of this ahead of sensationalistic finger pointing or making counter-recriminations is the allegedly "hard-left" National Public Radio.

I am reminded of the Columbine shootings. In the days following the shootings, we heard about how the shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, were loners, how they had been taunted and picked on and ostracized, how they were members of a group of students known as the "trench coast mafia" and part of the Goth scene, how their interest in role-playing games such as Vampire: The Masquerade led to their nihilistic view of life, and how their enjoyment of the music of Marylin Manson fueled their sense of rage. If you ask most people about this shooting, you will hear some or all of this repeated as fact, and even most journalists who covered the event now remember these details.

But none of it was true. The two had a close circle of friends and were not ostracized. Their taste in music and entertainment was not what early media reports claimed. They were not members of the Goth sub-culture. The "trenchcoat mafia" had long since graduated before these two went on their attack. They may have been occasional victims of bullies, but neither seems to have been the main target of anyone (and there may be some reason to think that Harris was a bully). One book, Columbine argues that Harris appears to have been a sociopath, and Klebold so desperate for the approval of Harris that he was ready to go along with what the other wanted. The narrative is wrong, it was based on supposition and a need to find something, anything to blame.

And it seems that the same thing is now happening in Arizona.

Did rhetoric and the frankly abhorrent claims spewed by people such as Hannity, Limbaugh, and O-Reilly play a role in the shooting? Perhaps, but we simply don't know yet. Was the shooting a part of an actual political assassination? It's possible, such things do happen, but, again, we don't have any real information and claiming that it is when information is lacking says more about the beliefs of the claimant than the motives of the criminal. When one is confronted with the, frankly, anti-reality, demonizing, fear-mongering, and vitriolic statements put forward by much of the political punditry, it is perfectly understandable that we want to blame them, and there have even been those who have warned that this sort of rhetoric would eventually lead to pointless violence. So, I understand the urge, but the fact remains that there is little evidence.

There is an on-going investigation, and part of the investigation is focusing ont he question of whether there was a conspiracy and if the crime had political motives. But until the investigation concludes and the prosecution begins to make public it's case, we should avoid coming to any conclusions. We know little about the shooter himself, and even less about whether or not other people were involved in the shooting. This could be little more than a mentally ill man acting out of insanity, or it could be something that reflects poorly on where our national politics are headed, or it could be something else entirely. We simply don't know much right now, and to claim that we do is an act of ignorance.





*And on the off-chance that you think I'm taking the side of the pundits, try looking through some of the other entries on thei blog in which I discuss the media or politics - I have no love for these people, but that doesn't mean that I am willing to blame them for a crime rather than look for the real cause.

Divine Rights, Ancient Mythology, and Modern Politics

Earlier today, I was listening to an interview with Jeff Sharlet, a journalist who has been writing extensively about the semi-secret sectarian political organization known as the Family. As I listened to the interview I was, as I always am when I hear discussions about this group, by the way in which this organization embodies two things that I remember well from my academic training. The first is historical, the second is anthropological. I'll write about the historical one today, and the anthropological one in the next week or so.

For those unfamiliar with it, the Family began as a religious organization dedicated to recruiting powerful individuals, especially politicians, in order to advance a political agenda that included union-busting and an advancement of lassies-fare free-market economics. It had this agenda because it's founder, one Abraham Vereide, claimed that Christ came to him in a vision and announced that the Christian churches of the world had it all wrong, and that Christians should not be ministering to the poor and downtrodden, but rather to the wealthy and powerful so that the wealthy and powerful could re-shape society into a more Christian mold, thus (allegedly) improving society for everyone. Mind you, by "improving society for everyone," what the leadership of the Family actually means is that they wish to force everyone to obey their own particular interpretation of Christianity, and as this group is both very power-friendly and has a strong current of anti-Catholicism (which they manage to keep under wraps for the most part), their vision of Christianity is likely one that not even most hard-right-wing Christians would recognize.

The organization has traditionally focused on economics, but has recently begun adopting many of the causes of the modern religious right (anti-abortion and anti-homosexual politics), and then running with them. And it has long reached outside the U.S. in its search for powerful men to whom it wishes to minister. It was tied in to U.S. Support for the regime that led to Somalia's current problems, and more recently it has backed Ugandan politicians wishing to push for the death penalty for homosexuals*.

The rationale given for the backing of these sorts of disgusting individuals is that the Family holds that the New Testament is a document not about the things most of us think about - hope, faith, tolerance, etc. - but rather a document about power. David Coe, the current leader of the Family, will often say that those 20th Century men who most understood the Gospel were Hitler, Stalin, and Mao Tse Tung. He will immediately follow this up by saying that he believes these men to have been evil, and that their policies were reprehensible, but that their rise to power represents that they understood, and that they rose to power because God wanted them there and they are therefore God's representatives on Earth.

And this brings us to the historical concept that this reminded me of - the family's core philosophy is nothing other than a modern re-packaging of the concept of the divine right of kings.

The divine right is a mythological construct, it is a model that seeks to make sense of the condition of the world by reference to the supernatural: if God controls all, then nobody can reach a position of power unless God wants them to do so. Since God controls all, anyone in a position of power, therefore, is there to carry out God's will.** Although it reached its apex with the Medieval Period, it was nothing new even then, and there is archaeological evidence that this sort of belief has been around for as long as humans have had permanent social stratification (so, for at least the last 10,000 years or so).

This concept began to be eroded in the west with the rise of a middle class during the late Medieval and early Renaissance periods - even the Magna Carta, though preserving an aristocratic social order, helped to ease this out of the way. Governmental changes in northern Europe during the Renaissance introduced new, non-monarchic models, damaging the divine right concept even further. By the late 18th century, it was struck a fatal (though slow) blow by the rejection of monarchies in what would become the United States and in France (though France reinstated a monarchy, and an empire with Napoleon Bonaparte, before too terribly long).

By the dawn of the 20th century, royalty was becoming obsolete, and by the middle of the century, even powerful countries that retained a monarchy (such as the United Kingdom) either relegated their monarchs to largely ceremonial roles or greatly diminished the monarch's power and influence.

And so, here in the early 21st Century United States the notion that anyone is divinely appointed rather than being selected based on merit seems weird and un-natural. However, this belief is itself the creation of a modern mythology about American meritocracy (the actual rode to power in the modern U.S.A. is paved with many different materials, merit only one of them, and sometimes a minor one).

Regardless, the idea that those in power, whether there through inheritance, conquest, or election, are chosen by God is a natural consequence of the belief that God is all-powerful. That even most religious people in the western world today don't recognize this speaks to the fact that most people don't really think through the propositions that they claim to believe to their conclusions. In some believers, such a belief can actually be beneficial to social cohesion after political upsets ("well, I voted for McSmarty, but McBrainy won, such is the will of God, and I suppose I'd better work to make things good under McBrainy"), but as is shown by the rather odd alliances formed by the Family, and by pretty much all of Medieval history, this can also be a destructive force in that it provides a way for those who support despots to persuade themselves that they are doing what is good and right.

The Family's activities are, at any right, proof that ideas that most of us had thought dead with the end of the chastity belt as a fashion accesory are in fact alive and well. Perhaps it's simply a permanent part of humanity's cultural landscape.






* Listen to the interview for further information, and while you're at it, write to the White House and your elected representatives and let them know that you oppose these sorts of human rights abuses. Uganda is dependent on U.S. assistance in a number of ways, and as such, we can do some good here.

** A similar idea underlies the trial by combat: clearly you can not win a fight unless God wants you to win it, so whoever wins a fight must be on the side of God's righteousness and therefore should be the winner of a trial.

Street Corner Politics

I was out on my usual lunch-time walk when a kid (well, he was in his early 20’s, anyway) with bad teeth approached me, and said “…….”

“Huh?” I inquired.

“……..”

I stood, puzzled for a moment, wondering what he was trying to say. And then I had an idea, “Wait, let me remove my earphones.”

“Hi. CanIhaveamomentofyourtimetotalkwithyouabouttheDemocraticNationalCommitteeandtheirplantogetthiscountrybackontherighttrack?”

I stared at him blankly for a moment, and then suavely responded “The whatwiththewhowiththehow?”

“The Democratic National Committee – you can help them put the country back on the right track!”

Now, I am not a Republican. In fact, I will likely vote against the Republicans in the upcoming election (not specifically against McCain, though I suppose that that will be what the ballot looks like, but against the Republican party). But the fact that I am lucid enough to see the Republican party for the pack of imbeciles that they are doesn’t mean that I think that the Democrats are much better. Ironically, the only thing that makes the Democrats even marginally better is that they don’t have a strong enough leadership to make a large portion of them capable of the partisan denial of reality in unison the way that the Republican party does – instead, you get a cacophony of smaller semi-partisan denials of reality, meaning a less cohesive set of delusions that does a little bit less harm than a more coherent set of delusions. In other words, their one saving grace is their inept leadership, not exactly where you want to pin your hopes for the future.

So, while I don’t dislike the Democratic party as much as the Republican party, it seems to me that the notion that they are somehow going to get us on the “right track” is wholly laughable. In fact, anyone who thinks that any political party will get the country on the right track really oughta’ up their medications. The very nature of political parties seems to draw people who are more interested in reinforcing their own pre-existing notions (or in buying wholesale into someone else’s) and getting “one of our own” into a position of power by whatever means necessary than in actually, you know, solving problems by actually looking dispassionately at potential solutions. Yeah, I know, this isn’t always how it works out, or even always how it has been, but it sure seems to be the way they function in the contemporary U.S.

So, I looked at the fellow, and I asked “what makes you think that the Democratic National Committee is going to help matters?”

“Well, they can’t do any worse than the current administration.”

“Agreed. However, aren’t both parties screwing matters up, aren’t they both part of the problem? I mean, think about it, don’t they both tend to serve as little more than echo chambers that result in the same partisan rants ricocheting about and never really seeing solutions? Hell, isn’t that also what happens in the smaller parties – I mean, have you ever tried having a discussion with a Green or Libertarian about economics and the environment?” Or at least, I remember that being what I said. In reality it was probably less articulate, and may have involved me drooling on myself.

“Well, all that we have now is two parties, so that’s where we need to solve out problems.”

Okay, this attitude irritates me no end. The reason why we only have two parties is because large numbers of people, including large numbers of people who like neither of them, will only vote for these two because they don’t want to “waste a vote” – and as a result, two parties that are far more interested in partisan bickering and pushing agendas that have more to do with beating the other party than serving the nation are locked into place as the ruling parties in a country that is supposed to have no ruling party. In other words, these parties will not solve our problems – they ARE our problems. Actually, no, we the voters are the problem, because we put these people into power.

It’s really the prisoner’s dilemma writ large. Do you vote for the lesser evil (or, as I tend to think of it, AGAINST the greater evil) hoping to keep the worst possible scenario from happening? Or do you vote for someone else, knowing full well that they won’t get elected because everyone else is either voting for the lesser evil or delusional enough to think that their party is not a mess? Regardless, the solution is not to be found in the two parties, it is to be found by breaking free from the two party system. However, the fact that many people, including this young yutz, have resigned themselves to the two party system means that we probably won’t break free. We are, in all likelihood, thoroughly screwed in the long-term because our reliance on partisanship rather than critical thinking is spiraling us farther and farther away from reality*.

I just looked at him and said, “kid, the fact that we have only the two parties IS the problem, and that being the case, I fail to see how either party is going to solve the problem.”

He gave me his best you’re part of the problem, apathetic voter look, and said “well, have a good day” with as much venom as could be put into those words.

But I am not an apathetic voter. I am a very concerned citizen, I try to be aware of what is going on around me and around the world, and I try to vote as best I can based on this information. In fact, it seems to me to be the height of apathy to simply trust in a party and assume that they will solve everything. Passion riding on apathy’s back, who’d have thought?



*yes, yes, I tend to over-use the word “reality”, but whatcha’gonna’do?

Fagan on the Daily Show

So, first, take a look at this - one of my former instructors from graduate school is speaking with John Stewart:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=164181&title=brian-fagan

(I tried to embed it, but it wouldn't take, so just go to the website)

Okay, so I have to say that it is very odd to see Brian talking and being relatively calm. He was always very excitable in class and when we'd talk to him in the halls or his office. That being said, look at the expression on his face when he talks about "water mountains" - he's clearly fascinated and enjoying himself. When people say, as the Graham Hancocks and other nutjobs on the planet tend to, that archaeologists "want to make everything boring", they are clearly talking out of their asses. Brian is clearly fascinated, as are his colleagues (myself among them). This isn't boring, it's amazing.


Now, funny Brian Fagan story...

When I was in graduate school, I attended the Society for American Archaeology conferences every year. One year we were in Milwaukee, and I attended one of the evening "meet n' greet" type functions. I walked into the room and saw a crowd of young women gathered around...something. Thinking little of it, I went to grab a snack from the snack table, and heard a British voice call out "Armstrong, haul your sorry carcass over here!" Lo and behold, the young women were all gathered around Brian.

Well, I walked over, and before I could say "Hi, Brian, what's shakin' the bacon, Homeskilet?" he had grabbed me, pulled me to the center of the crowd, and was stating loudly -

"Ladies, you are very fortunate. Let me introduce Matthew Armstrong! He is a brilliant archaeologist, and is clearly one of our rising stars!"

Not sure what else to say, I sheepishly said "well, It remains to be seen..."

"Nonsense, man." Brian then waved his hand to take in the crowd around us, "ladies, expect big things from this man. You are fortunate to be meeting him now, for he is brilliant!"

"Uhh, well, let's see if I can get a job before we start talking about my magnificence..."

"Fair enough. Well, I bid you all a good night."

And with that, he headed out the door and made good his escape.

So, there are two things I learned this night:

1. Brian Fagan has groupies

2. Brian Fagan is rather shy and likes to distract attention away from himself

And so, I am one of the few people I know of who can honestly say that Brian Fagan, perhaps the best known archaeologist currently living, tried to impress women on his behalf.

I rock!


One more bit o' info: Brian's nickname for me is "software salesman." Probably because I used to work in marketing for the tech industry.