#Hashbrowns

Okay, so I will periodically see sensible liberal people who should otherwise know better usually mostly joking say “Let Texas and the other southern states secede again. We’ll be better off without them. Can’t we just kick them out” etc etc.
You probably already know it if you thought about it seriously but even the Reddest of Red States roughly a third of the population is liberal enough to, for example, Vote for Obama in 2008. They would not be happy under your new Texas Baptist Theocracy or whatever you have.
Fun fact: the US population currently is roughly equal to that of India in 1947, when the Partition took place. During the partition of India, chunks of the previous country were carved off into what would eventually become Bangladesh and Pakistan, both officially Muslim, while the main body of the nation was more officially rendered a Hindu state. If you happened to be a Muslim in Mumbai, or a Hindu in Punjab, your government and new neighbors had a sudden vested interest in you leaving in a hurry.
The ensuing riots whilst everyone trying (forced) to move from the suddenly Hindu country to the Muslim one and vice versa resulted in mass kidnappings and rapes, and half a million fatalities (some sources estimate as high as a million.) and this was a “peaceful secession.”

My point is this: Not even as a joke. Bleach this fucking concept from your skull. We can have all the rhetoric we like about hating republicans, democrats and whatever else you like, but ultimately, our real options are peaceful dialog with the knowledge that while smug asshole conservatives will sometimes pass on those traits to their children, some will break, and in far greater numbers than the children of liberals becoming Free Republic waterboys. The weight of history is on our side, as unsatisfying as that might be, and half-baked schemes like this would do little to free us from the thuggery of conservatives, and indeed would strengthen the hand of those odious ideologies by concentrating them into their own fiefdoms where dissent is met not with apathetic shrugs from those in power establishing irrelevant “free speech zones” but with actual proper authoritarian’s long term prison sentences or executions.

Because we were slaves to pharoah in Egypt.

This is the question asked and answered, at the heart of the seder, the observation of Passover. It is central to Jewish identity in a way not often considered. Normally, when pressed for a Jewish identity statement, the resulting answer is the Shema. To be certain, the Shema (translated “Hear me, Israel, the Lord is our god, and the Lord is one.”) which is about as close to a credo statement as is presented in Judaism. But it defines little about who we worship, only a simple declaration that we do. So who is this god we announce so boldly? The god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob?

He is the god who brought us out of Egyptian Bondage to be our god. In deference to this, we shall have no other gods before him. This is the first law handed down at Sinai. If our jewish identity was simply one of filial piety, surely this god could have easily cited his presence as the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But he establishes this tone. That because of this supreme act of liberation, we owe our gratitude. That this is an ongoing blessing, as we are commanded to remember this liberation just as if we had personally been freed.

But the lesson seems lost. This is what our god did for us, but that is all. Here’s the thing: it probably didn’t happen. Or if it did, in a woefully misreported form. Our god is not a man of flesh and blood to whom we shall drink a toast for the favor of manumission. If there is no entity to express gratitude to, if there is no true facts to the story, then what is the point?

Metaphors can be layered and complex, but this is not. Our god is the very act of liberation, which is our obligation to provide as we might, and aid in any way we can. Eretz Mitzrayim is not a physical country on the banks of the river Nile, but any nation, any power, that is used for ill, to oppress and destroy. Slavery, oppression and apartheid are the Pharoah’s soldiers, and we are to fight them, no matter which Pharoah commands them. Even if it is an otherwise charming man. Even if the Pharoah weilds this oppression for our benefit at the expense of others.

We must embrace the spirit of the season and call for change. We must fight the forces of State terror in word and deed. It is a long, slow process. It is our 40 years in the desert.

But next year, in Jerusalem.

The Romans turned their lives upside down, with lords becoming slaves and vice versa. There was food and drink and song, and at the end of the festivities, everyone felt renewed for the coming year.

The Germans marked Midwinter with a feast; taking their fill of food and drink and song, and at the end of the festivities, everyone felt renewed, as they knew spring approached.

The Biblical story of Jesus is most likely a temporal transplant, celebrated in the wrong season for his actual birth, but giving a fine excuse to gather and enjoy food, drink and song.

We Jews celebrate a time we killed a bunch of Greeks for bossing us around (as good a reason as any) with, you might have guessed, food, drink and song.

When the wind whips the bones, and the nights swell past their customary borders, life becomes bitter. But humans are social animals, and we do so love to share our misery. So we drink and laugh and eat and sing and enjoy the company of others, because that’s the true meaning of any of the Solstice Holidays: to share our winter misery to lessen it, and to enjoy time with our loved ones. The story of Jesus in the manger or Amaterasu in the cave or Odin driving at the head of a furious legion of undead warriors on a Wild Hunt or just a bunch of Jewish Terrorists kicking the shit out of some foreigners are the instance of the holiday, not the substance.

Merry Midwinter, friends. Whatever your excuse, I’ll gladly grant you my brandy, tea, sweetbreads and company.

Just grant us peace.

What is our obligation to nations that we have done harm? For decades, in the name of democracy, we have propped up dictators, for their violent opposition to communism, even overthrowing democratically elected leftist governments. What do we owe these people? Clearly we owe them our support, and an attempt to make things right. But how do we do this?

Do we oust the brutal thugs our own government installed and propped up? We have a military that dwarfs all others. We have the biggest hammer. These nails deserve hammering down. There are dissidents in these nations, some already rising up. If we ask, they will ask for more and more support for their incursions against the powerful. Which makes our obligation to refuse military force all the more teeth grating.

The Neo-Conservative Impulse, that if we have power, we should use it, is understandable. We want to make amends, using the military that supported the monsters feels apropos. But the consequences of exercising supreme force are more complicated than the superhero fantasy would inform us. We could use our unconscionably expensive military to support the Arab Spring, which would only begin to make up for our sins. But we cannot predict consequences. Rather than risking doing harm, we should do nothing. Oppression is not the same mechanism as a mugging. In using force, we are not Superman, swooping in to save the Kitty Genovese’s of the third world. Initiating force is instead responding to violence by triggering upheaval and destruction, like a natural disaster, and we can only hope that our Hurricane of Earthquakes will kill those that do evil, and few others. But others will die.

So what shall we do? Shall we wash our hands, fall into isolationism, acting only out of the sociopathy of “national interest?” Clearly no. But our action requires a light touch; Education, information, aid. Since Vietnam, thinking on military victory have included two components. The ground war, and the war for hearts and minds. This second war is the only one worth fighting. And we do not spend our resources on it well.

First we came for the landless, and we spoke up for them, because the suffering of the poor among us is the suffering of all.

Then we came for the enslaved, and we spoke up for them, because no man has the right to own another man.

Then we came for the the immigrant, and we spoke up for them, because we are the land of opportunity, where all can build a new life.

Then we came for the women, and we spoke up for them, because gender does not determine value.

Then we came for the people of color, and we spoke up for them, because there remained issues of the past which had not been resolved.

Then we came for the homosexuals, and we spoke up for them, because love is a virtue to be honored and cherished.

And so we have come for all: the rich and poor, man and woman, all races, all creeds, all identities.

And so we will continue to come for our brothers and sisters. Where ever there are chains, inequities, and hatred, we will speak and we will fight. There are voices that align against this, saying they enjoy the status quo, that raising others to their elevated status in fact diminishes them. Or that we cannot change the world.

On this last point, they are right. The world needs improvement. It will always need improvement. It will ever be enough.  And so, we will come to the aid of those that need, forever. Equality moves at the speed of Zeno’s Paradox. We can, and must, walk those infinite steps.

Stand up, speak out, and keep walking. For Liberty, Equality, and Brotherhood. Until the end.

In ancient Rome, among the bloodsports of the Arena, there existed classes of Gladiators. Enemies were paired off based on balancing strengths and weaknesses, or for the sake of quasi-reenactments. Two of the more common types, the Hoplimachus and the Thraex, were based on Greek and Tracian soldiers, using their arms and armor of the same style. These would be pitted against gladiators representing Romans, and the audience could vicariously live out the thrill of these prior conquests.

Every time we load up Call of Duty to re-battle the German Army, we engage the same behavior. the Modern Warfare series, portraying fictional conflicts with modern enemies, indulges the same cultural chauvinism without having to first win a war against that foe.

I refer you to this little tidbit wherein we celebrate our recent military history.

The attachment of the notoriously corrupt band of murderers makes this more uniquely vile, but the problems presented here arise industry wide. And this industry is symptomatic of the most vulgarly Roman Imperial habits of our nation. Of course we are superior. We won the war. Even wars we lost, we won. Just ask us. And so we collect these victories, and live in the nostalgia, celebrating our history of violence.

Francois Truffaut said “There is no such thing as an anti-war movie.” The same is true of video games, but perhaps to an even heightened intensity. Games thrive on shallow conflict. Not only is a war glamorized, it is mandatory.

Rapture people, I totally feel for you. You really don’t need anyone making fun of you.

Normally, I’d be inclined to sanctimoniousness in the face of being completely right about something, especially something where you are telling me to my face that you are better than me, and that for this reason I deserve to die horribly at the hands of Satan himself.

But that’s not where you are right now. Right now, far more important to you that I and the countless others like me were right was that you were wrong. Something you believed, really and truly, with all your heart, was false. You had accepted it on faith. Some of you took dramatic steps acting on this certainty you had for the end of your mortal life; emptying bank accounts, quitting jobs, in some cases giving away or putting down family pets. There’s another set of people who go through the same actions: Suicides.

You have lived your life with the meaning hinging on what you were certain would be this one day and now that’s gone, leaving nothing but a hole. You’ve endured an absolute disappointment. For this, you have my sympathy.

Please do not go back to waiting for the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. It never arrives.