Devil vs. Deep-Blue-Sea

First I bitch and moan about the state of American politics, switching back and forth between the view that we are in thrall to a bunch of low-lifes with tribalistic instincts kissing up to corporate bosses, and the view that America is a perfectly functioning democracy - and that's the problem: we get the government we ask for. Then I swing to the other extreme and turn on all my friends who see things from the same perspective and lecture them on the importance of not turning things over to those on the dark side. Don't forget we have some very decent and capable people working in politics, I say. Think Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, and don't give up the ship.

Then I swing back again, agonize over the thought that we have not been able to rid ourselves of this Trump cult and the charlatan may actually run again in 2024 and win. The Republicans have sold their souls to the devil and the democrats don't want to do what appears to be necessary - act like Republicans, compromise their values, find a strong leader to herd the cats they are by necessity as free(er) thinkers. And, to jump metaphors mid-stream, make their clammy hands into fists.

But how?

How do we manage that?

I've been following the German election, as the small handful of friends who have followed me lately know, and when asked to explain that semi-obsession I tell them it's because I tend to hold German politicians in higher regard. Maybe that's because the average German voter is better-informed and their history motivates them to work a tad harder at democracy. Or maybe it's because they're better at calling stupid stupid, and it's harder for the likes of a Ted Cruz or an Andrew Clyde (that bozo from Georgia who pronounced the January 6 insurrection a "normal tourist visit") to get traction.

What's refreshing about the political debate in Germany is that it sometimes veers off into remarkably serious territory when you least expect it. Like on the Markus Lanz talk show recently when a conservative CDU supporter laid into a leftie Left Party leader, admonishing her to remember hers is the party derived from the East German Social Unity Party that ran East Germany, built the wall, turned the whole country into spies, etc. etc. Whereupon she turned on the guy and said, in effect, "And yours is the party that absorbed all the old Nazis into it after the war, helping them get away with murder scot free, so there ain't no way I'm going to take my lessons on history and morality from the likes of you." Something like that.  That's her words as seen through an American lens; she was far more civil. But that's essentially what she said.

And speaking of viewing German politics through an American lens, that, it turns out, is a pretty good reason for taking the time to study the German political scene. You can see the conflict between the progressives and the conservatives unencumbered by distractions like all-hat-and-no-cattle Texas bullshitter Cruz. Or the road-kill slick of Lyndsey Graham, whose loyalties - and moral values - can turn on a dime.

I have an awful feeling in the pit of my stomach that the alarmists are right when it comes to climate change. Can't prove it. Don't have the technical expertise. It's just a fear, probably over-the-line irrational, but it gets confirmed from all directions, so I can't let it go. I love, absolutely love, the State of California. It has been my home since I first discovered it back in 1963 and vowed to move here one day. Which I did in 1965 and despite 24 years in Japan and more time in Germany and Saudi Arabia, I never stopped calling it home. And now I watch it burst into flames every summer. I also watch Germany flood and Antarctica melt, and I'm scared for the future. I won't be around but I am blessed with a life full of lovable children and my heart aches for them. I am profoundly drawn to the environmental goals of Greta Thunberg and her "Fridays for future" and the world's various "Green" parties.

Because the Union Parties, the conservatives now bidding farewell to a leader, Angela Merkel, so impressive that they actually call her "Mommy" (Mutti), are more focused on wealth generation than climate change, they used the fear of communism as a campaign strategy by just such moves as that attempt to smear the Left spokesperson (Katja Kipping is her name) on the Markus Lanz program with the evils of the East German regime, dismissing her assertions that "The Left" have done a bang-up job of clearing out the rot in their midst and starting fresh, thank you very much, and don't lecture me....

Armin Laschet, the CDU leader who just came in second, rode hard on his Social Democratic Party opponent, Olaf Scholz, for not clearly stating he would not work with the Left Party, which has a "remove Germany from NATO" policy in its program. Scholz refused to take the bait, said policy issues would be worked out post-election when it came time for negotiations over which coalition would rule. But it's clear the left and right division could be defined by what in America gets labeled socialism (which Americans can't distinguish from communism much of the time) on the one hand and capitalism on the other. It also draws the line clearly between environment-first and economy-first advocates. If you listen carefully, both are actually saying both/and, not either/or, but the average German listener, I'm guessing (if I'm not projecting too much America-think on them) likely hears either/or.

The conservative argument makes sense. Christian Lindner is probably its most effective spokesman. He represents the "yellow" party - the Free Democrats, Germany's sometimes socially liberal, usually libertarian party. It's his view, and he's quite explicit about it, that Germany is good at technology and innovation, and we ought not to sell ourselves short; we can meet the carbon reduction and other environmentalist goals better, he says, by not threatening the economy with high taxes, as the left wants to do, but by encouraging innovation.

Never mind that that was one of Angela Merkel's weak points. She was all about economy, because that's what most people, especially those with more money, want - continued economic well-being, protecting the German car industry, for example, and removing much impetus for innovation in doing so. The FDP and the CDU see pretty much eye-to-eye on that issue. "You will never get your green goals unless you have the people behind you," you will hear the CDU and FDP charge, the implication being if you try and tax the rich you'll fall flat on your ass. I can certainly see the appeal of this line of reasoning, but I also can't sublimate my suspicion that for all its appearance of rational common sense, it has the scent of bullshit.

That's my point. That's what listening to the Germans make their points from the left and the right, free of the fog we in America have to contend with, does for me. Brings home the fact that we are dependent on expertise. And it's not just enough to say we should listen to scientists. Of course we should listen to scientists. But which ones? And what do we do with the political realists that say we have to persuade people to follow us, that we cannot do it without broad support? What if the masses are missing the very important claim that we are at the edge of catastrophe and fussing over economic policies at a time like this is shuffling chairs on the Titanic?

I am buffeted personally by friends who argue for leaving the fray to tend their gardens, listen to their music, read their escapist novels. And by others who suggest that democracy, which depends on an enlightened electorate, is probably on the rocks, that it was never more than a pipe dream anyway.

And by people who try to convince me that life is never anything more than a faith journey to begin with, that I should listen to my own advice and live by the wise men and the elephant story, that we never know as much about the big picture as we think we do. Maybe the optimists need to be given a hearing. Maybe the Christian Lindners are right and the engineers of the future will solve our environmental problems.

I really let the know-nothings get to me, those folks conditioned by religion to believe that faith equals wisdom. I hate it when people tell me that God answers prayer, that the folks at Auschwitz simply had a spell of bad luck. Or when if I just close my eyes and tap my red slippers together three times I can get back to Kansas. Or that Trump is a smart man because he's not a politician. And that he's rich because, well, because he's rich.

I want to know how we run a democracy with so many folks tuning out and so many others slipping back into pre-modern notions of white supremacy and other clearly non-democratic ideas. It's a three-way tug-of-war between obliviousness as a value, hope as all-we've-got, and surrender Dorothy.

I'll go with hope, of course.

And maybe tomorrow I'll be more positive about the world. 

I'm sure I will.

Pretty sure.

German Elections - Part III

The German election is now over with and the results are in. Olaf Scholz got 25.7% of the votes, a huge gain for the Socialists over the last election, while Armin Laschet of the Union Parties got only 23.1% of the votes, a huge drop in support for the party ruled by Angela Merkel these past sixteen years. Peek through the windows at Socialist Party headquarters and you’ll see them popping champagne corks. Tune in to the CDU/CSU headquarters, on the other hand, and you’ll see them crying in their beer. The Socialists have won.

Right?

Wrong.

The election is over, but as I mentioned in an earlier blog, the real story is just beginning to play out, and that is how the next German government will be formed by means of painstakingly negotiated coalition building.

Remember the names of the coalitions, based on the colors assigned to the parties? We’re down to three possibilities, two coalitions and a continued partnership:

1. A Jamaica coalition: black (CDU/CSU Union Parties); Green; and Yellow (the FDP - Free Democratic Party)

2. A “Traffic Light (Ampel, in German) Coalition: Red (SPD - Socialist Party of Germany, a “social democratic” party); Yellow (FDP); Green

Since the Union and the Socialists pulled in close to the same number of votes, this means it’s all up to the Greens and the FDP (yellow) which of them they want to work with. They are now officially “kingmaker” parties. The Greens are closer to the Socialists and the FDP is closer to the Union. Something’s got to give.

Both of these would require compromises the party leaders have sworn they’d never make. The Green Party’s original raison d’etre was to save the environment, and they, along with the Socialists, want to tax the super rich in order to make that happen. The FDP is the party that represents the interests of the super rich, and their leader, Christian Lindner, is on record for having turned down a coalition before with the comment, “Rather than to govern badly, I’d rather not govern at all.” And think of them as Republicans shouting “No new taxes!”

The good news, to most German ears, is the fact that the party on the extreme left, “The Left,” is out. They got less than 5% of the votes, and will be in parliament thanks only to a peculiar rule which allows them to by-pass the 5% limit restriction because they have three “direct mandates” (which I won’t go into here). In any case they are now largely irrelevant, and their desire to pull Germany out of NATO is no longer a serious threat. At the other extreme, the AfD dropped 2.3% down to no more than 10.3% of the vote, so they too are unable to make waves. The government, whatever it turns out to be, will be a government of the middle.

The third option, a “Groko” (Grand Coalition)  would seem to be a reasonable one, with the two leading parties sharing power with their combined forces of 49.8% of the total vote. They’d need to throw a bone to somebody to get them over the 50% mark, and I have to admit I don’t know how that would work. But it’s not a serious proposition, since the government has been a Groko government for many years now, with Angela Merkel the senior partner and Olaf Scholz and the Socialists as the junior partner. They could just switch places, of course, and make Scholz the senior partner and Laschet the junior partner, except for the fact that 1) Laschet has been adamant about not wanting to play second fiddle, and 2) the huge drop in support for the Union indicates that Germans are looking for a change. Carrying on with business as usual would be a very bad idea.

So my money is on a socialist-led coalition with the Greens and the FDP - a Traffic Light coalition. But that is going to take some very powerful give-and-take negotiations. There’s huge pressure on both the greens and the FDP to put German unity ahead of party policy.

That, as we know, would never fly in America where the Republicans now openly support a right-wing power center under Trump’s influence, America be damned.  Can the Germans show they are better than that?

Midnight Mass - a Netflix streaming film review

Ever since my first serious reading of the Bible, starting with a couple of serious courses in Biblical analysis in college, half a century ago, it’s been clear to me that the kind of people who insist on calling themselves “bible-centered Christians” have almost certainly never read it carefully. It they had, they would recognize it as a story of a people rejoicing in the way their god beat the life out of their enemies, dashing their kids’ brains against the rocks, slaughtering all the men and pressing the women into sex slavery, killing young boys whose only fault was to have been born before the other children in the family, and drowning not only an Egyptian army in hot pursuit, but the entire human race, except for a single family, at one point.

The only way to read through those gruesome descriptions of sadistic punishment is to see them as wishful thinking, stuff of the imagination of a people tired of being abused and enslaved. The Old Testament writers are clearly getting back at all those people in power over them symbolically, or metaphorically. It you take them literally, they show a tribal loyalty that not only allows for savage destruction of entire villages and towns, but actually justifies genocide, rape (turning your daughters over to a mob to keep them from sodomizing your house guests), murder and enslavement. One of the greatest jokes ever perpetrated on the human race is the notion that one consults the Bible as a moral code. Sure there are passages that urge one to love one’s neighbor, to forgive one’s enemies and to sell all one has and give the income to the poor, but serious Christian folk, with precious few exceptions, recognize that as hyperbolic excess. The average Christian considers the Bible something to be read figuratively, not literally. To claim it should be read literally is to reveal to the world that you probably ought to be committed to the looney bin. Or at least that you have no clue the extent to which you're lying to yourself.

I was raised in a Christian environment, and most of the people I knew as a kid were decent folk. When you asked them about whether they really believed Lazarus was raised from the dead and Noah had two kangaroos on his ark next to two Tyrannosaurus Rex, they usually muttered that “that was a long time ago and nobody really knows what actually happened,” or “things were different then,” or “God had a different kind of relationship with the ancient Hebrews than he does with us.” Or possibly, “don’t bug me with those dumb questions.” I didn’t know anybody who was a literal fundamentalist. Those people crept into the culture (at least in my part of the country) long after I had left my small New England town.

Except the Catholics. They insisted that when the priest elevated the communion wafer and the goblet of wine they turned into the actual (sic!) body and blood of Jesus Christ. Which we were supposed to then swallow and digest. Yuck. The Lutherans of my youth hastened to inform me that Martin Luther had spotted that as some sort of science fiction, that what actually happened during Communion was that the Holy Spirit (whom we also regularly referred to as a ghost) came in, with and under the wafer and the wine. “This is my body” was not to be taken literally.

But they did. They really did, those Catholics. And they outnumbered the Protestants and the Jews among my closest friends, and I didn’t want to tell them what I really thought of that wacko notion, and held my tongue. Mostly. There were times when a “Are you out of your freakin’ mind?” may have slipped out.

And it wasn’t just the blood-drinking that I found bizarre. The prayers to Michael the Archangel that followed the mass also gave me pause. Asking him to “be our safeguard” against the “snares of the devil.” And - this part really got to me - “cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits

who wander through the world seeking the ruin of souls.” Really? You mean like trolls and leprechauns? What’s the difference between an angel and an evil spirit, by the way? And how does one spot them when one encounters them? Do only angels have wings?

I’m so very glad I tuned in the other night without bothering to read any reviews to Midnight Mass, written for Netflix by Mike Flanagan, just out this last Friday.  I figured if it was a religious program I’d find out soon enough and turn it off. It took me a couple episodes to realize it was a friggin horror flick! Not only a horror flick, but a movie about vampires. I hate horror movies, and I have never understood the appeal of ghouls and other scary creatures. The U.S. political scene is enough to keep me awake at night. I don’t need blood and gore.

But it was a mesmerizing streaming experience, one of the most gripping and engrossing films I’ve seen in ages. I’m not sure I would recommend it to everybody. I think you kind of need to have a religious background to appreciate what it’s all about. I don’t think I can come up with anything I’ve ever seen to match it. It’s a cross between a horror film and a treatise on the philosophy of religion, particularly the concepts of morality, redemption and life after death.

I hope I’m not issuing a spoiler here by saying it can also be seen, if you’ve got a perverse sense of humor, as a satire on the way Christianity as a noble pursuit has been hijacked by hypocrites and phonies with non-religious goals, as a means of acquiring power and influence, much as the Republican Party has now hijacked American democracy for similar reasons.

The story takes place on a small island thirty miles from the mainland which has been devastated by an oil spill. Most of the inhabitants have left to seek their fortunes elsewhere, leaving a small closely-knit community whose only social life seems to be centered on the local Catholic Church. When the story begins, two characters, Riley Flynn (Zach Gilford) and Erin Greene (Kate Siegel), one-time lovers, each with their own reasons for leaving, were back, Riley after serving four years in prison for killing a young girl after falling asleep at the wheel while drunk, and Erin after a troubled marriage and divorce. The central character, however, is the young priest who shows up with the information that their beloved regular priest, Monsignor Pruitt, has fallen ill on the mainland and he, Father Paul (Hamish Linklater), would be temporarily standing in. Nobody bothers to verify the information.

Three other characters play important roles in advancing the plot - the Muslim sheriff, Hassan (Rahul Kohli) - along with his son Ali (Rahul Abburi), who despite their conspicuously outsider status, are respected and liked except by Bev Keane (Samantha Sloyan), a humorless tyrant of a woman who serves as a kind of lay deaconess at the church, an out-and-out anti-Muslim bigot. She is the kind of religious zealot that Saturday Night Live’s church lady (played by Dana Carvey) is meant to satirize.

At some point miracles start happening. First a young girl in a wheelchair gets up and walks. Then an old woman with dementia suddenly becomes her younger charming self again. Riley’s father, who has suffered for years with serious back problems is suddenly pain free.

To share more of the plot line is to ruin the experience of this edge-of-your-seat performance, so I’ll stop; I’ve already said far too much about what goes on. Despite a number of glaring anomalies - the fact that the village is 100% Roman Catholic and that mass includes one old fashioned Protestant hymn after another arranged by the Newton Brothers and sung with what is clearly professional voices - does not detract one whit from the narrative. The other major “anomaly” - if that’s what it is - that should be off-putting, but isn’t - are the long treatises on religion that the characters engage in from time to time, including a defense of Islam by Hassan against Christianity. They are serious topics, and would not be out of place in religious settings - which is why I said that the story would have greater appeal among the religiously informed.

The film is a life-long project of writer/director/producer Mike Flanagan (for background, see the excellent New York Times review by Darryn King from a few days ago here.) Flanagan, who grew up on an island (Governor's Island in New York Harbor), and is clearly working out some of his struggles with alcoholism and the fear that he could kill somebody when drunk and have to live out his life with the guilt - as well as his worldview as a relapsed Catholic. Flanagan is known for his horror films like The Haunting of Hill House, based on Shirley Jackson’s novel of the same name and Dr. Sleep and The Shining by Stephen King, also of the same names. I’m still recovering from Shirley Jackson’s short story, The Lottery, which I first read many decades ago, and I couldn’t get through Stephen King’s novels on a bet, so Midnight Mass is likely to be my last horror experience for some time.

At least it doesn’t have monsters jumping out at you.

Well, maybe once or twice.