There was little holiday cheer to see at the Vatican on Monday.
In his latest surprising move, Pope Francis critiqued the cardinals, bishops and priests who comprise the bureaucracy that serves him. During his annual Christmas greeting, he accused the Holy See of lusting for power, living hypocritical double lives and suffering from “spiritual Alzheimer’s” that has made the group forget the expectations to serve as joyful men of God, The Associated Press reported.
Pope Francis spoke about how the “terrorism of gossip” can “kill the reputation of our colleagues and brothers in cold blood,” and how cliques can “enslave their members and become a cancer that threatens the harmony of the body” and eventually kill it by “friendly fire.”
The Catholic Church, he added, “is called on to always improve itself and grow in communion, holiness and knowledge to fulfill its mission. But even it, as any human body, can suffer from ailments, dysfunctions, illnesses.”
The issues, Francis said, should be amended and cured by the beginning of the new year. Few members of the Holy See, which governs the 1.2-billion strong Catholic Church, smiled during the pope’s speech, according to the AP report.
Francis, who turned 78 last week, is the first Jesuit to assume the role of pontiff. When he succeeded Pope Benedict XVI last March, he promised to change the ways the Vatican conducts business. He has broken with his predecessors several times, saying the church cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptives, and asking, “Who am I to judge?” in response to reports of gay clergy members. And his personal plea contributed to the thawing of more than five decades of tense U.S.-Cuban relations last week.
The pope’s address came as his nine main cardinal advisers begin revamping the entire bureaucratic structure to combine offices with the goal of making them more responsive and efficient.
In October, Francis made a significant rhetorical break with Catholic tradition by declaring that the theories of evolution and the Big Bang are real, and remarking that God is not “a magician with a magic wand.” He explained that both evolution and the Big Bang are not incompatible with the existence of God. In fact, he said, they “require it.”
The Catholic leader was named “Person of the Year” in 2013 by TIME Magazine. He is scheduled to visit the United States next year in his first trip to the country since he took control of the papacy last March.
Although orthodox in many ways, Catherine's personal and political behavior were unprecedented for a woman of her time.
As St. Mike's Marshall McLuhan used to say "the medium is the message." (Or, as I read it, "the context is even more important than the content.")
I also think Laura -- ever the champion of motherhood, indeed a noble calling -- does not fully grasp the Church's position that celibacy (and consequent reproductive barrenness) are higher callings than marriage and reproduction.
Similarly, monks and hermits -- whom the Archibald family has always considered special conduits of divine light -- were often shabbily dressed, so much so that St. Francis' poverelli had reverted to what one biographer describes as a feral condition, living under rock outcroppings which I've visited in the hills above Assisi.
The poverelli were so sack-rough, soiled and unshorn that they startled local folk "taken unawares."
It would be instructive to see how Francis would deal with an ermine cape.
Similarly, it is impossible to imagine Francesco -- the "papal impostor's" namesake -- championing such furs as cause celebre.
Catherine is known for her "political boldness to speak truth to power— it being exceptional for a woman, in her time period, to have had such influence in politics and on world history." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_of_Siena
If such bold behavior is suitable for a (woman!) Doctor of The Church, where would Catherine's trail-blazing lead young women today?
Ultimately, the "point" is that the Roman Church has room for everyone -- even sinners like you and me, not to mention the Cathari on "the Catholic right."
The Church is, emphatically, not a prissy exercise in narrow (and narrowing) interpretations of extra Ecclesiam nulla salus and cannot be since The Christ through whom all salvation comes is best described as Love itself.
Yes!
Forever yes to Love as the source of all salvation!
Many have forgotten the rudimentary truth that "she" is called the Catholic church because she is universal, welcoming everyone --- even sinners... particularly sinners --- aboard St. Peter's Bark.
Oscar Wilde (who converted to Catholicism on his deathbed) noted that the Catholic church is"for saints and sinners alone – for respectable people, the Anglican Church will do".
PS Perhaps the most memorable proponent of extra Ecclesiam nulla salus was Pope Paul IV who first confined European Jews to ghettos, imposing the original "Star of David" uniform (later popularized by cradle Catholic, Adolf Hitler) to isolate them and call down opprobrium.
Excerpt from Wikipedia's Pope Paul IV's entry:
Pope Paul IV strongly affirmed the Catholic dogma of extra ecclesiam nulla salus ("Outside the Church there is no salvation"). The strengthening of the Inquisition continued under Paul IV, and few could consider themselves safe by virtue of position in his drive to reform the Church; even cardinals he disliked could be imprisoned.[5]
As it is completely absurd and improper in the utmost that the Jews, who through their own fault were condemned by God to eternal servitude, can under the pretext that pious Christians must accept them and sustain their habitation, are so ungrateful to Christians, as, instead of thanks for gracious treatment, they return contumely, and among themselves, instead of the slavery, which they deserve...
— Paul IV, Cum nimis absurdum, 1555
Paul IV was violently opposed to the liberal Giovanni Cardinal Morone whom he strongly suspected of being a hidden Protestant, so much that he had him imprisoned. In order to prevent Morone from succeeding him and imposing what he believed to be his Protestant beliefs on the Church, Pope Paul IV codified the Catholic Law excluding heretics and non-Catholics from receiving or legitimately becoming Pope, in the bull Cum ex apostolatus officio.
Paul IV introduced the Index Librorum Prohibitorum or "Index of Prohibited Books" to Venice, then an independent and prosperous trading state, in order to crack down on the growing threat of Protestantism. Under his authority, all books written by Protestants were banned, together with Italian and German translations of the Latin Bible.
***
Ex-Priest James Carroll: America's Unprecedented Threat Of Violence
How Christian anti-Semitism lies at the root of American belligerence.
Joe Cocker, a British-born rock and soul singer who delivered one of the most electrifying performances at the 1969 Woodstock festival with his raspy version of the Beatles’ “With a Little Help From My Friends,” and who later had a pop hit with “You Are So Beautiful,” died Dec. 22 at his home in Crawford, Colo. He was 70.
His death was announced by his manager, Barrie Marshall. The cause was lung cancer.
Mr. Cocker grew up in the industrial north of England but was always drawn to the blues and soul music of the American South. He became a disciple of Ray Charles and developed a singing style that expressed a raw, barely contained sense of emotional urgency.
His impassioned interpretation of the Beatles’ “With a Little Help From My Friends” was one of the highlights at Woodstock, the music festival held in rural New York. He transformed a gentle, shuffle-rhythm tune by John Lennon and Paul McCartney into a multilayered,seven-minute rock anthem, enlivened by his rough-edged vocals and his flailing, contorted movements.
Mr. Cocker — an air guitarist before anyone thought of the term — explained that his movements were simply physical responses to the music around him. Other performers parodied his style, and in 1976 Mr. Cocker appeared on“Saturday Night Live”alongside John Belushi, who mimicked his jerky gestures and facial grimaces before falling on the floor.
Singer Joe Cocker performs at the Woodstock Festival in 1969. (AP)
Mr. Cocker seldom wrote songs, preferring to reshape other people’s tunes in his own style. Few singers could match his visceral intensity or the depth of his commitment to a song. Charles, his musical idol, once said the three best soul singers in the world were Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye and Mr. Cocker.
“He has transformed material like the Beatles cutesy-poo ‘With a Little Help From My Friends,’ and the schmaltzy ‘You Are So Beautiful’ into ragged, soulful numbers of his own creation,” critic Steven X. Rea wrote in High Fidelity magazine in 1982. “Few singers are as readily identifiable; fewer interpreters are as adept at making outside material sound like their own creation.”
During the 1970s, Mr. Cocker released several well-received albums and embarked on worldwide tours, but he was also known for his erratic behavior and heavy indulgence in drugs and alcohol. He gave embarrassing performances, said insulting things from the stage and sometimes forgot the lyrics to songs.
In 1972, he and several members of his entourage were arrested in Australia for possession of marijuana. The next day, after he was charged with assault after a brawl at a hotel, he was given 48 hours to leave the country.
“If I’d been stronger mentally, I could have turned away from temptation,” he told Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper in 2013. “Drugs were readily available, and I dived in head first. And once you get into that downward spiral, it’s hard to pull out of it.”
He revived his career with “You Are So Beautiful,” a plaintive ballad originally performed by one of its co-writers, Billy Preston. In 1982, Mr. Cocker scored his only Billboard No. 1 hit in the United States with “Up Where We Belong,” which he sang with Jennifer Warnes. They won a Grammy Award for best vocal duo and an Academy Award for best song after it was featured in the film “An Officer and a Gentleman.”
Mr. Cocker’s mid-career rebirth continued with his 1987 album “Unchain My Heart,” which included a powerhouse performance of thetitle song, first performed by Charles in 1961.
“I’ve never really thought that I’m that great a singer,” Mr. Cocker told the Denver Post in 2004. “I have such a limited range, but I kind of know how to wring some emotion out of some songs. Once in a while, I just get the ingredients right.”
John Robert Cocker was born May 20, 1944, in Sheffield, England. He began singing at 12 and formed a band as a teenager. He performed under the name Vance Arnold before making his first recording in 1964. (He was vague about how his first name changed from John to Joe.)
In 1966, he and keyboardist Chris Stainton formed the Grease Band and two years later recorded “With a Little Help From My Friends,” which featured Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, on guitar. The song was a major hit in Britain and later became the theme of the ABC television series “The Wonder Years.”
In the early 1970s, Mr. Cocker toured with a changing lineup called Mad Dogs and Englishmen and worked with the American musician Leon Russell. After his career almost collapsed, Mr. Cocker climbed out of the ashes to perform at the 1989 inauguration of President George H.W. Bush, at the 70th birthday celebration for Nelson Mandela and for Queen Elizabeth’s golden jubilee in 2002.
Mr. Cocker released more than two dozen albums and continued his worldwide tours through 2013. Even as he grew gray and paunchy, his voice retained much of its youthful grittiness and strength.
He settled in a remote part of western Colorado in the early 1990s. He built a 17,000-square-foot mansion, raised cattle, launched philanthropic efforts and opened a restaurant in Crawford, a town of fewer than 400 people.
Survivors include his wife of 27 years, Pam Baker, of Crawford; a stepdaughter; a brother; and two grandchildren.
Mr. Cocker attempted to write music early in his career but gave up when he realized he couldn’t improve on the songs he admired by other writers and the early soul artists who continued to inspire him.
“There is something about that music,” he said in 2011. “At heart, connecting emotions to the audience is what I’m all about.”
Matt Schudel has been an obituary writer at The Washington Post since 2004.
In scathing piece, paper’s editorial board calls for criminal prosecution of former VP, other Bush-era officials mentioned in report
In an editorial board piece published Sunday, The New York Times called for criminal prosecution of former Vice President Dick Cheney and others featured in the recently released Senate Intelligence Committee’s report that details the post-9/11 torture program that went on during the Bush administration.
But any credible investigation should include former Vice President Dick Cheney; Mr. Cheney’s chief of staff, David Addington; the former C.I.A. director George Tenet; and John Yoo and Jay Bybee, the Office of Legal Counsel lawyers who drafted what became known as the torture memos. There are many more names that could be considered, including Jose Rodriguez Jr., the C.I.A. official who ordered the destruction of the videotapes; the psychologists who devised the torture regimen; and the C.I.A. employees who carried out that regimen.
The Times calls out Obama for his previous stance of not looking backward at what happened under the Bush administration.
Mr. Obama has said multiple times that “we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards,” as though the two were incompatible. They are not. The nation cannot move forward in any meaningful way without coming to terms, legally and morally, with the abhorrent acts that were authorized, given a false patina of legality, and committed by American men and women from the highest levels of government on down.
In terms of cable news, Dick Cheney is among one of the most polarizing figures in America. MSNBC will definitely cover the New York Times’ strong stance against Cheney in primetime tonight as its audience strongly opposes the former Vice President. Fox News might cover the story as well, from a more sympathizing point of view toward Cheney.
A machine works at the Suncor Energy Inc. mine in this aerial photograph taken above the Athabasca Oil Sands near Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada.
Can Canadian Oil Sands Survive
Falling Prices?
Matthew Phillips
As oil prices have crashed over the past six months, a lot of attention has focused on what this means for frackers in the U.S., as well as the national budgets of a lot of large oil producing countries, such as Russia and Venezuela. In short, it’s not good. But what about Canada? The country is the world’s fifth-largest oil producer, and only Saudia Arabia and Venezuela have more proven reserves of crude.
Almost all of Canada’s reserves (and production) are in the form of oil sands, which are among the most expensive types of crude to produce. There are pretty much two ways to do it. One is to inject steam into wells deep underground to heat up a thick, gooey type of oil called bitumen. The other is basically to strip mine large tracts of land and extract a synthetic blend of oil out of the earth and sand.
Taken together, both methods require about 17 percent more energy and water than conventional oil wells and also result in similarly higher levels of carbon emissions. That’s made oil sands a particular target of environmentalists. Now the Canadian oil sands producers have to contend with an even greater opposing force: economics. If Canadian oil sands are more expensive to produce than most other oil, how can they survive in the face of prices that are nearly 50 percent cheaper since June?
A few things play to their favor. The first is that their costs are more akin to a mining operation than conventional oil drilling. Oil sands projects require massive upfront investments, but once those are made, they can go on producing for years with relatively low costs. That’s made oil sands, and the companies that produce them, quite profitable over the past few years.
Suncor Energy (SU) and Cenovous Energy (CVE) are two of the biggest oil sands producers in Canada. Both have profit margins that would be the envy of a lot of major oil companies. At Suncor, earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (Ebitda), a basic measure of a company’s financial performance, has risen from 11.7 percent in 2009 to 31 percent through the first nine months of 2014.Exxon Mobil’s (XOM) Ebitda so far this year is about half that at 14.3 percent.
That cost structure may give oil sands producers an advantage over frackers in the U.S., who operate on a much shorter time horizon. Fracked wells in the U.S. tend to produce most of their oil within about 18 months or so. That means that to maintain production and rates of return, frackers need to keep reinvesting in projects with fairly short lifespans, whereas an oil sands project, once up and running, can continue to chug along, even in the face of lower prices, since its costs are spread out over a decade or more rather than over a couple years. That should keep overall oil sands production from falling and help insulate oil sands producers from lower prices, at least for now.
GenscapeCanadian oil sands are expected to continue growing despite lower prices
“They’re safer than the frackers,” says Carl Evans, an oil analyst at Genscape. “The sentiment up in Calgary has very much been that growth will push through this price dip, while U.S. production will start to come off highs.” Evans says the breakeven costs for bitumen oil sands projects that are already up and running can be as low as $10 to $20 a barrel. Right now, the price of Canadian oil in Alberta is about $40 a barrel.
This isn’t to say that future investments won’t get cut if prices stay where they are. But those cuts won’t show up in future production growth for years. A total of 14 new oil sands projects in Canada are scheduled to start next year with a combined capacity of 266,000 barrels a day, according to data published by Oilsands Review. That’s 36 percent more than were started in 2014. Since most of those investments have already been made, those projects are probably safe. Even for projects that are only partially paid for, investors will still probably be loath to stop halfway.
“You don’t stop a project mid-cap-ex,” says Greg Sharenow, a portfolio manager at Pacific Investment Management Company (Pimco) and former senior energy economist at Goldman Sachs (GS). “We’ll see a pause in new investments, but you probably won’t see shut-ins without real distress,” he says.
CHUCK TODD: Let me go to Gul Rahman. He was chained to the wall of his cell, doused with water, froze to death in C.I.A. custody. And it turned out it was a case of mistaken identity.
DICK CHENEY: --right. But the problem I had is with the folks that we did release that end up back on the battlefield. [...] I'm more concerned with bad guys who got out and released than I am with a few that, in fact, were innocent.
CHUCK TODD: 25% of the detainees though, 25% turned out to be innocent. They were released.
DICK CHENEY: Where are you going to draw the line, Chuck? How are-- [...]
CHUCK TODD: Is that too high? You're okay with that margin for error?
DICK CHENEY: I have no problem as long as we achieve our objective.
***
Dick Cheney Admits Preference For Torturing Innocent People If That's What It Takes
Each Christmas, President Obama takes a vacation with his family in Hawaii and this year was no different. Last Friday the First Family touched down ready to enjoy their two-week trip. Yet critics like Republican congressman Mike Rodgers attacked Obama for leaving the Oval Office, citing the recent Sony hack and police protests as reasons to stay.
However, compared to past presidents, Obama has taken relatively few vacation days. At this point in his second term, former President George W. Bush had taken a whopping 405 vacation days. Before him, Bill Clinton took a total of 174 days for himself. Another big vacationer was Ronald Reagan, who took a total of 390 days during his time in office. In comparison, Obama has only taken 161 vacation days to date.
CBS NEWS
Alan: Uncle Sam gets more than a half year's additional work out of Democratic presidents.
As with past administrations, the White House continues to affirm that the president can do anything while on vacation that he would normally do from the Oval Office. With modern technology, communication is rarely an issue or a major concern for the president.
This is not the first time the President has been criticized for taking a vacation during an urgent situation. During Obama's first term in 2009, Obama addressed the "Underwear Bomber" situation on television from Hawaii. On the other hand, in 2012 Obama flew back to the mainland midway through his vacation in order to deal with the fiscal cliff negotiations.
This year critics cited the recent Sony hack attack as a reason for the president to delay his trip. But as for the government's response to the incident, for which the FBI has blamed North Korea, it will probably take several weeks for various departments to come to a conclusive decision, leaving little reason for the president to interrupt his vacation.
What was that about Presidential vacations?
Every time President Obama picks up a golf club, the rightwingers go nuts, raving about how much vacation time he's taking. Let's review the past few presidents and their vacation days.
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Consumer spending is poised to charge into 2015 as more employment and lower gasoline prices boost household confidence and buying power, one reason why the Federal Reserve will probably raise interest rates next year. Photographer: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg
The world’s largest economy surged in the third quarter, expanding at the fastest pace in more than a decade, as U.S. consumers and businesses spent more than previously estimated.
Gross domestic product grew at a 5 percent annual rate from July through September, the biggest advance since the third quarter of 2003, and up from a previously estimated 3.9 percent, revised figures from the Commerce Department showed today in Washington. The median forecast of 75 economists surveyed by Bloomberg projected a 4.3 percent increase.
Consumer spending is poised to charge into 2015 as more employment and lower gasoline prices boost household confidence and buying power, one reason why the Federal Reserve will probably raise interest rates next year. Other aspects of GDP, including inventories, trade and government spending, are unlikely to maintain the strength seen last quarter, indicating the pace of growth will moderate at the end of the year.
“After five years of weak growth, the economy is finally coming out of rehab,” Ethan Harris, co-head of global economics research at Bank of America Corp. in New York, said in a research note before the report. “Look for the Fed to change policy in a way that only slowly and modestly tightens financial conditions.”
The estimate is the third and final for the quarter and followed a 4.6 percent advance from April through June.
The economy grew at an average pace of 1.3 percent in the first half of the year after expanding at a 2.2 percent rate in all of 2013.
Household purchases, which account for almost 70 percent of the economy, rose at a 3.2 percent annual pace, compared with a previously reported 2.2 percent. The revisions reflected stronger spending on health care, recreation and financial services than previously estimated. Outlays on durable and non-durable goods were also revised up.
Personal consumption added 2.2 percentage points to growth. It rose at a 2.5 percent pace in the prior three-month period.
Business investment was also revised up across the board, with bigger gains reported for spending on construction projects, equipment and intellectual property, which includes software and research and development.
Another report today showed similar advances will be difficult to match this quarter. Orders for durable goods, which are those meant to last at least three years, unexpectedly dropped in November, according to Commerce Department data. Demand for computers, metals and electrical equipment declined or was little changed last month as the global economy cooled.
Trade Gap
A smaller trade deficit added 0.8 percentage point to GDP growth last quarter, today’s report showed. That will also probably be difficult to replicate at the turn of the year as a global growth slowdown hobbles exports and gains in consumer spending draws in more imports.
Today’s report showed federal government outlays added 0.7 percentage point to third-quarter growth as federal defense spending jumped by the most since 2009. Total government spending rose at a 4.4 percent pace.
Watch spectacular footage of Earth from ISS in new timelapse [VIDEO]
By Dan Taylor , The Space Reporter | December 23, 2014
Alan: The dark blue band along the planet's edge is Earth's atmosphere. The accumulation of carbon dioxide in this narrow band transforms it into a blanket. The chemistry and physics of "The Greenhouse Effect" were first described in 1896 by Norwegian scientist Svante Arrhenius. To argue that "all the science is not in yet" is like arguing that "The Theory of Relativity" (on which all nuclear science and much cutting edge technology depend) shouldn't be trusted because Relativity"is only a theory." On the third stone from the sun, it is foolish to insist on Absolute Truth when the proper role of reasonable people is to heed The Preponderance of Evidence.
The Danger Of Carbon Dioxide As A Greenhouse Gas Was First Described In 1896
Video footage compiled from 12,500 images taken by an ESA astronaut over a six-month period.
German astronaut Alexander Gerst left his camera running while doing work on the International Space Station over a period of six months, and he recently released a timelapse from those shots. Gerst took 12,500 shots during his six months on the ISS for the “Blue Dot” mission on behalf of the European Space Agency. He compiled them into a six-minute timelapse since returning to Earth, according to the Washington Post. The images from his time aboard the ISS were shared all across Twitter, and his timelapse video has gone viral. It depicts the space stations orbit over the Earth and the many natural phenomenon that occur on Earth from above, such as the Northern Lights and tropical storms, as well as manmade things like the lights from cities. If you’re hungry for more photos, they can be found on his Flickr page here. The International Space Station operates in low Earth orbit (LEO), which is defined as an altitude between about 100 miles and 1,200 miles. Anything below 100 miles above the Earth will eventually plummet back to the planet. Scientists have been using the ISS as a research laboratory, where visiting astronauts can conduct experiments in a wide range of fields. It has been in operation for more than 14 years since Expedition 1 launched in November 2000. The previous record-holder was the Russian Mir space station, which lasted nearly 10 years in space.
The Hard, Central Truth Of Contemporary Conservatism
The hard, central "fact" of contemporary "conservatism" is its insistence on a socio-economic threshold above which people deserve government assistance, and below which people deserve to die.
The sooner the better.
Unless conservatives are showing n'er-do-wells The Door of Doom, they just don't "feel right."
Almost "to a man," contemporary "conservatives" have apotheosized themselves and now -- sitting on God's usurped throne -- are rabid to pass Final Judgment.
Self-proclaimed Christians, eager to thrust "the undeserving" through The Gates of Hell, are the very people most likely to cross its threshold.
Remarkably, none of them are tempted to believe this.
No charges for Milwaukee officer involved in fatal shooting
By Dana Ford, CNN
updated 7:29 AM EST, Tue December 23, 2014
CNN) -- A district attorney has decided against charges in the case of a police officer who fatally shot a mentally ill man more than a dozen times in Milwaukee. The officer, Christopher Manney, killed Dontre Hamilton during a confrontation in April.
The officer says he opened fire when Hamilton grabbed his baton and struck him with it.
Manney has since been fired for not following protocols, but he will not be charged.
Dontre Hamilton's family speak to the media after learning Hamilton had been shot 14 times by police.
"I've come to the conclusion that criminal charges are not appropriate in this case, and I am releasing all of the information related to this investigation so that you, the public, can see all the facts related to this decision," Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm told reporters Monday.
In a report, he wrote that the officer's use of force was "justified self-defense and that defense cannot be reasonably overcome to establish a basis to charge Officer Manney with a crime."
Chisholm anticipated that some might be upset with his decision and, in fact, protesters took to the streets Monday night.
According to local media, the officer is white; Hamilton was black.
"On a human level, of course it's tragic. Anytime I have to tell a family that I can't bring justice to them when one of their loved ones has died, it's always tragic. It's terrible," Chisholm said.
DA: Use of force justified in shooting
Mom: Cops killed mentally ill son
"The reason that our job is unique is our obligation is not to tell people necessarily what they want to hear. We have to follow our ethical obligations and the law, and sometimes that's very difficult ... But it's a privilege to be able to do the job, and we're committed to doing it the right way," he told reporters.
Following Chisholm's announcement, the U.S. Department of Justice said that it would conduct a federal civil rights review of the case, which comes amid ongoing protests around race and law enforcement in America.
"There is a lot of media trying to fit this incident into the national conversation, but it is important to note that the individual who was shot was not unarmed. He was armed with the officer's baton at the time that he was shot," said Lt. Mark Stanmeyer of the Milwaukee Police Department.
The Democrats’ conduct since the midterm debacle is as sad and sorry as the campaign that caused it. The party’s leaders are a big problem. A bigger one is the closed system of high-dollar fundraising, reductionist polling and vapid messaging in which it is seemingly trapped. Some say a more populist Democratic Party will soon emerge. It won’t happen as long as these leaders and this system are in place.
Nancy Pelosi says it wasn’t a wave election. She’s right. It was the Johnstown Flood; as catastrophic and just as preventable. One year after the shutdown Republicans scored their biggest Senate win since 1980 and their biggest House win since 1928. Turnout was the lowest since 1942, when millions of GIs had the excellent excuse of being overseas fighting for their country.
Every Democratic alibi — midterm lull, sixth-year curse, red Senate map, vote suppression, gerrymandering, money — rings true, but all of them together can’t explain being swept by the most extreme major party in American history. Citing other statistics — demography, presidential turnout, Hillary’s polls — they assure us that in 2016 happy days will be here again. Don’t bet on it.
It took more than the usual civic sloth to produce the lowest turnout in 72 years. It took alienating vast voting blocs, including the young and the working class of both genders and all races. The young now trend Republican. Voters of all ages migrate to third parties or abandon politics altogether. It’s the biggest Democratic defection since the South switched parties in the 1960s. If Democrats don’t change their ways, their 2016 turnout will be a lot harder to gin up than they think.
Democrats are in denial regarding the magnitude and meaning of their defeat. It is a rejection not just of current leaders but of the very business model of the modern Democratic Party: how it uses polls and focus groups to slice and dice us; how it peddles its sly, hollow message and, worst, how it sells its soul to pay for it all. Party elites hope party activists will seek to lift their moods via the cheap adrenaline high of another campaign. For once, activists may resist the urge.
The vital task for progressives isn’t reelecting Democrats but rebuilding a strong, independent progressive movement. Our history makes clear that without one, social progress in America is next to impossible. For 100 years progressive social change movements transformed relations between labor and capital, buyers and sellers, blacks and whites, men and women, our species and our planet. But in the 1970s progressives began to be coopted and progress ceased. Their virtual disappearance into the Democratic Party led to political stultification and a rollback of many of their greatest achievements.
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Much is written of the rise of the right, but very little of the fall of the left. We’re apt to see the left’s decline, if we do see it, as a consequence of the right’s superior funding, organizing and messaging, of the corporate dominance of all politics, and of white backlash against government, liberalism or modernity itself.
It’s a bad analysis. The left’s fall is as much a cause as an effect of what ails us. Middle-class anger isn’t about race, taxes, social services or social change. It’s mainly about middle-class decline and public corruption. Democrats talk a lot about both problems — but if they were really trying to solve either one, we’d all know it.
The prevailing analysis fosters passivity. Whenever people speak of forces rather than choices it’s a sure sign they aren’t about to do anything. Progressives who blame their losses on globalization, white backlash or money in politics are less apt to focus on the one thing they alone control: their own choices.
It also fosters denial. We know there can’t be a strong middle class absent a strong government to help create and sustain it. Social Security, Medicare, civil rights and labor laws, public education and market regulation are middle-class foundations. In the late ’70s they buckled and the middle class buckled with them.
It was around then that Wall Street began colonizing the Democratic Party and the Democrats began colonizing the left. After Jimmy Carter squashed Ted Kennedy, challenges to incumbent Democrats ceased. Grassroots movements morphed into Washington lobbies and formed their first PACs. For the sake of the Democrats in whom they’d reposed all their hopes and dreams, progressives moved their debates indoors.
We know these things but we don’t connect them and so we miss the chain of causation that runs from the left’s fall to the fall of the middle class and finally, the triumph of the right. Nor do we connect the left’s fall to its own choices. It has a victimization story worthy of a Fox News anchor, but in truth the left dismantled itself. Progressives traded their independence for a seat on the far end of the Democratic bench. Progressives turned their movements into mailing lists. Progressives put aside proven weapons of reason, passion and conviction for the shallow techniques of corporate marketing and modern electoral politics.
Our problem isn’t partisan gridlock but the stagnation of a political ecosystem imbalanced by the slow extinction of liberalism. In the shutdown Ted Cruz bestrode the world like a colossus till the Kochs, of all people, rode to the rescue. Wall Street was a major player but labor was invisible and progressives said barely a word. Their silence didn’t strengthen Obama, it weakened him. It was a perfect tableau of politics in our time. When the left goes AWOL, the right goes crazy.
Democrats think they need more money, better ads and a bigger computer. They gripe about Republican wedge issues, but have their own; immigration for Latinos, choice for women, student loans for students. What they need is a blueprint for solving problems that matter to everyone. Since the 19th century, progressive movements have created the blueprints and the public groundswells needed to enact them. Can progressives build such a movement in this century?
They can do it but they’ll have to take a time-out from electoral politics. They must declare their independence from the Democratic Party, its ineffectual politics and its current, clueless leaders. In the fall liberal pundits chastised Democrats who “ran from Obama.” Democrats lost because they couldn’t run from themselves. What they really needed to do was assure voters they saw the flaws in Obama’s program and had a plan to fix it. They didn’t have a plan because progressives never gave them one.
Democrats in Congress seem bent on mass suicide. After their landslide loss they reelected all their leaders without challenge. After the Senate confirmed two utterly unqualified Obama donors as foreign ambassadors, they caved on a budget that opened more sluices for the rich to pour money into politics and hollowed out Dodd/Frank to let Wall Street cover its bad bets with depositors’ money. In 2013 Obama said he wouldn’t “pay ransom” to pass a budget. In 2014 he did just that.
A Progressive Declaration of Independence is a risk, but it’s safer than idling about on deck as the Democrats’ ship goes down. Movement building is arduous work. Builders must agree on an agenda, finance and organize a base, communicate their vision, and help people apply the pressure needed to make change. It’s a huge task. If it hadn’t been done so many times before you’d think it was impossible.
Some progressives will spend 2015 trying to lure Elizabeth Warren or some second or third choice into a run for president. Some will make their peace with Hillary. Some will take other paths. A public debate among progressives will unearth some disagreements on policy and a more fundamental divisions over strategy.
Some say the Democratic Party is beyond saving. Others say it’s our last hope. I see progressives taking leave of Democrats not as abandonment but more like tough love. In the end it may be the only thing that can save Democrats or for that matter progressives, whose reputation has been tarnished by the party that betrayed them. In any event it’s better for both parties for all future business to be conducted on an arms’ length, cash-for-carry basis.
My guess is that if you can’t take over the Democratic Party, you can’t take over the country — and that a declaration of independence should be followed by an actual rebellion. The Tea Party has shown you can work within a party and yet be highly independent. But whether to work within, against or apart from the Democrats is a call for later. Building a strong progressive movement is work we must do now. Obama had this right in 2008. We are the change we’ve been waiting for.
Progressives once provided Democrats with policies. Now Democrats provide them with slogans. Progressives say Democrats lack backbone and a bottom line, but progressives used to provide those too. Want politicians to get the courage of their convictions? It’s simple. First, get some convictions. Courage will follow.
Bill Curry was White House counselor to President Clinton and a two-time Democratic nominee for governor of Connecticut. He is at work on a book on President Obama and the politics of populism.
Thinkstock/Getty Images"Hey have you heard the new Spoon album? No? I can go throw it on ... this guy seems to be in a bit of pain. Maybe it'll help." A new study suggests the music played in the OR may even help with pain control and patient communication.
The prize for the year’s most thought-provoking article in a learned journal must go to an editorial published last week in the British Medical Journal. It reviewed research on the music played in operating theatres, and made for fascinating reading. It appears that music is not just entertainment for doctors, nurses and theatre staff, it can have positive benefits for patients, too.
Mike Knutson taught himself to play the harmonica as a child, and the 96-year-old sang with his family for most of his life. Even now, as he suffers from dementia, music is an important part of his life thanks to a study looking at the impact of a U.S.-wide music program aimed at helping dementia patients.
The study being led by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is the largest yet on the impact of the Music and Memory program, which is in hundreds of nursing homes across the U.S. and Canada, said program founder Dan Cohen. Similar studies will be conducted in Utah and Ohio.
Researchers are monitoring the responses of 1,500 Alzheimer’s and dementia patients who were given iPods at Wisconsin nursing homes through the program, which was highlighted in the documentary Alive Inside, which was honoured at the Sundance Film Festival this year.
There is good evidence that it helps patients treated under both local and general anesthetic. Incredibly, one study has shown that playing music that has a rhythm that mimics the heart beat is as effective as midazolam, a relaxant given to patients undergoing a variety of procedures such as colonoscopy. Research also showed that music can help reduce post-operative pain to the extent that patients need less analgesia; and staff report that it helps improve their communication, reduces anxiety and increases efficiency.
The operating theatre is a strange place, tightly governed by procedures, protocol and the rigid hierarchy that ensures things run smoothly. Everyone knows their place and their job and woe betide anyone who doesn’t. It can be an intimidating arena — but rightly so, because what happens there really is a matter of life and death.
It seems astonishing that playing music has an impact on the outcome of an operation, but researchers have looked at similar variables before, particularly in infection control.
When I was a junior doctor and worked in surgery, the consultant loved to tell us about a group of Swedish researchers who decided to look at infection rates in surgical patients.
The story goes that, in true Scandinavian style, they decided to see if operating while naked reduced the risk of wound infection. The rationale was that friction from the surgical scrubs caused skin to be constantly shed during the operation — and with it any bacteria on the skin surface. At this point the consultant would guffaw, and tell us that indeed the study had showed that the risk of infection was less in those patients who’d been operated on by naked teams. Thankfully the idea never caught on, and if you’d seen some of the surgeons I’ve worked for you’d understand my relief.
I was never sure if this story was apocryphal, but needless to say it was usually told to attractive, female medical students — perhaps the surgeon fantasized about them turning up in the buff.
Amid all the rules and regulations though, the one thing that there is choice over is the type of music played, and tradition dictates that the most senior surgeon gets to choose the tracks. Although, according to the review, this tends to be classical music, it opens up the possibility of a number of appropriate songs that could be played. The article makes a few suggestions — ‘Stayin’ Alive’ by the Bee Gees is one I hope surgeons take particular note of!
Cat Stevens’s ‘The First Cut Is The Deepest’ is, of course, very apposite. My mum is about to have her cataracts removed, so should, I think, ask her surgeon to play ‘I Can See Clearly Now’ by Johnny Nash. But some should perhaps be avoided, for the sake of the patient. When undergoing a colonoscopy, I’d rather have that midazolam than listen to ‘Ring of Fire’ by Johnny Cash. Equally, I doubt there are many men who’d like to drift off before their urological examination to Chuck Berry singing ‘My Ding-a-Ling’. I have every confidence that readers will be able to think of many more.
Avocado Kale Sweet Potatoes Blueberries Almonds Apples Salmon Oats Garlic Broccoli (... with honorable mentions for beets, lemons, dark chocolate and carrots)
Hanukkah parties can be measured in a few ways: the number of latkes present; the horribleness of the soundtrack, which inevitably includes small children singing about dreidels; the degree to which menorah-themed decorations have taken over. The get-together I attended last week at the Gottlieb household in Fairfax Station, Virginia, hit all these holiday standards, and more—they even had whitefish salad laid out on their festive blue-and-silver tablecloth.
The biggest difference between this party and all the other Hanukkah parties I've ever attended was the involvement of Jesus.
"I wanted to be a rockstar," said Val, one of the first women I spoke with, by way of introduction. "Then Jesus came into my life and said, 'Eh, that's not what I have planned for you.'"
Val was one of 30 to 40 people at the party, which is hosted every year by the Washington, D.C., branch of Jews for Jesus. Attendees identified themselves in lots of ways: Jewish believers in Jesus, Messianic Jews, Jewish Christians, and, sometimes, just Christians. Many worship together at the McLean Bible Church; for the most part, Jewish believers in Jesus go to evangelical churches, rather than synagogues.
But for one reason or another, everyone there wanted to participate in and learn about the rituals of Hanukkah, from lighting the menorah to telling the story of the Maccabees. There were babies, teenagers, and older single ladies; the group even included a couple from Iran, a black woman, and an Asian woman. Some grew up practicing Jewish traditions in conservative and Orthodox households; others had never seen a menorah before. Jews for Jesus exists for all these people—they educate Christians, and they also offer community to Jewish believers in Jesus.
But most of their work focuses on another kind of person: Jews, or rather, Jews who don't believe in the divinity of Christ. At this particular Hanukkah party, there was only one person who fit that description: me.
* * *
Emma Green/The AtlanticWhen Jews for Jesus was founded in San Francisco in 1973, it was called by a different name—Hineni Ministries, after the Hebrew word Abraham and Moses use to respond to God when he speaks to them in the Bible. "Jews for Jesus" was one of the organization's slogans, along with "Jesus made me kosher" and "if you don't like being born, try being born again," said David Brickner, the executive director of the organization, in a phone interview. "The media were the ones who glommed onto that slogan and started calling us the Jews for Jesus, and we thought, well, okay."
Brickner's background isn't typical of most people who identify as Messianic Jews: On his mother's side, he says, he's part of the fifth generation of Jewish believers in Jesus. Especially in the early days, Jews for Jesus was mostly made up of Jews who had starting believing in Jesus later in life. The Messianic Jewish community developed in tandem with the Jesus People movement, which was a kind of hippy Christian revival in the 1960s and 70s. Jews for Jesus offered ways for people to maintain a connection to their Jewish identity while embracing Christian spirituality.
Before Brickner took over leadership of the organization in 1996, it was led by its original founder, a Jew from Kansas named Moishe Rosen. Like Brickner, Rosen was an ordained Baptist minister; after going through a conversion in 1953, he made it his life's work to proselytize to Jews. Ultimately, this is the mission of Jews for Jesus: "We want to make the Messiahship of Jesus an unavoidable issue to our Jewish people worldwide," Brickner said.
To say the least, this was met with skepticism, particularly in the American Jewish community. For example: "'Hebrew Christians' Trouble Jews," declaredThe New York Times in May 1977. The author wrote that "the growth of such communities and their proselytizing have raised considerable anxieties in the Jewish community," and Rabbi James Rudin, then an assistant director at the American Jewish Committee, said "the Jewish attraction to the cults is a stunning indictment of our inability to relate to our youngsters on a spiritual level." The Times published 50 such articles mentioning Jews for Jesus or Messianic Judaism in the 1970s alone.
Stephen Katz, the director of the Jews for Jesus's missionary work in North America, became a follower of Christ around this time. When he was a first-semester college student, he was assigned to write a term paper on the Messianic expectations of Jews during the life of Christ. In the course of his research about Jesus's teachings, he told me at the Jews for Jesus Hanukkah party, "I started to lean toward it being true—which was threatening."
This word—threatening—comes up a lot in conversations about Jews for Jesus. Katz had been raised in a conservative Jewish household in Chicago; when his parents found out that he considered himself a follower of Christ, they were shocked. "My mother said I was brainwashed. My father said I was trying to put up wall between us. They had my uncle, who's a rabbi, come over and try to straighten me out," Katz said.
Their attitudes were specifically shaped by world events at the time, he added: In 1975, the United Nations passed a resolution determining that "Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination." (It was revoked in 1991.) "My mother said, 'Stephen, there's going to be a new wave of anti-Semitism in this country, and you're just trying to hide.'"
To Jews—and especially those who live in diaspora, or places other than Israel—the mission of Jews for Jesus can seem like an attack "from within": They evangelize by creating a sense of commonality and shared values.
But at least to some extent, the organization's leaders are aware of this perception.
"It's is a frontal assault on identity," Katz said. "Jesus is not only seen as foreign—[Christianity] is seen as destructive to Jewish identity."
Jews are a people long persecuted, often in the name of Christ. Proselytization is never just a high-minded exchanged of metaphysical worldviews—and to Jews, it can seem like an attempt to undermine the core beliefs and traditions that define their faith.
This can lead to hostility—and, sometimes, violence. "You might be spat upon, depending on what part of the world you're in," said Larry Dubin, the head of the Washington, D.C., branch of Jews for Jesus at the Hanukkah party.
"My wife was attacked a couple of times. One woman took her glasses and destroyed them. A Jewish man, much taller than she was, basically knocked her to the ground," he said. "She was proclaiming that Jesus, or Yeshua, is the messiah, and they didn't like it."
This, he says, is just "part of the business. The prophets were rejected. The messiah was rejected. Do you think people are going to say, 'Oh! It's Stephen Katz! Let's go see what he has to say'?
"It's been a battle of the ages."
* * *
For all this hostility, Jews for Jesus still seems to have a good sense of humor about its work. This holiday season, its North American offices distributed cards that remix Hanukkah and Christmas—adding some Hebrew to depictions of the nativity, making a menorah out of Rudolph's antlers, that sort of thing.
Jews for Jesus
Jews for Jesus
Humor seems to be the organization's schtick. This summer, I happened to pick up a flyer put out by the D.C. branch of Jews for Jesus, asking passersby whether they feel #connected with @God.
Jews for Jesus/The Atlantic
But for all its efforts to reach out to the young and the hashtag dependent ("Last summer we were trending on Twitter!" Brickner told me excitedly), the organization has seen a drop-off in engagement—and, to a certain extent, press coverage.
"Jews for Jesus was oftentimes seen in America as counter-cultural and rather intriguing to young Jews who were disaffected," Brickner, the organization's executive director, said. "It has more recently been seen as part of the wallpaper."
Or, a bit more tangibly: From the organization's founding in the mid-1970s until the early 2000s, there was a steady rise in the number of books that mentioned Jews for Jesus, Messianic Jews, and Messianic Judaism. But starting roughly ten years ago, that number plummeted.
Books Mentioning Messianic Judaism, Through 2008
That data, from Google ngrams, only extends through 2008. But according to Google trends, which traces search trends from 2004 forward, a similar pattern continued throughout the aughts, at least in terms of news headlines about Jews for Jesus, Messianic Jews, and Messianic Judaism.
Google Searches for Messianic Judaism, 2004-2014
Google TrendsPerhaps the novelty has worn off. This is what Brickner thinks, anyways—which, he says, is why the organization is now seeing its greatest successes in Israel, rather than the United States.
"There's probably a greater openness [in Israel]—in terms of attitude, and willingness to discuss the concept—than in any of the other 14 countries we're currently operating in," Brickner said. "There's a great curiosity about a whole host of things, spiritually. That's why you've got people, fresh from the Israeli army, going off to India and Nepal, following the hummus trail."
Of the roughly 200 staff members who work for Jews for Jesus across the world, about 30 of them work out of the organization's office in Tel Aviv. Although the organization sent its first missionaries to Israel starting in the spring of 1975, for 25 years, these were only short-term efforts. Then, in the summer of 2000, the Jews for Jesus received an amutah, or official government recognition as a non-profit organization. Since then, its Israeli operation has been growing—they've now got a second office in Beersheba, for example.
Of course, this alleged Israeli "openness" to Jews for Jesus is very different depending on which Israelis you're talking about. Katz called it "ambivalence"— there may be a sense of friendly curiosity among the secular public, but others have fought the presence of Jews for Jesus in Israel for reasons of religion or nationalism. For example, when the organization bought its offices in Tel Aviv, Katz said, the Orthodox, anti-missionary organization Yad L'Achim "posted everywhere, warning everyone to keep the missionaries away and complain to the municipality."
For organizations like Yad L'Achim, this is a matter of preserving faith, and numbers—"we don't give up on even a single Jew," their website blares. But for some of the modern Orthodox, the argument is more nationalistic, Katz said. "[People] say, 'We got this in Europe and elsewhere. We have one little piece of turf. Leave us alone.'"
* * *
Emma Green/The AtlanticThe funny thing about holiday parties, though, is that it's very hard to look at people slurping latkes in dorky sweaters and see the complex, centuries-old tension between Christians and Jews.
I met Rachel, who grew up going to Messianic summer camp and got introduced to her husband through Jews for Jesus. Their baby, Micah, had hands sticky with the red sprinkles of what looked like a misplaced Christmas cookie.
I met Suzanne and her twentysomething daughter, Cassidy, who traditionally hit this Hanukkah party as their once-a-year bout with Judaism. After becoming a Christian at the age of 17, Suzanne didn't speak with any members of her conservative Jewish family for 20 years.
If it seems rude to ask strangers about decades-old family feuds at a crashed Hanukkah party, well, it is. But the people I met were remarkably willing to talk about their paths to believing in Jesus, and the pain that accompanied it. They also shot back questions: What faith was I raised with? How much had I been exposed to Christianity? Do I attend religious services?
Occasionally, when people heard I'm Jewish, they would "casually" suggest that I try reading the New Testament. Maybe in another context, this would have felt threatening. But it didn't. That is part of who they are, just as being Jewish in my own, complicated way is part of who I am.
Because identity is never clean, no matter who you are. We are all dorky people slurping food at holiday parties; we are all symbols of centuries-old religious tension.
During our conversation, Katz told me about a dinner party he attended at his parents' house in the mid-90s. His mom's friends kept asking him what he did for a living; at that time, he was managing a bookstore for Jews for Jesus in San Francisco. He followed his mom into the kitchen during a lull in the meal.
"I don't want to embarrass you and dad in front of your friends," he told her.
"And my mom's response was, 'Oh Stephen, don't worry about it. I mention that you're with Jews for Jesus all the time,'" he said.
"Before that, I didn't realize she had reached that point of comfort with what her son is."
Like many parents, on the occasions when I thought my children’s table manners were lacking, I was wont to say, “Where were you raised—in a barn? Don’t eat like an animal.” The predictable retort was, “Yes. And we’re all animals.” The story of the Flood, in parasht Noach, is the quintessential “animal story” of the bible; ironically the one in which virtually every animal on earth is annihilated.
The story of the Flood is nestled between two stories of human overreaching for divinity. The Flood story follows the account of Adam and Eve, who are banished from the Garden of Eden for eating fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, which will supply moral discernment. Added to the immortality God has already granted Adam and Eve by virtue of fruit from the Tree of Life, this will make them divine. In essence they will become gods. Torah cannot tolerate apotheosis, people becoming gods, a notion rife in other ancient Near Eastern cultures.
The Flood is followed by the terse account of the Tower of Babel, found in this week’s parashah. The Tower is a tale of human hubris gone wild. People set out to build a tower to heaven so that—ונעשה לנו שם / “we will make for ourselves a name”; that is, become gods. Adonai confounds their speech and here Torah makes a wordplay on שם “name” when it says ונבלה שם שפתם “God confounded/confused their speech there.” The seemingly superfluous term “there” is written identically to “name” because the Torah originally had only consonants. Their “name” (i.e. ambitions for divinity) became nothing there but confusion and lead to ruin.
These two bookends to the Flood story, Adam and Eve’s expulsion from Eden to insure they do not become gods, and the Tower people’s failed attempt to become gods, not only bracket the Flood story, but also help us understand it on another level. Torah has treated God’s unsurpassed creative power in the opening chapter of Genesis; creating the cosmos and our world provides sufficient evidence. The Flood, in contrast, addresses God’s unrivaled destructive power; most of the world is wiped out in the deluge. Only a small remnant remains and—the story suggests—God could well have decided to forego the whole ark business, leaving nothing. In fact, midrash Bereishit Rabbah 3:7 tells us that God created and destroyed many worlds before creating ours.
In fact, there is ample evidence that the biblical authors knew of traditions that some of us are descended from gods. Just after Torah’s first mention of Noah, but before the story of the Flood begins, we find this peculiar remnant of that tradition:
And it came to pass, when people began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the divine beings [b’nai elohim, lit. sons of gods] saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took wives from among them, whomsoever they chose. And Adonai said: ‘My spirit shall not abide in people for ever, for they also are flesh; therefore shall their days be 120 years.’ It was then that the Nephilim were on the earth, and also after that, when the divine beings [b’nai elohim, lit. sons of gods] came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. They were the heroes of old, the men of renown. (Genesis 6:1-4)
Descendant of gods (b’nai elohim), presumably, walk among us. Adonai does not approve. Perhaps it is because finding our place in the world, between the vaulted heights of divinity and the depraved depths to which humans can fall, is so difficult and dangerous. Striving to become divine leads us not toward holiness, but ironically in the opposite direction. Human arrogance knows no limits, and leads people both to conceive of themselves as gods, and to engage in nearly unimaginable corruption and violence. Akavkiah b. Mahalalel taught:
If you ponder three things, you will avoid falling into sin: Know your origin, your destination, and before whom you will be required to give an accounting. Your origin: a putrid drop. Your destination: a place of dust, worms, and maggots. Before whom will you be required to give an accounting? Before the Ruler of rulers, the Holy One Blessed be God. (BT Pirke Avot 3:1)
How’s that for a formula to keep one’s ego in check? But don’t we want people to spread their wings, let their creativity soar, and exert their influence? We are capable of the best and the worst, and the two often come perversely bundled. Accounts of the Holocaust, certainly a hallmark of human depravity, are not complete without the stories of courage, heroism, and altruism.
The Rabbis (BT Sanhedrin 38b) envisioned God consulting panels of angels concerning the creation of humanity. The first two panels, citing the evil people would do, are adamantly opposed. God eliminates them. The third panel says (in essence): Given what You did to the first two panels, we wouldn’t dare oppose the plan. Do as you will.” But when the Generation of the Flood and the Generation of the Tower come, the third angelic cadre cannot resist chirping a refrain of, “We told you so!” What is God’s response? I’m sticking with them through thick and thin. God is committed, but it’s not always easy.
The Rabbis couched it this way:
God created humans with four qualities of the angels and four qualities of the lower animals. Like the animals, people eat, drink, reproduce and die. Like the angels, they stand erect, speak, understand, and see [from the sides as well as from the front]. Rabbi Tifday said: The angels were created in the image of God and do not reproduce, while the earthly creatures reproduce but were not created in God’s image. God said: I will create humanity in My image and likeness and in that way they will be like the angels. But they will also reproduce, like the animals. Rabbi Tifday also said: The Lord reasoned: If I create them like the angels, they will live forever and not die; if I create them like the animals, they will die and not live forever. Therefore I will create them as a combination of the upper and lower elements. If they sin they will die; if they die, they will live [in the world-to-come]. (Bereishit Rabbah 14:3)
We are little lower than the angels (Psalm 8:6), but not unlike the beasts. In our best moments, we aspire to righteousness, generosity, and humility. This is our divine side. But we also aspire to power, possession, control, acclaim, and adoration, and like the beasts, we are curious about everything—good and bad. We are vulnerable to every sort of temptation. We are driven by our biology. We live every day in the tension of our angelic selves and our animal selves.
Science confirms this. Psychiatrist and cardiologist Barbara Natterson-Horowitz explains this in her both startling and comforting book Zoobiquity: What Animals Can Teach Us About Health and Human Healing. We would see ourselves as utterly different from the animals—possessed of free will, superior intelligence, complex technology—but in reality we have all evolved in tandem and share many traits and biological processes in common. Not only can we learn much from the animal world and the specialists in animal behavior and healing, veterinarians, concerning cancer, infection, and disease, but we have more in common with animals than you might like to acknowledge in the areas of addiction, sexuality, eating disorders, and adolescent behavior.
Natterson-Horowitz gently counsels that rather than denying the breadth and depth of our “animal side,” we would be better off acknowledging and even embracing it. Our biology combined with our instincts are responsibility for much good—love and loyalty, for example. The energies of our biology, when we understand them and how they operate in us, can be channeled to fuel our divine side. Acknowledging and understanding our animal side, celebrating it, and then taming it by placing it in service of holiness will go far to relieving the angel-or-animal tension.
Torah’s persistent refrain that humans must not become gods is, perhaps, a warning not to think of ourselves as gods and thereby shut off our aspiration to holiness.
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel saw the two poles of our being as divinity and dust, which we will all ultimately become. His charge to us applies to our attempt to achieve balance between the poles of divine being and animal, as well. He wrote:
Perhaps this is the most urgent task: to save the inner man from oblivion, to remind ourselves that we are a duality of the mysterious grandeur and the pompous dust. Our future depends upon our appreciation of the reality of the inner life, of the splendor of thoughts, of the dignity and wonder of reverence. This is the most important thought: God has a stake in the life of man, of every man. But this idea cannot be imposed from without; every man must discover it; it cannot be preached, it must be experienced. (The Insecurity of Freedom: Essays on Human Existence, pp. 12-13)
This week, pause and consider your “mysterious grandeur” and your “animal side.” Try not to focus on the former at the expense of the latter. Try to discover in your life a sense of how valuable you are to God and to those around you. Feel it. Experience it. And then going forward, live it.
Fast food consumption isn't merely connected to increases in pant size—it's tied to significant decreases in test scores among school children, according to a new national study.
Researchers at Ohio State University used data from a nationally representative sample of some 11,700 children to measure how fast food might be affecting their performance in class. The study measured how much fast food the children were eating at age 10, and then compared the consumption levels to test results in reading, math, and science three years later.
What they found is that even small increases in the frequency with which the students ate fast food were associated with poorer academic test results. Habitual fast food eaters—those who ate fast food daily—saw "test score gains that were up to about 20 percent lower than those who didn’t eat any fast food."
The connection held true even after the researchers took into account more than a dozen other factors about the children's habits and backgrounds that might have contributed to the association between fast food consumption and poorer academic performance, including fitness, broader eating habits, socioeconomic status, and characteristics of both their neighborhood and school.
"Our results show clear and consistent associations between children’s fast food consumption in 5th grade and academic growth between 5th and 8th grade," the researchers wrote. "These results provide initial evidence that fast food consumption is associated with deleterious academic outcomes among children."
More than half of the students the researchers observed ate fast food between one and three times a week, and nearly three quarters of them ate fast food at least once a week.
“Fast-food consumption was quite high in these students,” Kelly Purtell, the study's lead author, said in a statement.
While the study observed children's eating habits in 2004, and therefore could point to fast food consumption levels that are no longer representative of current trends, there's reason to believe little has changed. Nearly a third of American kids between the ages of 2 and 11 — and nearly half of those aged 12 to 19 — eat or drink something from a fast food restaurant each day, according to a study from 2008. And fast food still accounts for roughly 13 percent of total calories eaten by children and teenagers aged 2 to 18 in the United States.
Purtell is careful to point out that while there's a strong suggestion that feeding children fast food negatively affects their academic performance, the study falls short of establishing a definitive casual connection. While her team can't prove the diet quirk caused lower test scores gains, the group insists that fast food consumption helps explain at least part of the performance gap between the students.
Why exactly fast food could be blunting school children's brains is unclear. A study conducted last year showed that nutrients like iron, which can be lacking in fast food, are essential for the development of a child's brain. Diets high in fat and cholesterol have also been linked to poorer memory.
Roberto A. Ferdman is a reporter for Wonkblog covering food, economics, immigration and other things. He was previously a staff writer at Quartz.
Music by Unitarian Minister, Richard Storrs Willis
Lyrics by Unitarian Minister, Edmund Sears
Written in 1849, it has long been assumed to be Sears' response to the just ended Mexican-American War. Sears' pacifism would take second place to his commitment to abolishing slavery in the Civil War, but his carol remains, repeated all over the world every year. Probably more than any other Christmas carol, it talks about today — his day or our day. It says that the call to peace and goodwill to all is as loud on any other day as it was on that midnight of old, if we would but listen in solemn stillness...
Sears was considered theologically conservative by other Unitarians in his day."
What we think of as "Christmas music" is really just a seasonal exercise in baby boomer nostalgia.
That, at least, is one takeaway from the list of the top 30 most-played Christmas songs of all time, compiled by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP). Nearly two-thirds of these songs were written in the 40s and 50s -- when the baby boomers were small children.
No holiday songs from the 2000s or the present decade crack the top 30. The closest is Mariah Carey's 1994 hit "All I Want for Christmas is You." And only one 80s song makes it -- George Michael's risible "Last Christmas."
But that's far from the worst song on the list. That honor goes to the MIDI-synthesized abomination that is Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime," which I'm forcing myself to listen to as I write this.
Overwhelmingly, though, the sound of Christmas is trapped in the mid-20th century. Web comic artist Randall Olson (of XKCD fame) made this observation back in 2009, when ASCAP released its original list of the 20 top Christmas songs of the 2000s: "Every year, American culture embarks on a massive project to carefully recreate the Christmas of Baby Boomers' childhoods," he wrote. Or, more concisely, "an 'American tradition' is anything that happened to a Baby Boomer twice."
Plenty of ink has been spilled on why it's so hard for new holiday songs to gain traction with listeners. Part of the reason the boomers' childhood classics endure is that the postwar era really was an exceptional time in American history: jobs were plentiful, the economy was booming, and America's influence on the world stage was at its peak.
What we now think of as the holiday aesthetic isn't just about a particular time of the year -- it's also very much about a particular time of American history. That golden postwar era casts a long shadow across the decades that have come after. Many contemporary policy discussions -- on big topics like inequality and political polarization -- are animated by a comparison between that period and the present one.
We still haven't fully figured out whether that postwar boom period represented a baseline that we can return to, or an anomaly reflecting a unique convergence of historic circumstances. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that during the most nostalgic time of the year, our music tastes remain stubbornly stuck in the past.
Christopher Ingraham writes about politics, drug policy and all things data. He previously worked at the Brookings Institution and the Pew Research Center.
Pope Francis leaves the Paul VI hall at the end of and audience with the Holy See's employees at the Vatican, Dec. 22, 2014.
