Looking at Presidential elections

 

I recently  read Race of  Lifetime: How Obama Won the White House by Heilemann & Halperin)and got curious about it stacked up against what I regard as one of the finest accounts of a presidential campaign - An American Melodrama: The Presidential Campaign of 1968 by Chester, Hodgson & Page.

I have to report that the 1968 account stands up very well on a number of fronts and highlights the limits of the reporting of the 2008 campaign. Race of a Lifetime read on its own terms reads like now. It is focussed on the personalities and the inside gossip about who said what to whom. An American Melodrama has that but has a lot more to offer. It gives background on the issues and the working of the American political process and issues in society that were underpinning the dynamics of the campaign. All this is written fluently and yet with a light touch and a wry sense of humour.

The Race of  Lifetime tells us little of any of these things - it is personality centred and deals little with the wider processes and hopes and fear in American society. Politically and socially something significant was at work in the 2008 campaign but we are given few clues and little analysis to help us understand.

There are moments of observation and reflection in An American Melodrama in which some of the characteristics of presidential campaigning that are unreflectively on display in the report of the 2008 campaign are tellingly anticipated. The limitations and narrowness of the way the story of the 2008 campaign is told is reflective of the narrowness and lack of depth in the media coverage of the campaign.

The comparison of the reporting between 1968 and 2008 is revealing and disturbing. I doubt that I will ever go back and read Race of a Lifetime. Going back to reread An American Melodrama this past week was intellectually rewarding and engaging in its narrative drive and literary style.

US Churches and Economics in a time of recession

The Alban Institute's journal this quarter, reports on the 2009 Congregational Economic Impact Study, recently conducted by the Alban Institute and the Lake Institute on Faith and Giving at the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University. Some key findings reported by James P Wond in his "The Leading Edge" column are:

Prompted by the worst economic recession since the Great Depression, this new research reveals some important things. First, it has surprising news about the resilience of congregations. At a time when almost every American institution had to trim its budget, a majority of the congregations surveyed saw their fundraising receipts hold steady or increase. That is good and important news for those accustomed to the prevailing "mainline decline" narrative told in our culture. Second, it shows us that congregations responded to the economic crisis with food, clothing, and shelter for those in need. The traditional, charitable impulses of Christian congregations endure and still make an important difference. Third, the survey reveals that the same congregations that many write off as dying are in fact innovating, partnering with a host of not-for-profit organizations like Habitat for Humanity and Second Harvest and doing new things like offering credit counseling and emergency loans. To be sure, not every American congregation saw its income increase during this tough time, and more than a few had to cut back their programs. But this survey provides evidence, as do larger surveys like Giving USA 2009, that even in an era when many are dropping out of organized religion and turning to less demanding types of spirituality, giving to religious institutions, unlike other sectors, actually increases when times are tough.

 There is good news in this research but something is missing. Almost no mention is made of congregations starting new business ventures to widen and diversify the revenue streams that support their missions. Yet some are doing just that. A recent article in the Washington Post ("At Home in the Houses of the Lord: Church Missions, Portfolios Embrace Residential Real Estate," August 8, 2009) featured a local real estate boomlet led by congregations. In Landover, Maryland, Reston, Virginia, and the District itself, congregations have been teaming with local real estate developers to build residential communities that provide both affordable housing in high-priced markets and new streams of revenue to support community ministries. These entrepreneurial congregations are not only resilient and able to motivate donors in tough times; they are trying to dig beneath old stewardship ways of thinking about money (pass the plate, sign the pledge card) and find new ways to love and serve their neighbors.

Advice on the scientific process for those who are confident global warming isn't happening

Peter Doherty  the Nobel Prize winning scientist has provided some advice that those who are critical of the scientific enterprise over the issue of global warming in a recent issue of The Month.

Scepticism is central to science. Good scientists look critically at their own and others’ ideas as they seek understanding from available observations and measurements. Better to find the flaw yourself than have someone else point it out. This is as true for climate scientists as it is for research biologists (like me). As an occasional attendee of ‘climatology’ seminars, I don’t see any basic difference in philosophy between these scientific fields. ...


I am an experimentalist who manipulates acute systems, so I may be marginally more conscious of Murphy’s Law than scientists who observe long-term natural events. “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong” is a principle realised all too often when you are deliberately intervening in complex systems, which is what I do for a living. When it comes to perturbation, there is no precedent for the greenhouse gas experiment presently being conducted by humanity. We are simultaneously releasing the combustion products of billions of tons of fossil fuels, devastating the forests that remove CO2 from the atmosphere and rapidly acidifying the great CO2 ‘sink’ (the surface layers of the oceans). This experiment, which involves 6.8 billion human beings, as well as every other complex life form on our small planet, can only be done once. Can we afford to explore the extent of its possibilities? I fail to comprehend how any competent scientist could argue that our current strategies are sustainable. Comparable intimations of disaster during, for instance, the testing of a new drug would lead to the immediate termination of the trial.

The identification of the fossil fuel–greenhouse gas problem is based on physics and chemistry and is further informed by research in meteorology, oceanography, geophysics, glaciology, palaeontology, marine microbiology and terrestrial ecology, among other ?elds. While the occurrence of significant climate change may seem conceptually straightforward, developing an accurate description of the intricacies of what is happening is deeply complex. The scope of this task places it beyond the capabilities of any individual or small group. Making sense of the myriad information is the responsibility of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a unique body fostered by the UN Environment Program and the World Meteorology Organization. Thousands of scientists are involved and the IPPC draws its evidence exclusively from peer-reviewed, published scientific literature; the contents of its Summary for Policymakers must meet the approval of government representatives from some 100 nations.

Active researchers will inevitably have some uncertainty – scepticism, even – about this or that emphasis in climate-change research. That’s how science works: scepticism develops the scientific debate. It plays itself out in competition, in discussion, in analysis, and by generating further results that test whether previous conclusions are justified, need further refinement or should be overturned. Everything is open to question, including the most basic assumptions. The debate is often intense and not always friendly. It does, however, inspire questions around which new studies can be designed – and these studies may produce new findings.

In a completely different category are the climate-change sceptics and deniers who cut themselves off from ongoing scientific discussion but happily share their views in the full glare of the media. The more extreme sceptics use the language of conspiracy theorists to characterise the IPCC as deeply flawed and to describe its key data-sets as fraudulent. They claim that the climate-science community largely comprises fools and knaves. The University of Adelaide geologist Ian Plimer argues along these lines in his book Heaven and Earth: Global Warming – The Missing Science, which has sold more than 30,000 copies in Australia since it was first published in April. It has been greatly acclaimed by those media commentators hostile to science and rational enquiry, but universally panned by informed reviewers for its scientific inaccuracy and basic misrepresentations.

In a way, climate-change scepticism is unsurprising. A denialist fringe operates at the margins of almost any important field of science that gets discussed widely in the public domain. The most egregious example in my field is the faction that claims the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) does not cause AIDS. Despite numerous identified cases of AIDS having been contracted by HIV-infected needle transmission, the identification and study of similar diseases in non-human primates and the fact that specifically targeted ‘designer drugs’ have been shown to reduce the virus load and bring people back to something like clinical normality, HIV–AIDS deniers include Nobel laureate Kary Mullis and senior American National Academy of Sciences member Peter Duesberg. Unfortunately, early-career achievement in science confers no protection against later becoming a dangerous and dogmatic nutter.

As well as outright deniers, every field has the occasional ‘combative confrontationalist’ who automatically assumes a position in opposition to any major consensus. If they are active researchers – and their urge for confrontation doesn’t reach virulently destructive heights – confrontationalists can serve a useful role by forcing people to sharpen their arguments. Writing a mundane study becomes much easier if you can cite an article by one of these folk, which often also allows you to establish the brilliance of your intellectual synthesis in the process. Another category of nay-sayers are the ‘professional controversialists’. Science is hard and it takes a great deal of effort to establish a strong reputation in any area. If you speak out loudly against the consensus view, however, it is much easier to become part of a prominent public discourse. The pronouncements of the eminent, and elderly, physicist Freeman Dyson on climate science are a case in point. The crux of Dyson’s argument seems to be that we shouldn’t take action on climate change because it could delay development in countries such as China.

 Finally, there are the ‘con?icted nay-sayers’: people who have, say, worked closely with the mining industry and who feel a strong sense of personal loyalty towards it. It seems to me, though, that the compromised loyalty of this particular form of nay-sayer is wasted, as, while miners may currently be losing on the swings, they stand to gain on the roundabouts. Coal mining may be in trouble, but uranium sales are up, and those in the much cleaner natural gas industry must be doing well. Most renewable-energy strategies use a wide variety of metals, including structural steel and aluminium, nickel, cadmium, indium, gallium, and platinum for batteries and fuel cells. Some mining jobs will be lost but – as with any technological revolution – others are being created. Once an ETS is in place, I suspect the current phase of the energy industry protesting too much will have passed.

With the exception of Stewart Franks – a mid-career hydrologist, who is publishing well – Australia’s prominent climate-change sceptics are not active research leaders. Some have held impressive appointments in the past, but spending a decade or more as the public face of an institution doesn’t necessarily correlate to a high level of contemporary scientific awareness. I, for one, am acutely aware that – although I am still looking at data, talking to young scientists in the lab and helping to write research papers – there is no way I can be ‘across’ my own increasingly complex area of research without the constant input of colleagues with different expertise and insights.

The reality that multi-faceted science must necessarily be collaborative is the basis of my extreme scepticism regarding climate-change deniers in the media, who purport to command an enormously complex field from the Promethean perspective of the superior detached intellect. Like all other science, climatology is data-driven, and the data is constantly flooding in: measurements of change in bird-migration patterns; details of ocean temperatures and wind pro?les; measurements of the calcification of coral, the ripening of grapes, the retreat of glaciers, and so on. Those who try, like Plimer, to cover the field simply by reading the specialist literature will inevitably make major mistakes. It’s essential to talk to other scientists, especially as relevant findings inevitably occur in areas outside your expertise. Meteorologists, physicists, geologists and oceanographers each have contributions to make, but the issue of climate change doesn’t belong to any one of them individually. It certainly does not belong to those at, or near to, retirement who are at odds with currently active scientists.

Social gospel and the Reformation

Little is known about the German Peasant's War in the christian community apart from Luther's fulminations about murdering, thieving peasants. It might come as a surprise to discover that the program of the peasant movements for reform were profoundly shaped by what we might now term a social gospel and an evangelically informed social and political critique.

James M Stayer provides a great introduction to the historiography of the German Peasant's War and the connections to the Anabaptist movement and its understanding of the community of goods.

This is an important historical moment that deserves to be better known by theologians. the historians have done us proud with their painstaking research in opening up fresh perspectives on this critical moment in European history.

What is Australia Day all about?

Trying to get clear about Australia Day is getting more difficult each year, as I find myself pushing through an increasing fog of efforts by retailers to get on the back of Government and Opposition attempts to turn into a patriotism fest about Australianness.

You could hardly make it down the aisles at my local supermarket for cases of beer everywhere, they are normally confined to the liquor aisle and sausages packaged in quantities that suggested that everyone was going to be catering for their local neighbourhood bar-b-q or that the extended family was planning to drop by again.

Is this an attempt to create a new sub-cult of an Australian civil religion and how well will it succeed?
Anzac Day is well ahead and has the advantage of a cult of martyrs to support it.

A bit of history might be helpful. Australia Day is really a date which bookmarks the start of the European landgrab. When I was growing up I remember it as a fairly local event that Western Australians for example were not much interested in and South Australian celebrated Foundation Day on 26 December as the start of their colony. Most importantly it marked the end of the holiday season and the date on which life could begin again in earnest, people could schedule meetings and politicians could start issuing press releases and be interviewed on current affairs programs.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders  have never been too excited about the date. It was too lead to a rolling war of conquest, theft, social disruption and disease for the next two centuries.Their feelings at best were captured in that famous cartoon of the Endeavour looming up on the horizon off Botany Bay, with one saying to the other "There goes the neighbourhood". Many remain unenthusiastic and alienated from the celebrations of nationhood on this particular date.

The movement to turn it into a date of patriotic celebration has gradually emerged over the past two decades but their is no central point of resonance and the meaning of the date remains highly disputed.

As a Christian for whom all loyalties are qualified by the commitment to following Jesus I start to get a bit queasy over pushes from the powers that be to join unreservedly in celebration of the nation.

The task is how to state the affirmation of seeking the welfare of the city as one who is something of an exile within it and not sound simply grouchy.


My mate Jarrod McKenna has helped me out with his own statement which has a little of the Australian larrikin in it.

My identity is found in no flag yet is lost on those who don't understand connection to the land. My anthem is not sung by those in uniform but is heard in the praise of birds who redecorate statues of men. My freedom was not won on the hills of Gallipoli but on the hill of Calvary. This is why I will never kill for country but will live for Love & seek the peace of the land. 

Why bother joining the ALP?

It is getting to the point where I seriously wonder why people both joining the ALP. One of the significant reasons for joining is that you get to vote in preselecting your parties candidate when a vacancy occurs. Why else give up all those Tuesday evenings?

Well increasingly it seems that you will not need to bother yourself with taking out membership if that was something you were interested in.  The ALP National Executive is willing take all that responsibility off local party members and do all the work of parceling out vacant seats based on complex deals to keep all the faction leaders happy.

Whatever happened to democracy within the party that claims a special place in the struggle for democracy in Australia?

What it looks like right now is continuing hollowing out of the ALP into nothing more than a self-perpetuating institution for carving out access to the right to manage the machinery of government whenever the ALP gets its turn.

The latest shenanigans in the ACT in which it looks unlikely at the moment that there will be a local preselection to replace the retiring members for the electorates of Fraser and Canberra is really the last straw. The rumours are that overriding factor is that the allocation of candidates for these electorates is the flow on results of deals done in the Sydney metropolitan area by factions within the party.

If that happens it is my profound hope that there is an electoral revolt. It has happened before in Canberra.

If the process goes unchallenged within the ALP it simply means that another one of the limited channels for community participation in the governmental process will have been blocked up.

Wendell Berry on war

Wendell Berry has contributed a number of essays on war that are striking in the clarity of expression and the breadth of their moral perspective.

The Failure of War
Peaceableness Toward Enemies
Thoughts in the Presence of Fear

In his first book of essays The Long-Legged House there are two relevant pieces that are not available on line: "A Statement Against the War in Vietnam" and "Sme thoughts on Citizenship and conscience in Honor of Don Pratt"

Also:

Blessed Are the Peacemakers: Christ's Teachings about Love, Compassion & Forgiveness. Washington, D. C.: Shoemaker & Hoard, 2005.

Berry is especially helpful in reminding us of the impact of war on creation and hence on ourselves as inextricably grounded in creation.

XIV. It was, as any war must be, in part a war against ourselves. Even in winning, we lost. Many of our young people were killed or hurt-though we look on this as a bargain price for the massive slaughter of our enemies. Our war industries are richer, but as a nation we are poorer. And though we have achieved "victory" by the damage that we did in the Middle East, we are poorer for that damage as well.

XV. It was not just Saddam Hussein's world that we damaged; it was our world. As every modern war has been and must be, this was a war against the world. In order to damage Saddam Hussein and his people, we damaged the earth. In order to protect himself and his people, Saddam Hussein damaged the earth. There was much talk in the press of Saddam Hussein's "crime" of releasing oil into the Persian Gulf. And yet we knew that he could and probably would do this; it was something we were willing to risk. It was the sort of thing that will inevitably happen in industrial warfare in industrial nations. Let us admit that the only solution to "world problems" that is in keeping with our military means is the destruction of the world. ("Peaceableness towards Enemies")