The Observation Deck

The news story considering whether "Christmas is under attack" is part of conservative religious extremists' fantasy that Christians are being persecuted by secular society. It is the latest tender morsel of outrage served up to a willing, receptive audience of cultural reactionaries who WANT to be angry about something all the time.

Unfortunately, an "if it bleeds it leads" media has covered this ruse as "news" and is getting eager assistance from the right wing broadcast machine (Rush Limbaugh, FOX, et al).

But the entire point of this faux fight, along with the whole list of Christian Right issues (gay marriage, Ten Commandments in public, etc.), is NOT to actually win (when was the last time a GOP President truly advanced the pro-life agenda, and didn't just use pro-life votes?) but to keep voters' blood fired up.

Why does that matter? If we are all psychologically on a war footing, if we underscore our divisions, if we talk only about the most intractable problems, the resulting style of thinking/feeling favors a certain kind of conflict, extremist politics. (For more on this read George Lakoff, who explains how language pushes psychological buttons underpinning political attitudes.)

If, on the other hand, we turn our psychological swords into plowshares, emphasize our commonalities, and focus on how we can "put our minds together to solve problems and make a better future for our children", politics looks and feels different.

Under the first, politics is shrill and divisive; moderate legislators retire and average citizens tune out.

Under the second, politics can be reasoned and unifying; moderates become the leaders in finding negotiated solutions, and average citizens find that the political system is doing a better job for them, whether it's run by Republicans or Democrats.

Which of these alternatives do *you* want?

I'd resist the urge to take up any banner in the "Merry Christmas versus Happy Holidays" fight. *Don't* fight--stay psychologically peaceful. That's the way out of Falwell's trap.

wow, another new thread on this topic

go figure

kate

Tom:

I see you are not selling tickets to the Neo-Con theatre of holiday symbol manipulation.

As a conspiracy freak whose study probes the profaning of the sacred in the spectacle of apocalypse, I read the episode as another instance of the ruling elite’s method of mind control.

Dr. Meredith Watts, BA Lawrence University, MA Northwestern University, PhD at Northwestern and Captain in the U.S. Air Force from 1967-1970, writes in “FURTHER THOUGHTS ON BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE AND SOCIAL MANAGEMENT:â€Â￾

“The primacy of politics implies that symbol manipulation if coupled with the capacity to employ physical and/or moral violence assures adequate resources both to maintain the political class and its parasitic dependents, and to provide for adequate response to internal and external challenge.â€Â￾

For more:
http://itest.slu.edu/dloads/70s/techsoc ... cial-2.txt

So your focus on the blood boil, which ultimately pumps through culture to ethnic and religious identities and differences, is on the money.

High blood pressure feeds big Pharma, too.

The secular/humanist shot, under attack since the rise of Reagan and the Neo-cons, was intended to chill the blood that drives society and culture to pulse through psychologically and spiritually complex relationships with various deities and sacred texts.

The call to battle for cultural hegemony is always there. The frustration of one ethnic/religious minority with another ethnic/religious majority is the horizon that never goes away.

That’s why so often one minority is forced to submit to the sword, the waters of baptism, the separation of church and state, what have you.

The latest iteration in the culture war is Neo-con Judeo/Christian versus the Neo-liberal secular humanist. Which side are you on boy?

Then both these Neo sides, which is the Janus face of modern Western cultural hegemony, having resurrected a sacred Judeo-Christian kernal, can now square off against traditional Islam in the total war to reform it, grab resources and thin the planet.

Believe me I am not saying traditional Islamic culture is our friend. I simply want to lay out the set-up of the geopolitics and symbol manipulation.

Getting locked and loaded for that culture war is a practice not worth cultivating for very long, because your mind is where power elite has established its ideological playbook. But how can we avoid it?

Speaking more locally, the relevant terms of cultic conflict are sacred and profane – how to interface sensitively in a season that is holy for some and commercial for others, and all combinations for some and none of the above of others.

I remember the Knights of Columbus, an organization of Roman Catholic culture warriors, advancing the “Keep Christ in Christmasâ€Â￾ message many years ago. I suppose they may still be doing so.

When any culture achieves hegemony/dominance its body of learned behaviors will rule.

Accordingly the sub-cultures, whether ethno-religious, secular, universalist, nationalist, internationalist etc. will organize resistance and articulate grievances.

What can we do?

Tend our roots peacefully.

What you transmit from your culture may affect others in unpredictable ways.

Such is life in a diverse society.

You offer excellent advice on tending the holiday fire in a peaceful seal of the heart that ignores mass media and special interest symbol manipulation that would march us off to culture war.

Let the chips fall from the heart.

Kenneth Warren

Thanks, Tom. This is what I was pointing out on the other thread!!

Where were you when Kate was jumping all over me the other day!!

As I said, this incredibly outdated topic is all a big straw man for the Neanderthal wing of the GOP to play its "Christians are persecuted" routine.

Despite war, hurricanes, Washington scandals, etc. this topic is all over the mass media (along with our beloved Ms. Natalee, of course).

Check out today's PD Forum section for the Letters to the Editor.

No less than three letter writers indignant that Christmas is being dissed.

Mike Deneen wrote:Thanks, Tom. This is what I was pointing out on the other thread!!

Where were you when Kate was jumping all over me the other day!!

As I said, this incredibly outdated topic is all a big straw man for the Neanderthal wing of the GOP to play its "Christians are persecuted" routine.

Despite war, hurricanes, Washington scandals, etc. this topic is all over the mass media (along with our beloved Ms. Natalee, of course).

Mike

You three could of talked about this at Bela's and met Todd as well. That's where Tom was!

You were missed.


.

OK, I can't stand it. For the meanest satire on this subject, check out http://bettybowers.com and look at her latest newsletter.
Warning: this is offensive to many good hearted people.

Ken,

In pointing out that...

the blood boil . . . ultimately pumps through culture to ethnic and religious identities and differences

...are you pointing out that picking a fight over Merry Christmas v Happy Holidays is an attempt to shift from communitarian ("green meme") values to tribal/warband ("red meme") values?

The thought hadn't occurred to me, but it's a good one. (Can you post the link to meme theory here?) I would have thought the dynamic might be enforcement of traditional rules ("blue meme")--rigid adherence to rules and resistance to change which threatens to modify tradition. However, I suppose that would be more sober, rather like enforcing zoning laws against gaudy lawn ornaments and clothes lines (i.e. whether you agree with the law or not, the law is the law and it must be enforced).

As you say, the fundamental challenge is, how do we negotiate

"life in a diverse society" ?

Can we learn to co-exist as neighbors who live side-by-side peacefully--and even grow respectful of and curious about one another? Or must we respond to difference like a panicked horses, bolting through the streets, fleeing away, and rejecting people whose ways didn't have a place in the world we learned to call "normal" in our formative years?

Whenever I feel I'm being manipulated into a blood boiling moment, it helps me to "zoom out" historically and try to put things in perspective. This from the New York Times explains some of our shortsightedness when it comes to Christmas:


This Season's War Cry: Commercialize Christmas, or Else
By ADAM COHEN

"America has a complicated history with Christmas, going back to the Puritans, who despised it. What the boycotters are doing is not defending America's Christmas traditions, but creating a new version of the holiday that fits a political agenda.

The Puritans considered Christmas un-Christian, and hoped to keep it out of America. They could not find Dec. 25 in the Bible, their sole source of religious guidance, and insisted that the date derived from Saturnalia, the Roman heathens' wintertime celebration. On their first Dec. 25 in the New World, in 1620, the Puritans worked on building projects and ostentatiously ignored the holiday. From 1659 to 1681 Massachusetts went further, making celebrating Christmas "by forbearing of labor, feasting or in any other way" a crime.

The concern that Christmas distracted from religious piety continued even after Puritanism waned. In 1827, an Episcopal bishop lamented that the Devil had stolen Christmas "and converted it into a day of worldly festivity, shooting and swearing." Throughout the 1800's, many religious leaders were still trying to hold the line. As late as 1855, New York newspapers reported that Presbyterian, Baptist and Methodist churches were closed on Dec. 25 because "they do not accept the day as a Holy One." On the eve of the Civil War, Christmas was recognized in just 18 states."

Tom - I appreciate the sentiment in the following: "If, on the other hand, we turn our psychological swords into plowshares, emphasize our commonalities, and focus on how we can "put our minds together to solve problems and make a better future for our children", politics looks and feels different."

TPB made good points in the initial post of this thread, on that i'll agree. but i took exception with citing falwell as if that man is some sort of mouthpiece for the gop.

though most of falwell's followers are most certainly republican, not all republicans follow falwell. fortunately i see falwell for what he is - a huckster who uses Christ as a means to line his pockets.

like in the other thread on this same subject where that boob, john gibson, was mentioned, the citing of falwell (another boob) made me roll my eyes (and reply).

ellen, your post about christianity and christmas was dead on. Jesus wasn't born in december and the bible makes a few things clear on the matter of christmas trees and bowing to a man in a red suit. i should very much like to engage in conversation with you one day.

kate

Dear Kate - Amen!