Month: December 2010

Christmas Eve

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Fr. Frederick W. Faber is a spiritual writer who is little-known these days. His style is old-fashioned, but the substance is usually very sound. I found out about him by buying two of his books a thrift store years ago. His book Bethlahem (1860) is now instantly available to us all via the wonders of Google Books. One of my favorite passages talks about the response of the world to appearance of Jesus. He asks us first to imagine the arrival of Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem:

The twilight deepens. Mary and Joseph descend the hill. They find the cave, a stable-cave, a sort of grotto … a poor couple from Nazareth have sought refuge with the ox and ass in the stable. What is about to happen there? It must be differently described, according to the points of view from which we consider it. Angels would say that some of God’s eternal decrees were on the eve of being accomplished in the most divine and beautiful of ways, and that the invisible King was about to come forth and take visible possession of a kingdom, not narrower than a universe, with such pomp as the spiritual and godlike angels most affect. The magistrate in Bethlehem would say, that, at the time of the census, a pauper child had been added to the population by a houseless couple who had come from Nazareth, noting perhaps that the couple were of good family but fallen into poverty. This would be the way in which the world would register the advent of its Maker. It is a consistent world, only an unteachable one. It has learnt nothing by experience. It registers Him in the same manner this very day.

Fr. Faber then goes around the world and imagines what state it is in on the night of Christ’s birth. I like best his depiction of the Roman Empire, which reminds me of our own times:

Let us go forth upon the slopes, and watch the night darkening, and think of the great earth that lies both near and far away from this new and obscure sanctuary, which God is about to hallow with such an authentic consecration. Much of earth is occupied with Roman business. Couriers are hastening to and fro upon the highways of the empire. The affairs of the vast colonies are giving employment and concern to many statesmen and governors. The great city of Rome itself is the centre of an intellectual and practical activity, which makes itself felt at the furthest extremities of the empire. Upon some minds, and especially those of a more philosophical cast, the growth of moral corruption, and other grave social questions, are weighing heavily. There are lawyers also intent upon their pleadings. Huge armies, which are republics of themselves, are fast rising to be the lawless masters of the world. But nowhere in the vast world of Roman politics does there seem a trace of the Cave of Bethlehem. No prophetic shadows are cast visibly on the scene. All things wear a look of stability. The system, ponderous as it is, works like a well-constructed machine. No one is suspecting anything. It would not be easy for the world to be making less reference to God than it was making then. No one was on the look-out for a divine interference, unless it were that here and there some truth-stammering oracle perturbed a narrow circle, whose superstition was the thing likest religion of all things in the heathen world. In the palace of the Csesars, who suspected that unborn Caesar in His Cave?

“No one was on the look-out for a divine interference … .”

Least of all as a baby, in a poor place, in a poor and conquered country.

God’s love invaded the world, stealthily at first. Two thousand years later we still celebrate it.

Merry Christmas to all Chicagoboyz, and to our readers.

God bless everyone who cannot be home for Christmas, especially our men and women in uniform around the world.

How It Ends

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WIND POWER AND SPAIN

Alternative power (wind & solar, primarily) survives because of subsidies that make it competitive with the traditional “base load” power sources of nuclear, coal, natural gas and hydroelectric power. These subsidies have to be passed on, in some form or another, to either the end user that pays the power bill or the taxpayer who funds it on behalf of all citizens.

Spain, in particular, offered incentives that led to a large investment in wind power facilities. Spain was viewed as a “model” country for alternative power by greens as a result of these policies.

Today’s WSJ had an article titled “Spain’s Cuts to Solar Aid Draw Fire” that summarized the situation:

In Spain, solar-PV plants (cost) roughly 10 times the price utilities pay for power produced from conventional sources such as gas and coal.

Since Spain is having financial problems, these subsidies are expected to be significantly reduced, by up to 30%. The developers of these wind farms are crying foul, saying that Spain is reneging on its commitments and offering up a form of the “expropriation” argument that often occurs over power investments of this type.

20 billion Euros had been invested in the solar-PV plants in Spain… the tariff changes could force many solar producers in default on their debts.

It is interesting that debt-holders assumed that citizens would want to pay ten times the rate of coal and gas power for “clean” wind power indefinitely. It doesn’t seem like a bet that is going to pay off for them.

GOVERNMENT PENSIONS

Another infeasible and indefensible scheme is also beginning to show cracks towards its inevitable collapse. This article describes the situation in the city of Prichard, Alabama.

The financially troubled suburb of Mobile turned to bankruptcy court… when it simply ran out of money to meet pension obligations… Prichard proposed capping benefits to current retirees at $200 a month, down from monthly payments as much as $3,000.

The obligations of many, many municipalities are unsustainable. Prior politicians promised benefits that can’t be paid without seriously reducing and impairing existing services. The type of “haircut” that Prichard was proposing seems very onerous but they have to pay for existing salaries and benefits and then the costs of the retired staffing on top of it is apparently impossible.

At some point a new generation of politician will come into office and have to make the choice of either 1) raising taxes to unsustainable levels (and thus being thrown out of office) to pay for past pension promises 2) find a way to get out of the promises by either going bankrupt or somehow “cramming down” smaller payments.

It is a good bet that many of the politicians will balk at raising taxes and seriously look at bankruptcy or some other way to reduce these costs simply because raising taxes during a recession when citizens are hard up is political suicide. The same forces (conflict avoidance, pandering) that allowed unions to amass such favorable terms while the fiction of pensions and 10% returns on investments compounded forever existed works exactly in reverse when the situation becomes dire; why would the politician try to sacrifice everything (including current workers) for past worker pensions and health benefits?

In both these cases the fictions that citizens are willing to bear higher than market costs indefinitely for alternative power or to pay for lifetime pensions for people retiring in their 50’s is going to founder, and these consequences will ripple through the entire financial and governmental sector.

This is how it ends.

Cross posted at LITGM

Super Size Me!

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Here is a question for you – what size do you think a man a bit under six feet tall and around 200 pounds would wear? And the answer is… SMALL. This was at Eddie Bauer and among a vast stack of winter clothes and shirts. It fits me fine.

I won’t bore you with statistics that are easily obtainable everywhere on the Internet about how Americans are getting larger, but this is the most overt sign that I have seen yet.

Dan at his new fighting trim size would probably be an extra small from the waist line perspective, at least.

Cross posted at LITGM

Martyrdom, messianism and Julian Assange

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[ cross-posted from Zenpundit ]

Martyr and messiah are two of the more intense “roles” in the religious vocabulary, and unlike mystics and saints, both martyrs and messiahs tend to have an impact, not just within their own religious circles but in the wider context of the times.

Martyr and messiah are also words that can be bandied about fairly loosely — so a simple word-search on “messiah” will reveal references to a third-person platform game with some gunplay and the white messiah fable in Avatar, while a search on “martyr” might tell you how to become a martyr for affiliate networks, just as a search on “crusade” will turn up crusades for justice or mental health – my search today even pointed me to a crusade for cloth diapers.

1. Martyrdom and messianism in WikiLeaks

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, both terms crop up occasionally in WikiLeaks, with the Government of Iraq, for instance, banning use of the word “martyr” for soldiers who died in the war with Iran, and US diplomats wiring home a report by an opposition psychiatrist to the effect that “Morally, Chavez [of Venezuela] combines a sense of tragedy and romanticism (a desire for an idyllic world) to project a messianic image.” Indeed, the whole paragraph is choc-a-bloc with that kind of imagery, and worth quoting in full:

Ideologically, Chavez wants to project an image of a “utopian socialist,” which de Vries described as someone who is revolutionary, collectivist, and dogmatic. In reality, de Vries argues, Chavez is an absolute pragmatist when it comes to maintaining power, which makes him a conservative. Coupled with Chavez’ self-love (narcissism), sense of destiny, and obsession with Venezuelan symbolism, this pragmatism makes Chavez look more like fascist, however, rather than a socialist. Morally, Chavez combines a sense of tragedy and romanticism (a desire for an idyllic world) to project a messianic image. De Vries, however, said Chavez is a realist who uses morals and ethics to fit the situation.

PM Netanyahu of Israel was using the term “messianic” with a little more precision when he described the Iranian regime as “crazy, retrograde, and fanatical, with a Messianic desire to speed up a violent ‘end of days.'”

2. Julian Assange in the role of martyr

The words martyr and messiah, then, carry a symbolic freight that is at the very least comparable to that of flags and scriptures – so it is interesting that both terms crop up in the recent BBC interview with Julian Assange.

My reading of the interview suggests that it is Assange himself who introduces the meme of martyrdom, though not the word itself, when he answers a question about the impact of the sexual accusations against him, “What impact do you think that will have on your organisation and what sort of figure do you think you, Julian Assange, cut in the face of all this. How will you be regarded? What will it do to you?” with the response, “I think it will be quite helpful for our organisation.”

In the follow up, interviewer John Humphrys twice uses the word “martyr” explicitly:

Q: Really? You see yourself as a martyr then?
 
JA: I think it will focus an incredible attention on the details of this case and then when the details of this case come out and people look to see what the actions are compared to the reality of the facts, other than that, it will expose a tremendous abuse of power. And that will, in fact, be helpful to this organisation. And, in fact, the extra focus that has occurred over the last two weeks has been very helpful to this organisation.

and:

Q: Just to answer that question then. You think this will be good for you and good for Wikileaks?
 
JA: I’ve had to suffer and we’ve had incredible disruptions.
 
Q: You do see yourself as a martyr here.
 
JA: Well, you know, in a very beneficial position, if you can be martyred without dying. And we’ve had a little bit of that over the past ten days. And if this case goes on, we will have more.

3. Julian Assange in the role of messiah

If the role of martyr implies, at minimum, that one suffers for a cause, that of messiah implies that one leads it in a profound transformation of the world. Both terms are now found in association with the word “complex” – which applies whenever a individual views himself or herself as a martyr or messiah – but a “messianic complex” is presumably more worrisome than a “martyr complex” if only for the reason that there are many more martyrs than messiahs, many more willing to suffer for a cause than to lead it.

It is accordingly worth noting that it is the interviewer, John Humphrys, who introduces both the word “messianic” and the concept of a “messianic figure” into the interview, although Assange makes no effort to wave it away…

Q: Just a final thought. Do you see yourself… as some sort of messianic figure?
 
JA: Everyone would like to be a messianic figure without dying. We bringing some important change about what is perceived to be rights of people who expose abuses by powerful corporations and then to resist censorship attacks after the event. We are also changing the perception of the west.
 
Q: I’m talking about you personally.
 
JA: I’m always so focussed on my work, I don’t have time to think about how I perceive myself… I had time to perceive myself a bit more in solitary confinement. I was perfectly happy with myself. I wondered what that process would do. Would I think “my goodness, how have I got into this mess, is it all just too hard?”
 
The world is a very ungrateful place, why should I continue to suffer simply to try and do some good in the world. If the world is so viciously against it ,why don’t I just go off and do some mathematics or write some books? But no, actually, I felt quite at peace.
 
Q: You want to change the world?
 
JA: Absolutely. The world has a lot of problems and they need to be reformed. And we only live once. Every person who has some ability to do something about it, if they are a person of good character, has the duty to try and fix the problems in the environment which they’re in.
 
That is a value, that, yes, comes partly from my temperament. There is also a value that comes from my father, which is that capable, generous men don’t create victims, they try and save people from becoming victims. That is what they are tasked to do. If they do not do that they are not worthy of respect or they are not capable.

4. Julian Assange, martyr and messiah?

I think it is clear that both Assange and his interviewer are in effect reframing the religious terms “martyr” and “messiah” in non-religious, basically psychological senses — although I don’t suppose Assange is exactly claiming to have the two “complexes” I mentioned above.

Here’s what’s curious about this reframing, from a religious studies point of view:

Assange’s implicit acceptance of a “messianic” role undercuts the specific force of the role of “martyr” – one who gives his life for the cause. “Everyone” he says, “would like to be a messianic figure without dying.” Assange wouldn’t exactly object to being a martyr without dying, too.

Delicious Irony

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Today while reading the WSJ I came across an article on the impact of some changes to the medical insurance laws.

Members of the Screen Actors Guild recently read in their health plan’s newsletter that, beginning in January, almost 12,000 of its participants will lose access to treatment for mental-health and substance-abuse issues. The guild’s health plan represents one of a small number of unions, employers and insurers that are scrapping such benefits for their enrollees because of a 2008 law that requires that mental-health and substance-abuse benefits, if offered, be as robust as medical or surgical benefits. By dropping such coverage, providers can circumvent the requirements.

Changing laws to mandate higher SERVICE requirements on employers (and in this case, guilds or unions) obviously causes COSTS to rise, as well. Since not all costs are borne by the government and thus invisible to the average non-governmental employee, businesses have to take steps to cope with these laws and reduce costs somewhere.

The irony of all this is that probably no group in the popular imagination is as associated with mental illness and treatment for substance abuse as actors; from reading the popular press you would get the picture that many of them spend some time in “rehab” at some point in their career.

And even more you can just picture in your minds eye some aging, pompous actor or actress chaining themselves to the fence in favor of this type of mandate with some sort of sign over their head saying “Justice for All” and stating that doesn’t everyone deserve the best coverage?

But the net result of this sort of mandate is no coverage for anyone, since the plan can’t afford to move from a normal plan to a “gold plated” plan, so they are dropping it entirely.

And no one needs mental health assistance & rebab more than the deluded actor base on the left coast that funds and agitates for just this sort of mandate in the first place.

Now that’s irony.

Cross posted at LITGM