Star Trek: Discovery -- "Context is for Kings"

I waited three days before writing anything about this episode, because I was hoping something would come to me that I haven't already said.  Alas, it was not to be.  I still see no justification for this series being a prequel to original Star Trek.  If anything, I see even less justification for this series being a prequel.  Apparently, the crew of the Discovery (or, at least, its engineering staff) is working on a fungus-based technology that will allow people to beam from planet to planet.  Benedict Cumberbatch's shenanigans notwithstanding, we know that doesn't pan out, because people are not beaming from planet to planet in the twenty fourth century.  Already we are seeing the brutalizing effect of war on the Federation (or maybe this vision of the Federation was always brutal).  Very few characters in this episode come off as sympathetic or empathetic to each other or us.  Authority figures relate to their subordinates principally via condescension.  A shuttle pilot gets jettisoned into deep space in the first five minutes of the episode and no one bats an eye.  Culturally, I do not see how this Federation evolves into Captain Kirk's Federation in less than ten years.

While we're on the topic of the Federation's new mean streak, I'm beginning to worry that I gave the first episode too easy a pass on the whole "mutiny" thing.  The first half of the effectively two-part pilot ends with Commander Burnham (sp?) Vulcan neck-pinching her mentor and (I assume) friend of seven years, Captain Georgiou.  Captain Georgiou then pulls a phaser on Commander Burnham.  I understand that "character you like pulls a gun on another character you like" is a time-honored way of ratcheting up the tension (and, I assume, it is probably what a commanding officer would do upon being rendered unconscious against her will by a subordinate, so maybe the fault lies more with Commander Burnham than Captain Georgiou), but I thought Star Trek was better than that.  This is supposed to be a vision of what humanity can become when we recognize, if not entirely overcome, our flaws, not a world in which professional military officers -- especially those in command of.... anything -- assault one another when they disagree.  The idea that the moral authority of the Federation has been or always was compromised is a worthwhile theme (again: something that Deep Space Nine got to first with the Maquis and Section 31 plots).  I'm not sure, though, that the way to explore that theme is by presenting us with a cast of main characters who are themselves compromised (put another way: I'm not ready to watch a Star Trek series in which I feel unfriendly towards more than half of the characters).  I know I am being hasty and we will get a chance to see everyone's warm and sympathetic side in turn (except Captain Lorca; that guy is Admiral Presman levels of creepy).  I just feel like this isn't quite Star Trek (because I clearly get to define what is and is not Star Trek....), which I would be much more comfortable with if it was sold to me as what Captain Janeway's Federation became through neglect and dissolution as opposed to the thing that became Captain Kirk's Federation through surviving a war with the Klingons.

Also: the super-top-secret lab is secured with a.... breathalyzer lock.  Clearly that choice was made to make it reasonable for Commander Burnham to hack the lock (which she could only do because her cadet bunk mate is authorized to enter the super-top-secret lab; one of those words, "cadet" or "top-secret" doesn't mean what I think it means).  I am just pointing this out because that level of world building for the sake of plot this early in the show doesn't strike me as a good sign.

Vulcan Hello

Star Trek is what taught me to be a geek.  When my brother and I were pre-teens, our mother would tape the late night re-runs of "Star Trek: the Next Generation" (hereafter TNG) and we would binge-watch them all on Friday night in anticipation of watching the new episode that would be premiering on the following Saturday.  As a result, I have seen every TNG episode at least five times (except "Code of Honor;" @$%$ "Code of Honor").  None of this should surprise anyone who knows me well enough to be reading this blog.  I just want to make it clear what a big deal it was for me when I learned that there was going to be a new Star Trek show on "television" (scare quotes because, of course, you can't actually watch it on anything that anyone from the 1980s would recognize as a television), and I don't necessarily mean "big deal" in a good way.  I am one of those who responded to the ad campaign for Abrams Trek 1 -- "this is not your father's Star Trek" -- with "but.... I liked my father's Star Trek."  I like watching pedantic arguments about the political ramifications of abrogating the Treaty of Algeron.  "Abrams Trek 2: Into Darkness," with it's poorly-motivated laser gun fights papered-over with shallow recreations of memes from "The Wrath of Khan," made me..... upset.  Accordingly, my experience of the lead-up to "Star Trek: Discovery" went something like this:

1) "Bryan Fuller is making a new 'Star Trek' series!  Alright!  I loved 'Pushing Daisies'!  I can't wait to see what he does with 'Star Trek'."

2) "Bryan Fuller is..... not making a new 'Star Trek' series, but someone else is using his ideas.  Okay... I guess he probably is pretty busy with 'American Gods.'  Sure...."

3) "They have cast Raine Wilson as Harry Mudd.  They have cast anyone as Harry Mudd.  No.  No. No.  No.  No.  No.  Stop.  Please, stop."

4) "The main character is a human raised on Vulcan by Sarek (Spock's father).  Oh, for #$%@ sake! There are OTHER Vulcans, you know?"

Nevertheless, this evening I held my nose and watched the two-part pilot of "Star Trek: Discovery."  These are my thoughts (recorded because, you know, I can).  Is this where I'm supposed to say "spoiler alert?"  I'm not recapping anything here, but I'm going to speak like you've seen the episodes.

That wasn't half bad.  It actually felt like Star Trek.  There were more laser guns and explosions than I'm used to, but I feel like I understood why everyone was shooting at each other, which is a marked improvement over more recent additions to the franchise.  I am not totally sold, though, that the principal threat had to be Klingons, as opposed to a new alien species created specifically for "Discovery," or that this story should be happening in the past rather than the future (where "the past" means before Captain Kirk and "the future" means after Captains Picard, Sisko, and Janeway; the only way time should really be reckoned).

These are essentially same question.  Klingons are the second most studied alien species in Star Trek behind Vulcans.  We know a lot about Klingons.  Nothing that was introduced in this pilot contradicts what we already know about Klingon culture (TNG introduced a very strong and reasonably defined Klingon spirituality), but I worry about how it interacts with what we know of Klingon history (disclaimer: I am a snob about my Star Trek; I refused to watch and thus know very little about "Enterprise",  or, for that matter, "Voyager," so maybe everything I am about to say was addressed by where "Enterprise" left off; I know Klingons appeared in "Enterprise" somewhere).  The Klingons of Captain Kirk's Star Trek were a well-established, stable society that interacted with the Federation much as the Soviet Union interacted with the United States at the time Captain Kirk was on television: a respectful adversary who would like to wipe them off the map if they could, but who acknowledges the political and military realities that make that proposition difficult.  The first two hours of "Discovery" present us with a fractious Klingon society that is only just now banding together under the influence of an apparent religious revival.  Furthermore, by the end of those two hours, a fairly bloody war has broken out between the Federation and the Klingons.  Granted, it has been a long time since I saw "Errand of Mercy," but I never got the sense that Captain Kirk and company were less than a decade removed from a shooting war with the Klingons.  Compare the collegial disdain shared between the Klingons and Captain Kirk's Federation with the racist vitriol directed towards Romulans (and, by extension, Spock, when the magic of view screen technology reveals that Vulcans and Romulans are somehow related) in "Balance of Terror," in which it is explicitly stated that only a generation has passed since an all-out Federation-Romulan war.

Finally, the chief exponent of the Klingon revival, a self-styled messiah named T'Kuva, appears to be very concerned with the sanctity of Klingon culture.  This is an interesting idea in the Star Trek universe.  "Deep Space Nine" started to deal with it, by which I mean that they mentioned it once when they had Commander Eddington, a Starfleet officer-turned-Maquis-terrorist/freedom fighter compare the Federation unfavorably to the Borg ("at least the Borg tell you they want to assimilate you").  The problem I have with dealing with this idea in "Discovery" is... why now?  Why are the Klingons worried about cultural assimilation at this point in their history.  As presented to us, it is not even obvious that Vulcans are fully integrated into the Federation at the time of "Discovery."  Certainly no one is tossing around the idea of incorporating the Klingons into the Federation, yet.*  Fast forward a few hundred years (into the post Picard/Sisko/Janeway future) and this story would be very timely and, I think, much more believable.  TNG presented an alliance with the Klingons as the next logical step in our post Cold War progression towards a more perfect incarnation of Gene Roddenberry's vision.  It's not obvious how many Klingons were happy with that (there were several episodes early in the series that pretty definitively made the case "not all of them").  Maybe a few decades later, as the Klingons became even more integrated into the Federation after their united victory in the Dominion War, there would be some in the (former) Klingon Empire eager to receive T'Kuva's gospel of Klingon "purity" (a good friend of mine actually pitched something very similar to this, set in the future, as his ideal "next Star Trek" story).  Maybe I'm wrong and this will all make perfect sense once the show runs its course and we will see a seamless transition from ragtag religious revival to 1960s-style superpower.  I hope I am wrong.  I just don't want Star Trek to fall into the trap of thinking that all of our best stories are behind us and that the future is "solved."

PS I'm still upset that it's Sarek.

PPS I'm also still upset that it's going to be Harry Mudd.

PPPS They screwed up canon.  The Klingons didn't invent the cloaking device.  They got it from the Romulans in the alliance first referenced in "The Enterprise Incident" (though Klingon ships that could cloak really weren't a thing until Star Trek 3).  There; I've said it.

* I do acknowledge that there can be other threats to cultural integrity besides explicit incorporation into something like the Federation, but if that is what is going on here, I need to be explicitly told that the Klingons lost a war, or experienced some major loss of territory, or somesuch.  If this really just boils down to "Klingons preserve their culture by fighting because Klingon culture is about fighting" I'm going to be disappointed (but not surprised; Star Trek aliens are not the most fleshed-out societies on television; that's what Babylon 5 is for).

Time and Place

Disclaimer the first: The title of this blog post probably doesn't mean what you think it means.

Disclaimer the second: It is entirely possible that some of you will think I'm a hypocrite by the time you reach the end of this post.  You are justified in so thinking.  I will do my best to keep the hypocrisy limited to the footnotes.  "Hypocrisy" may also be a proxy for "snark."

Among the several Major Life Changes I am going through right now, my girlfriend and I are "church shopping."  Every Sunday, we visit one of several churches in our neighborhood.  Eventually, we will tell all but one of them that we're really just not that into them.  We thought we'd narrowed it down to two finalists.  Then we discovered that both of them are currently led by interim/imminently retiring pastors.  We have not decided if we are going to expand our list.

One of the finalists is a Lutheran church.  One part of Lutheran worship (and maybe the worship of other denominations; I'm not sure) is the Prayers of the People.  The celebrant reads a list of standard petitions to which the congregation replies "Lord, hear our prayer" (or some variant thereof).  These are usually pithy yet general enough to be unequivocally good things (e.g., "We pray for there to be less starvation in the world with a preference for no starvation").  The floor is then opened for members of the congregation to spontaneously offer their own petitions, which are then also given general sanction.  We're all Christians.  We should pray for each other.  Maybe someone's aunt is sick.  How can you know?

Today, one of the spontaneous petitions was "Help return our nation to what our founding father's intended."*  A similar petition was made the Sunday after the election (we were attending the same church that particular Sunday).  Today, the petition was immediately followed by a prayer for a Federal ban on assault weapons.  This particular turn of awkward events has prompted several reflections which I present in no particular order.

1) NOT COOL.  As I said, the way the Prayers of the People work is that someone asks for a prayer and everyone responds "Lord, hear our prayer."  I did not say that everyone has the option of responding "Lord, hear our prayer."  Everyone responds "Lord, hear our prayer."  That places a particular onus on the petitioner to ask himself (both were men in this case) "is what I'm asking for really something that all Christians (or, at least, all Lutherans) agree upon?  Is it a part of Lewis' 'Mere Christianity'?"  I want to believe that the "no assault weapons" advocate only said what he said to counterbalance the "founding fathers" prayer (I also want to believe that God is not in favor of assault weapons as a general rule), but maybe he was going to ask God to ban assault weapons, anyway.  Regardless, these gentlemen should have realized that these were issues that can (and should) be debated without committing heresy and saved their prayers for a time when we wouldn't all look rude for not agreeing (full-disclosure: I did not say "Lord, hear our prayer," to restore the founding fathers' vision; I muttered it to get assault weapons banned).

1b) I guess this is a good stand-in for the school prayer debate (or at least an explanation for why there still is a school prayer debate).  These gentlemen assumed everyone in the room was exactly like them and therefore saw no problem in foisting our approbation upon their views.  If Lutherans (Lutherans!) cannot see how that is problematic when surrounded by other Lutherans (LUTHERANS!), how can we expect Christians writ large to see how it is problematic when they are leading a classroom full of 30 children whom they assume are Christian except that two of them are actually Jews, three are Hindu, and one is an atheist?

2) All of that being said... there has to be a time and place for these conversations.  If churchgoers actually believe what they say they believe, it should probably have a fundamental influence on how they live the rest of their lives.  Does God want us to return to the founding fathers' vision*?  Does He want us to ban assault weapons?  If we're not going to ask these questions, what is the point of faith?  As a friend once said when I was in earshot "church can legally affect the state; it's just that the state cannot legally affect the church."  The problem is less that the gentlemen in question brought their politics to their house of worship.  The problem is that they brought it at a time when we are supposed to give thanks to God, support one another, and not raise any hackles.  We all (most of us) said "Lord, hear our prayer," and moved on.  I'm not a pastor.  I don't know what pastors think about such things, but in my imagination, if I were, I would have stopped the service right there and asked the congregation: "What do we think about that?"

2b) The first two-thirds of episode #456 of "This American Life" examine the "self-deportation" movement: the idea that states can solve the problem** of illegal immigration by making life so miserable for illegal immigrants that they will elect to leave.  Specifically, the episode focuses on an Alabama bill that allows state law enforcement to ask people to produce their immigration papers and arrest them if something is amiss.  It also makes it a crime to employ an illegal immigrant (that part may be redundant). Around the 34 minute mark, they interview State Senator Gerald Dial of Alabama, a self-described "devout Christian" working to amend the bill (which he originally voted for) so that providing charitable help to an illegal immigrant is not, itself, a crime.  The interview culminates in this exchange.

Jack Hick (interviewer): "Once you've amended the bill, do you think Jesus would vote for the bill?"

State Senator Dial: "Gosh... you've asked me a tough question you know, uh... I would hope that He would understand that... I would, I would say that.... would He vote for the bill?  Probably not."

This makes no sense to me.  If you are a lawmaker who believes in God and you are presented with a law that you believe God would not support (and I would say it's pretty safe theology that God does not support making people's lives miserable), how can you, in good conscience, vote for it yourself?  I worry that this is one of the direct consequences of our refusal as a society to discuss "tough issues."  It is impolite to talk about politics.  It is impolite to talk about religion.  We just say "Lord, hear our prayer" and go about our days with all kinds of self-contradictory nonsense living in our brains.  To quote Ray Bradbury (by way of 'The West Wing') "If you hide your ignorance, no one will ever hit you, and you will never learn."

I started out annoyed that politics were injected into the church service I attended.  I have pretty strong views about what my religion says about my politics, but I'm still annoyed.  I'm annoyed because the politics were injected, not by reasoned debate, but by fiat.  "I believe X, and therefore, you're all going to pray for X with me."

No.

I'm really not.

*Never mind that our founding fathers intended to leave slavery legal in half the country.  Also, isn't one of the points of Christianity supposed to be that exactly one infallible person has ever been born?

**I didn't want to overcrowd that sentence with scare quotes, so let me just say that the idea that illegal immigration is a problem (unless you are talking about people dying in the desert trying to get to Arizona, because that is a problem) is... problematic to me.  The people and institutions responsible for the financial crisis all had their papers in order.

That word... I don't think it means what you think it means.

These are the words of a US Senator

“I don’t think the people of Wisconsin discriminate against anybody, but I think we also hold the traditional view that marriage is between a man and a woman,” says Johnson. “I don’t find that contradictory at all. I’d favor civil unions. I have no problem with that.”

I just.... I can't.... There aren't..... gah!

citation:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2012/10/tammy_baldwin_may_be_the_first_openly_gay_u_s_senator_and_no_one_considers.html

Grace, Courage, and Wisdom

Sometime around the 2004 election, I harumphed in loud approval as a friend of mine railed against single-issue voters.  The single-issue voters specifically elected for my friend's ridicule were the members of the so-called "pro-life" faction (scare quotes in honor of the mind-boggling number of people who oppose abortion, support capital punishment, and have somehow managed to convince themselves that giving poor people food and education was not what Jesus had in mind).  My friend thought it irresponsible bordering on silly to decide anything as important as one's vote for President, Senator, or Congressperson based solely on the candidates' views about the appropriate relationship between the Federal Government, fetuses, and womens' internal organs.  As I said: I harumphed.  What I did not understand/was not willing to face at the time was that I was and am a single-issue voter myself.

Five years later, as America debated the appropriate relationship between the Federal Government, sick people, and doctors, a different friend -- a life long Republican perpetually terrified that his vote might a) swing Democrat and b) ever actually matter -- asked "why are you so loyal to the Blue Team?"  I hemmed, I hawed, and the only thing intelligible that came out of my mouth was this:  For my entire political life, one party has used gay people as boogey-folk around which to mobilize its base.  I will never ever ever vote for such a party.

It is now 2012.  In two months, America will elect a President and Washington state will elect a governor.  Two cycles ago, Washington's gubernatorial race wasn't decided until January.  I think I know something about where Barack Obama and Mitt Romney stand on most issues (though not with the subtlety I think I should).  I know the names of the men running for governor of my fair state.  I feel no compulsion to learn anything more.  Five months ago, our current governor and state legislature legalized same-sex marriage.  The opponents of that move have gathered enough signatures to bring that decision before the voters as a referendum.  Rob McKenna is on the record opposing same-sex marriage.  For no other reason, I am going to vote for Jay Inslee.


Many of the problems faced by our government are hard.  Intelligent people can have intelligent, unresolved discussions about how to fix the economy.  These people are called "experts."  You will find them listed in the modern lexicon of the American language under "enemies of Western civilization."  Discrimination is the opposite of that.  It's the political equivalent of the joke

Patient: "Doctor, it hurts when I move my arm like this!"

Doctor: "Don't move your arm like that."

.....

Government: "Doctor, we are treating gay people like second-class citizens!"

Doctor: "Stop treating gay people like second-class citizens."

In McKenna's defense, not legalizing same-sex marriage will leave Washingtonian same-sex couples in their current position, often referred to as "marriage in everything but name only."  However, America has been down the "separate but equal" road before and I think I know what is at the end of it.  Nothing will change my opinion on this question.  I just worry that what I'm doing (casting my vote for governor based on the mono-syllabic answer to a five word question) is irresponsible bordering on silly.

Of course, I worry even more that if I don't, the answer to the related question "when will we start treating gay people like people?" will perpetually be "after...."



PS While I have you here, there's something I've been hearing on the radio all day:

Take Wyoming-based businessman Foster Friess. He’s a conservative Christian who prominently backed Rick Santorum for president. Like McKenna, Friess is no fan of government mandated healthcare.

“This whole idea is health care a right?" Friess said in a 2009 speech. “That issue shouldn’t even come up because we know for those who embrace the Christian values systems, health care is a responsibility. We are our brother’s keeper.”

Does anyone have any idea what this means?  To my untrained ear, being "our brother's keeper" means that we should take care of our brother if he doesn't have healthcare.  Given that the United States Federal Government is the ultimate embodiment of our collective action (at least, that is what Abraham Lincoln tried to convince us of with that "of the people, by the people, and for the people" nonsense), and given that "we are all brothers and sisters in Christ," shouldn't these implied "Christian values" be an argument for some kind of government-provided health care?

Christian Nation

The more I think about it, the more I really do wish that the Blue Team would concede the terms of the game and actually wage an election on the question "which party is more Christian?" I know we couldn't actually change anyone's votes, but I think it would be valuable to have that discussion out in the open. It would rehabilitate Christianity in the minds of those who, like me, have come to see religion as just another bludgeon used to beat the Other into submission.

There are many arguments I would mobilize were I the chair of the DNC. I'm sure you can imagine most of them. But, like Felix, I like the sight of my own words, so I'm going to explicitly state one upon which I recently stumbled. Feel free to be bored.

At the end of my third year at Whitman College, I took a seminar course in the religion department entitled "Religion and Science." It remains one of the most exciting intellectual experiences of my life. I have recently (well, not recently, but I'm slow, so I'm still not done) re-reading the central texts we read over the course of that semester. I am currently 85% through Ian Barbour's "Religion and Science: Historical and Contemporary Issues." In one of the many paragraphs on the Christian view of human nature, Barbour writes:

"Paul Tillich identifies sin with three dimensions of estrangement. Sin is estrangement from other persons in self-centeredness and lovelessness. It is estrangement from our true selves in pursuing fragmented and inauthentic goals. It is estrangement from God, the ground of our being, in attempted self-sufficiency. For Tillich, estrangement, brokenness, and division can be overcome only in reconciliation, healing, and wholeness. To Tillich's three forms of sin I would add a fourth: estrangement from nonhuman nature by denying its intrinsic value and violating our interdependence. I suggest that sin, in all its forms, is a violation of relatedness."

This idea of sin (focusing on the four types of estrangement) calls into question the assertion that the United States is a "Christian nation." Usually, that assertion is countered with the argument: "no; the First Amendment and 222 years of legal interpretation establish ours as a secular government." In my Fantasy Election, I would counter it with "no; we are not a Christian nation; we in no way act like one."

I do not think I misspeak when I say that most interpretations of Christianity hold that humans are wholly dependent on Jesus for their spiritual salvation. You cannot earn your way into heaven. Nothing you do can ever be good enough. You are wholly dependent on God's forgiveness. Hence Tillich's idea of sin as "estrangement from God....in attempted self-sufficiency." Contrast that with the American mythology of the self-made person, succeeding exclusively by the sweat of his or her own brow without relying on anyone else. These self-made people are the ideal to which we must all aspire, and if you find yourself dependent on social institutions like Welfare or Medicare/aid, it is because you have failed and are in some way inferior. There are, of course, secular reasons that this myth is a falsehood. Elizabeth Warren does a particularly good job of laying one out (in my mind, she does a particularly good job of most things...). Religiously, I would ask: why the cognitive dissonance? Why is it a sign of inferiority (or even sin?) to be dependent in our Earthly lives but a definitional aspect of humanity that we are dependent spiritually? Are we fallen, or not? Are we broken, or not? Maybe you can have it both ways, but not without first having the discussion. Politicians like Rick Santorum make their bread and butter talking about "equality of outcome" versus "equality of opportunity," but there's a lot of distance between true "equality of outcome" and making sure poverty and unemployment are not death sentences*. We can achieve the latter. All we have to do is act like Christians (or Jews, or Muslims, or Buddhists...really, anyone who believes there is something more important than self).

*Don't get me started on how a nation that claims to follow the teachings of an innocent victim of capital punishment routinely fights tooth-and-claw to defend its right to execute people.

I suspect things like this are going to become the new gist of this blog. Be forewarned.

It's not a principle if you're willing to compromise on it...

...which must mean that "this blog is no longer about how Scott is an angry Democrat" isn't a principle. Quelle dommage.

Perry's running a "War on Christmas" ad in Iowa.



The way religion gets wielded in elections has always bothered me. Democrats put their butts on the line to pass healthcare reform because we think poor people should have some kind of access to medicine, and yet, for some reason, we roll over and take it whenever anyone tells us we are the less Christian of the two major political parties.

That's all I'm going to say about that.

What I am going to continue talking about is this: I'm still trying to figure out what I believe writ large, but I am quite certain that if I am a Christian, Easter is by far more important than Christmas, doctrinally speaking. Christmas celebrates Jesus' birth. Easter celebrates Jesus' willing sacrifice as an example to God (who is also him... like I said: not yet sure what I actually believe) that humans are a worthy creation and shouldn't just be tossed into the cosmic trash bin. If the claim truly is that we are a Christian nation and should remain a Christian nation, it seems to me there should be an outcry that "our kids aren't allowed to openly celebrate Easter... in schools" (by the way, did you notice how Perry inserted other words between "Christmas" and "in schools" so that it sounds like kids aren't able to openly celebrate Christmas anywhere?). My feeble mind can only come up with two possible explanations that I have never heard anyone bemoan the "War on Easter":

1) Easter's secular component is much weaker than (to quote my hometown pastor) the Santa Claus festival. Even Republicans can't make a claim that everyone should have to celebrate the resurrection of a man/God whom they don't necessarily believe was resurrected. In other words, they know this is a fight that they cannot and should not win. This, to me, means that they don't actually believe in or care about the "War on Christmas" and are just using it as a wedge issue (which they obviously are, so why am I wasting your time on this....)

2) The people who whine about the "War on Christmas" actually believe Christmas is the central holiday in the Christian tradition. Christmas emphasizes Jesus' Superman-like qualities (birth heralded by angels, turned water into wine, that sort of thing). Easter forces us to remember that, in the end, he still died the most miserable death humans have figured out how to inflict on one another. It's the difference between the Prosperity Gospel and the actual Gospel. Is God concerned about showering his followers with wealth? or is He concerned about the fact that somewhere, right now, someone is suffering from hunger, or a curable disease, or civil war, or.....

This brings me back to that thing I wasn't going to talk about ("Rule number 1: [this] doctor lies"). The left should stop cowering in the face of accusations that they are "unChristian" and instead employ more of an "I'm rubber and you're glue" defense. I think we could actually win that argument (something about rich men and camels and the eye of a needle comes to mind). I suppose the fear is that we would lose most of our principles and some of our heroes (I'm going to miss you, Barney Frank).

I just wanted to point this out (to people who probably already noticed it...)

If anyone wants to have a discussion about it, though: so do I.