On Hate and Ignorance

Recently I did something very out of the ordinary: I joined a Facebook group. And not just any group, but a petition group with a political bent to it. Last week I started to see friends joining a Facebook group that not-so-subtly hinted that the death of the President of the United States would be an answer to their prayers. Beside the absolute lack of class this demonstrates, the fact that this would make Joe Biden the leader of the free world ought to trouble anyone.

So I joined a group petitioning to have this removed. I don't really want it removed; I really don't care what foolish and hateful things exist online, as long as I am seeking out and finding things that make my life better. Nor am I unfriending the people who joined the aforementioned tasteless group; petty and childish behavior is best left to the kinds of people who join these groups. But I found joining the petition group a good way to voice my disapproval and disgust. (Ranting, I have found, also helps.)

In addition to the hypocrisy of folks who a few years back were saying that calling into question the judgment and executive power of the President is tantamount to treason now praying for the death of the Commander in Chief, I find the idea of thinking you're clever for following the lead of someone who formed a group of hateful people disturbing. The herd mentality at its worst, really.

But it's not at all out of character among the hate-mongers and demagogues who rally against government spending, taxation, and regulation. I read the other day a spot-on analysis of the historical illiteracy and dangerous rhetoric of the Tea Party protesters who shout out epithets and threats aimed at anyone they consider to be too liberal. We're in a historical moment in which the shrillness of one's crying is equated with the quality of one's argument, the hyperbole of mislabeling one's foes is considered clever and intelligent.

It's especially disgusting to see people with whom I worship getting caught up in this. Elder Cook's message from General Conference--"We can disagree without being disagreeable"--and President Uchtdorf's--with the emphasis on compassion, love, and mercy--seem completely at odds with the loud and caustic voices that would render illegitimate an administration that won a hefty majority of the popular vote and an overwhelming majority of the electoral vote. To call President Obama or a democratically elected Congress "dangerous" or "rouge" is to fundamentally misunderstand what the Constitution puts forth as the means of establishing a government.

It also shows an utter lack of faith, hope, or charity. If you believe, as the Church clearly teaches, that this nation has a divine mandate and role, that the founding documents thereof are divinely inspired, and that freedom is a central part of God's plan for humanity, then demonizing, dehumanizing, and disrespecting that government carte blanche demonstrates a lack of vision, a perspective so clouded by the talking heads on television, talk radio, and the web that reason and discourse have no place in your heart or mind. And that's a truly sad state. If the current administration is in the wrong, then time will right those wrongs--exactly the thought that kept my head held high from late 2000 until November 4, 2008.

One final note to hopefully show that this is not just a bleeding heart liberal getting his feelings hurt. This is something I believe deeply. On a sunny Tuesday morning nearly nine years ago I watched, at the end of a terrible day for our country, as the President--a man I did not vote for, did not like, and never did think highly of--returned to the White House. I sat in front of the television with my wife and two young children, praying for his safety. None of us truly understood what had happened that day, but we knew we couldn't stand another tragedy, and it was a relief to see the leader of the nation safe. And even when that administration engaged in policies and acts that I considered wrong and wrong-headed, I still insisted on saying "amen" when prayers for the leaders of our nation were offered. I don't think it's too much to ask even the most politically conservative among us to give an elected leader who has sworn to protect and defend the Constitution that kind of prayerful support, regardless of who that person is.

On Being Messy

As part of my new gig as department chair I am required to participate in a year-long training, a portion of which entails setting a series of goals for developing my leadership skills. As anyone who has known me for longer than a few minutes is aware, I despise this sort of thing--setting goals as part of a tightly-crafted system for self-improvement is a chief reason why I dropped out of Boy Scouts.

So I really struggled to set some good goals, winding up with vague things like “improve my conflict-resolution skills” and “raise my QDLRS scores”--rubbish all of it. But after getting some feedback on these ideas, I was convinced that the best thing I could do was to study, to read some leadership books and get some ideas.

This appealed to me because a) I wouldn’t have to do anything, just read about people who do things, and b) it would be a great excuse to read more books.

After looking through some suggested reading lists, I decided to hit the library and browse. I found myself wandering more or less aimlessly through the 600s, where I picked up a handful of volumes. One of these--easily the most interesting--is my current read: A Perfect Mess.

The basic idea of the book is that people and organizations have a tendency to overemphasize order and structure, when, in reality, randomness and certain degree of messiness are much more fruitful.

This is a fascinating--if dangerous--idea (Summer has a habit of looking at me sideways when I’m reading as if to say that 12 years of work may be going down the drain). I am an inherently sloppy man, and if anything, assuming a new responsibility would require that I get my act together more, not less.

But that’s the whole point of the book. We have been trained to believe that the only way to accomplish anything meaningful is to be more organized, to spend more time and energy scheduling, planning, sorting, and controlling. The reality, however, is often the opposite: in accepting and even fostering a moderate amount of randomness in our lives, we can be more efficient and effective.

There are some interesting applications of this theory to organizational leadership and everyday life (my favorite, from the chapter on accepting messiness in our homes: “Making a bed after getting up in the morning is a bit like tying your shoes after you take them off.”), but here’s one I did not expect: church administration.

This seems incredibly counterintuitive; we typically laud the church for its administrative organization. Wards run smoothly even with a lay--or as I like to put it, amateur--clergy, General Conference is a tightly-orchestrated affair, humanitarian aid is shipped off in a matter of hours after a crisis occurs.

However, at our stake conference this pat weekend, I was reminded of something that resonated all the louder because of reading A Perfect Mess. In the priesthood leadership session, our stake president made the distinction between being ministers and administers. His point was this: priesthood leaders are not called simply to deal with paperwork and processes, but also--and more importantly--to serve people individually.

To me this means we have to be willing to let go of the agenda, to drop the schedule. In the end, the most important form of messiness we can accept--and perhaps seek out--it to listen to the Spirit and be willing to heed inspiration when it comes.

To me this speaks volumes of the need to allow some messiness in our meetings and into our organizations. I am reminded that the most precious experiences I have had in my life have come when I have dropped my plans and improvised. It has been true of my church service, my teaching, my parenting. It’s a hard truth to accept, as I have fought to be more structured, but nevertheless, it’s a truth, one that I really need to remember.

Bibliophilia

I'm about halfway through my winter break, and I'm really enjoy the unadulterated sloth in which I currently exist. I wake up when I hear Evan yelling that he needs to use the bathroom, I play tons of games throughout the day, I cook and clean as needed, and I read. I've gotten some serious reading done these past few weeks, and it's made me a bit contemplative. So, here is a review of some of my 2009 reading accomplishments:

• I've read several dry tomes related to my dissertations--titles like Mixing Race, Mixing Culture: Inter-American Literary Dialogues. And I suppose "read" is a bit inaccurate and should be replaced by "skimmed as quickly as possible while taking notes and eating Doritos."
• I'm reading Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson, a Christmas gift from Summer, who, realizing how excited I get about what I'm reading, hopes this will convince me to go to England. This comes on the heels of reading A Walk in the Woods, in which Bryson recounts his summer along the Appalachian Trail (I spent several days picturing myself strolling along some lonely trail). I also read The Mother Tongue and In a Sunburned Country by Bryson. I've decided that I like this man for several reasons: he's wry and witty, he writes in an erudite style that is nonetheless accessible and self-deprecating, he travels widely and thoughtfully (both in space and in themes), and, as I just learned in chapter 2 of Small Island, he's left-handed, all of which is meant to say that he's me.
• Late last winter I read Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which I discussed here. It was inspiring, but it didn't make me much of a gardener. Maybe I'll read it again soon. I'd also like to dive into some Michael Pollan this year (Summer's reading In Defense of Food right now).
• I also read Jack Turner's Travels in the Greater Yellowstone last winter, an experience I reviewed here. He's also got a book on the history of spices, which I somehow haven't gotten to yet.
• Toward spring I read The Hobbit again, followed by working through The Lord of the Rings over my May break. For what it's worth, I also watched the movies a few times. (I had vowed to wait until finishing my dissertation to read the latter, but I decided that if I put off living for my PhD I might be pretty miserable.)
• In early March I finally tackled In the Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco. I've read several collections of Eco's essays, so this was fun, even if the unraveling of the plot was a bit clumsy. I also got to lend this to Dad, which is always nice.
• Over the first few months of the year I read a few pieces of non-fiction: Speaking of Faith by Krista Tippett, a volume each of The Best American Travel Writing and The Best American Non-Required Reading (I thoroughly enjoy the Best American series). These are good volumes that I can readily pick up again at a moment's notice.
• This fall-winter, I read The New Kings of Non-Fiction, edited by Ira Glass, and two Malcolm Gladwell titles: Blink and The Tipping Point. I also read Freakonomics. The last three were interesting--thought-provoking and well-written, but after each one I couldn't quite decide what the point was. Perhaps my expectations were too high, but I couldn't help shaking the notion that these were more style than substance.

I'm sure there's more, but this is enough to make me feel good about myself. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a book to get to...

A Real Man

Today was a very relaxed day...until we woke up. Unlike most of the past week, we had no plans or specific obligations, so we began by cleaning the house. While working on our bathroom, Summer asked me to see if I could redo some of the caulking in the kids' bath, which is where the fun began.

Pulling up the faulty caulk I had put in several years ago quickly led to the discovery of water intrusion into some of the drywall. Within an hour I had a pile of dirty caulk bits and a small hole in the wall.

After several hours of work and two trips to Home Depot, I had patched the hole, spackled the other gaps, and cleaned up my mess. We'll now need to repaint, but that was in the cards anyhow.

On one trip to the store I also picked up a rake for all the leaves that fell yesterday. Seven years in New Mexico and we had never had to rake leaves. But this year the trees were big enough to warrant it. So here are some shots of the kids jumping and playing in the leaves:



While I was transferring the leaves to a bag, Summer comments, "You're like a real man today." I suppose it was about time...

Not Even a Real Rant

More of a thought that occurred to me last week at the Priesthood session of General Conference. Elder Ballard's talk on fathers and sons was touching, and it made me realize the following: in 10 years I can go to the Priesthood session with all three of my sons. Ryan will be 18, in his first semester of college, and quite possibly an elder already; Isaac will be a 15-year-old teacher, and Evan will be a freshly-minted deacon. (We needn't mention how old I shall be.) We should go to Salt Lake and go to the Conference Center that October. Anyone who wants to join is invited...

A (Kind of) Conservative Rant For a Change

I'm taking a brief break from my occasional series on why I'm not politically conservative to write a piece that may undermine that entire project. I listen sporadically to a podcast called The Story (kind of a conceited title, I think, but it generally makes me think, which is good). Some of the episodes are poignant and touching, while others feel a bit flat, so I don't listen religiously, but I try to catch a few episodes a week.

Yesterday I listened to an episode from last week with two very different stories. The first was about an American couple who retired and moved to Mexico to enjoy better and less expensive health care. I wanted to get behind their story, as it highlights much of what is wrong with the health care industry in America today. But in the end I found the husband, who is at the center of the story, a completely unsympathetic figure.

In part this is a result of the phrase the host kept using to describe why Steve Minnick and his wife moved to Mexico: "to take advantage of that country's health care system." I know what he means, but "taking advantage" of something is a messy phrase that implies something that was, I believe unintended but telling. The idea of exploiting a system to which you have no real connection is troubling.

I also find it hard to be sympathetic for someone who's complaint is that he has to return to work because the recession harmed his retirement savings. When the poor are losing jobs and homes, it's hard to feel for someone who lost (which means he had) $300,000 in retirement and had to sell his home in Mexico, move back to America, and return to work so he could save enough in his retirement account to live quite comfortably seven years from now.

And I contrast this with the other story in the episode, in which Robert Johnson recalls his father's sacrifice to support his family during the Great Depression. This man fought six rounds at a county fair against a professional boxer, nearly dying in front of his son, to earn $25 to pay rent. It makes unretiring look pretty pedestrian a sacrifice, I think.

This gets at something that has bothered me throughout this recession. People complain about decreased or lost income, but still get cable TV and drive SUVs. We talk about scrimping and saving, but still rack up credit card debt. And the federal response has been to spend more and bail out failing companies while cutting services for the poor.

I contrast this with the New Deal approach. Instead of bailing out banks, the federal government put people to work. Instead of encouraging us to spend more, it provided a safety net for individuals and families. A welfare system that focuses on people, not corporation, is far superior. The New Deal was no a panacea, but it seems better than the way this recession has been addressed.

And I think this says something ugly about who we are, that our response to tragedy is to amass material things, to spend, to stimulate our way out of a crisis rather than to make real sacrifices. I makes me a bit sad and ashamed.

How Big a Tent?

When over-the-air television broadcasts went all-digital this summer we lost our signal, at first with some misgivings. Living in modern America without TV seemed unthinkable. But now, just a few months later, I am amazed, not just at how well we've adapted, but at how much more we get done. We read to the kids more, we play outside more, we cook and talk and simply live more.

I kind of wish we had ditched TV earlier, say a year ago, during the height of election season. Not just for the election ads that bombarded our humble swing state, but for the other, less obvious aspects of the presidential campaign. I speak specifically of the conventions, an archaic holdover from the era of cigar-smoking obese men who made backroom deals and decisions, a holdover which is poorly adapted to the world of mass media and instantaneous communication. They drive me crazy, with the pomp and self-importance of political parties (there's a reason I register independent), the pontificating speeches and fake drama of it all.

But the most jarring part of last year's convention season was not the size of the crowd in Denver or the small-time acts by Guliani and the other nominee also-rans, but the shots of the crowd at the RNC in Minneapolis. This homogeneous group of middle-aged white people was a perfect symbol of what I believe is the ultimate undoing of conservatism in America: its failure to understand, appreciate, and foster a diverse, pluralistic society. This profound failure marks conservative thought as antiquated and obsolete, much like the conventions themselves.

I approach this topic with a great sense of hesitation, based primarily on my own identity as a middle-aged white heterosexual Christian male. (It has always been odd in job interviews to answer the obligatory diversity question: “I think we need a diverse faculty to represent the multiplicity of cultures and viewpoints in our community. We should hire fewer white men. Let's start that as soon as you hire/promote/reward me.”) I am simply too racist, sexist, and homophobic to get on a soap box here when traditional discussions of diversity come up.

But I can speak of what I find to be the most indicative but underappreciated instance of bigotry and prejudice in the contemporary conservative movement: the debacle that was Mitt Romney's primary race last year. Now, I don't like the former governor of the commonwealth of Massachusetts. I find him vapid and uninspiring, and, obviously, I disagree with many of his stands on the issues. (In other settings I have referred to him as my least favorite Mormon, but it seems Glenn Beck is intent on holding that title indefinitely.) But the fact is that a qualified and electable candidate with policy views in line with the mainstream of his party who poured millions of his own dollars into the campaign had no realistic chance of getting that party's nomination.

And why was Romney so soundly beaten by hacks like Huckabee in the southern primaries? It all comes down to simple, unadulterated prejudice. A Mormon candidate in the GOP primary in South Carolina has a huge disadvantage due entirely to the conservative mindset that labels any identity outside of the narrow definition of mainline Christianity as unacceptable. And this is evident time and time again in the right-wing, as moderates like Senators Specter and Snowe are either driven away or derided as phonies. Anytime your movement is so narrow as to exclude even those who tend to agree with you, you know you've painted yourself into a corner and out of the mainstream.

So I'm not sure what to suggest to conservatives concerned about doing poorly in elections when the female and minority votes break bad for them. When your political philosophy is built on the idea that those who have traditionally held power and wealth should be the first and primary voices in debating, setting, and benefiting from national policies, it's hard to feel sympathy when demographic and social transformations undermine your political viability. It's time at that point to not just revise a platform or alter a message. It's time to admit that conservative views toward contemporary American society--who we are and how we interact with a range of people--have become provincial and useless in the 21st century.