On 6/28/15, Carl Jarvis <carjar82@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Just like the Pope, the Pundits are products of their life-long
conditioning. Each, Pundit and Pope reflect the current thinking of
their particular Establishment. Despite some declarations by Pope
Francis, that seem almost daring, the Pope is still mostly a
traditional Catholic, holding to the most basic Catholic teachings.
The Pundits, by contrast, have nothing new to say. They are not Pope
Trashing, per say, they are simply continuing their job as protectors
of the Corporate Empire.
These are the decendants of those fellows who hunted down Jesus and
tacked him to a cross for daring to stand up to the Roman Empire. The
very man who said, "Give unto Caeser that which is Caeser's, and unto
God, that which is God's". Give unto Whom? As far as Caeser was
concerned, the entire universe belonged to him.
So you'll only get praise from the Pundits if you, like them, lick the
boot of the Corporate Masters. I'll never return to the, "Let's
Pretend" world of religion, but my hat is off to Pope Francis for
speaking Truth.
Carl Jarvis
On 6/27/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Taibbi writes: "When Pope Francis recently wrote an encyclical letter
condemning the polluting impact of global capitalism, conservative maven
Michelle Malkin was offended."
Pope Francis issued his encyclical on the environment last week, irking
many
conservative pundits. (photo: Francesco Zizola/NOOR/Redux)
Why Are So Many Pundits Trashing the Pope?
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
27 June 15
When Pope Francis recently wrote an encyclical letter condemning the
polluting impact of global capitalism, conservative maven Michelle Malkin
was offended. "Holy Hypocrisy!" she declared:
"While the pontiff sanctimoniously attacks 'those who are obsessed with
maximizing profits,' Carrier Corporation -- a $13 billion for-profit
company
with 43,000 employees worldwide (now a unit of U.S.-based United
Technologies Corp.) -- ensures that the air in the Vatican's Sistine
Chapel
stays clean and cool."
I'm normally not a big fan of the Catholic Church, or popes in general.
But
if anyone should be allowed to adopt a "sanctimonious" tone, it's
probably
a
pope, right? Isn't an air of moral superiority part of the job
description?
Malkin might have been joking, but she doesn't usually go for Art
Buchwald-style funny in her prose. Moreover, it came in the middle of a
passage in which she unironically called the pope a hypocrite for
criticizing global capitalism and using air conditioning at the same
time.
This is the same bizarre argument that right-wing columnists pulled out
during Occupy Wall Street, when, for instance, Charles Krauthammer called
protesters hypocrites for complaining about corporate capitalism even as
they drank Starbucks, wore Levis and used iPhones.
At first glance, the Francis encyclical seems like Typical Pope Stuff,
full
of organized religion's usual sour grapes over various new altars
humanity
has chosen to worship before - in particular, technology and profits.
Francis repeatedly argues that the sweeping changes of humanity's recent
past (which of course include a dramatic reduction in the influence of
religion) haven't been all they're cracked up to be.
"The growth of the past two centuries," he writes, "has not always led.to
an
improvement in the quality of life."
The pope also manages to bootstrap a collection of old Catholic
grievances
into the hipper, more millennial-friendly conservationist argument. He
insists that "the protection of nature is also incompatible with the
justification of abortion," and somewhat implausibly complains that
consumerism is a bigger threat to our supply of natural resources than
overpopulation.
The passage on overpopulation is particularly odd. The pope seems to
argue
that instead of trying to offer "reproductive health" services to poor
nations, we should just throw away less food. Francis in other words
wants
us to be better stewards of the environment, but only if we can do so
without using condoms.
So there's a lot of the familiar churchy terror of progress in here. But
some of the Francis diatribe is more urgent and political. In parts it
reads
like a Bernie Sanders stump speech, denouncing wastefulness and greed.
One
passage is striking:
"The economy accepts every advance in technology with a view to profit,
without concern for its potentially negative impact on human beings.
Finance
overwhelms the real economy..Some circles maintain.that the problems of
global hunger and poverty will be resolved simply by market growth..For
them, maximizing profits is enough. Yet by itself, the market cannot
guarantee integral human development and social inclusion."
The relentless quest for profits, the pope writes, has left the planet
mired
in problems: escalating levels of crime and violence, huge populations of
migrants without rights, hunger, degradation, the destruction of the
environment. On that last note, he levels a blunt insult at the cosmetic
end-result of capitalist achievement: "The earth, our home, is beginning
to
look more and more like an immense pile of filth."
Language like this inspired caterwauls of wounded anger from
establishment
pundits all over America, where the nation's opinion priests seemed
determined to shoo the ignorant pope away from issues above his pay
grade.
Right-wing goofballs like Malkin and Cal Thomas ripped the pope for being
the dupe of scientists pushing a climate change conspiracy theory, with
Thomas accusing the pope of joining the "disciples of the
environmentalist
cult." Ross Douthat quickly denounced Francis as a "catastrophist" who
thinks humanity's recent technological achievements are a "500-year
mistake."
People from all corners piled on. A columnist for the Missoulian conjured
a
memorable image in his piece, "Pope Francis Goes Off the Rails." A writer
for The Federalist named Denise McAllister even argued with a straight
face
that the Jesuit pope - a man who dedicated his life to the teachings of
St.
Francis of Assisi - somehow misunderstood the Gospels' instructions on
poverty. The West Virginia Coal Association complained that Francis
failed
to appreciate the wonders of fossil fuels. And the National Post even
went
so far as to say that the encyclical read "like the Unabomber manifesto."
What was so weird about a lot of these articles was their strident,
accusatory tone. The pope is a hypocrite! A cultist! An apostate! A
substandard economist! It wasn't just that the pope was wrong, but that
he'd
stuck his beak somewhere where it didn't belong.
Of course the most hilariously obnoxious response belonged to Times
columnist David Brooks, whose "Fracking and the Franciscans" piece
actually
chides a Jesuit pope for underappreciating the importance of
self-interest.
Brooks, who in his spare time has carried the preposterous title of a
Yale
Professor of Humility, wrote his piece
"The innocence of the dove has to be accompanied by the wisdom of the
serpent - the awareness that programs based on the purity of the heart
backfire; the irony that the best social programs harvest the low but
steady
motivations of people as they actually are."
How's that for sanctimony, Popeface! Amateur!
Lindsay Abrams at Salon has already done a thorough takedown of this
strange
Brooks broadside against the whole Christian love thing, so there's no
need
to get into that too much here. But there was one part of the article I
found truly incredible, a section on the pope's failure to appreciate the
wonders of the Asian economy:
"A raw and rugged capitalism in Asia has led, ironically, to a great
expansion of the middle class and great gains in human dignity..
Pope Francis is a wonderful example of how to be a truly good person. But
if
we had followed his line of analysis.there'd be no awareness that though
industrialization can lead to catastrophic pollution in the short term
(China), over the long haul both people and nature are better off with
technological progress."
Has it really come to this? Is it now conventional wisdom to admonish the
Catholic Church for underappreciating the contributions of Chinese
totalitarianism toward "human dignity?"
It's nauseating enough when Western economists laud the Chinese "economic
miracle," as if there's some deep secret involved in using slave labor to
hoard mountains of manufacturing profits.
But asking us to appreciate the "gains in human dignity" offered by a
society without freedoms of speech, assembly, political choice, religion
or
labor organization is beyond absurd. For that matter, so is calling the
Chinese economy a model of free-market progress, when it's actually a
system
that depends almost entirely on ongoing, intimate interference from the
world's most ubiquitous and domineering central government.
That the pope's letter inspires such hysterical stupidities speaks to how
deeply upsetting it must be to our guardians of mainstream opinion. But
what
exactly has all of these people so upset?
To me, all of this speaks to the weirdly cultist, neo-Randian, Road to
Serfdom vibe that is increasingly swallowing up the American cultural and
intellectual mainstream.
Capitalism and competition aren't merely thought of as utilitarian
systems
for delivering goods and services to people anymore. To people like
Brooks
and Rand Paul and Charles Murray (also known as Jeb Bush's favorite
author),
the free market is also a sort of religion that can address every
important
human question.
We used to think of wealth and spirituality as being two completely
separate
things. But in the minds of some in modern America, they're becoming
fused.
The way Brooks and others clearly imagine it, one achieves wealth first,
then dignity follows behind. We're losing the ability to imagine a
dignified
life without money. Which is pretty messed up.
In the past, it was completely natural for a religious leader like a pope
to
suggest that our economic system leaves important spiritual questions
unanswered. After all, that's what religion was supposed to be for,
addressing the non-material parts of our lives. But in modern times, this
idea offends many people.
Hence this bizarre wave of criticism directed against an elderly cleric
in
a
funny hat who is being blasted for being impractical, unrealistic and
insufficiently appreciative of the material, despite the fact that it's
precisely a pope's job to be all of these things.
I'm not religious, and I'm not particularly a Luddite or an
anti-capitalist.
But I'm open to the idea that there should be something else in life
beyond
money, or that we may be losing something important when we communicate
by
clicks and drags instead of face-to-face meetings. Is that really such
revolutionary thinking, especially coming from a pope? It seems like such
a
strange thing to get angry about.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not
valid.
Pope Francis issued his encyclical on the environment last week, irking
many
conservative pundits. (photo: Francesco Zizola/NOOR/Redux)
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-are-so-many-pundits-trashing-t
he-pope-20150626http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-are-so-many-pu
ndits-trashing-the-pope-20150626
Why Are So Many Pundits Trashing the Pope?
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
27 June 15
hen Pope Francis recently wrote an encyclical letter condemning the
polluting impact of global capitalism, conservative maven Michelle Malkin
was offended. "Holy Hypocrisy!" she declared:
"While the pontiff sanctimoniously attacks 'those who are obsessed with
maximizing profits,' Carrier Corporation -- a $13 billion for-profit
company
with 43,000 employees worldwide (now a unit of U.S.-based United
Technologies Corp.) -- ensures that the air in the Vatican's Sistine
Chapel
stays clean and cool."
I'm normally not a big fan of the Catholic Church, or popes in general.
But
if anyone should be allowed to adopt a "sanctimonious" tone, it's
probably
a
pope, right? Isn't an air of moral superiority part of the job
description?
Malkin might have been joking, but she doesn't usually go for Art
Buchwald-style funny in her prose. Moreover, it came in the middle of a
passage in which she unironically called the pope a hypocrite for
criticizing global capitalism and using air conditioning at the same
time.
This is the same bizarre argument that right-wing columnists pulled out
during Occupy Wall Street, when, for instance, Charles Krauthammer called
protesters hypocrites for complaining about corporate capitalism even as
they drank Starbucks, wore Levis and used iPhones.
At first glance, the Francis encyclical seems like Typical Pope Stuff,
full
of organized religion's usual sour grapes over various new altars
humanity
has chosen to worship before - in particular, technology and profits.
Francis repeatedly argues that the sweeping changes of humanity's recent
past (which of course include a dramatic reduction in the influence of
religion) haven't been all they're cracked up to be.
"The growth of the past two centuries," he writes, "has not always led.to
an
improvement in the quality of life."
The pope also manages to bootstrap a collection of old Catholic
grievances
into the hipper, more millennial-friendly conservationist argument. He
insists that "the protection of nature is also incompatible with the
justification of abortion," and somewhat implausibly complains that
consumerism is a bigger threat to our supply of natural resources than
overpopulation.
The passage on overpopulation is particularly odd. The pope seems to
argue
that instead of trying to offer "reproductive health" services to poor
nations, we should just throw away less food. Francis in other words
wants
us to be better stewards of the environment, but only if we can do so
without using condoms.
So there's a lot of the familiar churchy terror of progress in here. But
some of the Francis diatribe is more urgent and political. In parts it
reads
like a Bernie Sanders stump speech, denouncing wastefulness and greed.
One
passage is striking:
"The economy accepts every advance in technology with a view to profit,
without concern for its potentially negative impact on human beings.
Finance
overwhelms the real economy..Some circles maintain.that the problems of
global hunger and poverty will be resolved simply by market growth..For
them, maximizing profits is enough. Yet by itself, the market cannot
guarantee integral human development and social inclusion."
The relentless quest for profits, the pope writes, has left the planet
mired
in problems: escalating levels of crime and violence, huge populations of
migrants without rights, hunger, degradation, the destruction of the
environment. On that last note, he levels a blunt insult at the cosmetic
end-result of capitalist achievement: "The earth, our home, is beginning
to
look more and more like an immense pile of filth."
Language like this inspired caterwauls of wounded anger from
establishment
pundits all over America, where the nation's opinion priests seemed
determined to shoo the ignorant pope away from issues above his pay
grade.
Right-wing goofballs like Malkin and Cal Thomas ripped the pope for being
the dupe of scientists pushing a climate change conspiracy theory, with
Thomas accusing the pope of joining the "disciples of the
environmentalist
cult." Ross Douthat quickly denounced Francis as a "catastrophist" who
thinks humanity's recent technological achievements are a "500-year
mistake."
People from all corners piled on. A columnist for the Missoulian conjured
a
memorable image in his piece, "Pope Francis Goes Off the Rails." A writer
for The Federalist named Denise McAllister even argued with a straight
face
that the Jesuit pope - a man who dedicated his life to the teachings of
St.
Francis of Assisi - somehow misunderstood the Gospels' instructions on
poverty. The West Virginia Coal Association complained that Francis
failed
to appreciate the wonders of fossil fuels. And the National Post even
went
so far as to say that the encyclical read "like the Unabomber manifesto."
What was so weird about a lot of these articles was their strident,
accusatory tone. The pope is a hypocrite! A cultist! An apostate! A
substandard economist! It wasn't just that the pope was wrong, but that
he'd
stuck his beak somewhere where it didn't belong.
Of course the most hilariously obnoxious response belonged to Times
columnist David Brooks, whose "Fracking and the Franciscans" piece
actually
chides a Jesuit pope for underappreciating the importance of
self-interest.
Brooks, who in his spare time has carried the preposterous title of a
Yale
Professor of Humility, wrote his piece
"The innocence of the dove has to be accompanied by the wisdom of the
serpent - the awareness that programs based on the purity of the heart
backfire; the irony that the best social programs harvest the low but
steady
motivations of people as they actually are."
How's that for sanctimony, Popeface! Amateur!
Lindsay Abrams at Salon has already done a thorough takedown of this
strange
Brooks broadside against the whole Christian love thing, so there's no
need
to get into that too much here. But there was one part of the article I
found truly incredible, a section on the pope's failure to appreciate the
wonders of the Asian economy:
"A raw and rugged capitalism in Asia has led, ironically, to a great
expansion of the middle class and great gains in human dignity..
Pope Francis is a wonderful example of how to be a truly good person. But
if
we had followed his line of analysis.there'd be no awareness that though
industrialization can lead to catastrophic pollution in the short term
(China), over the long haul both people and nature are better off with
technological progress."
Has it really come to this? Is it now conventional wisdom to admonish the
Catholic Church for underappreciating the contributions of Chinese
totalitarianism toward "human dignity?"
It's nauseating enough when Western economists laud the Chinese "economic
miracle," as if there's some deep secret involved in using slave labor to
hoard mountains of manufacturing profits.
But asking us to appreciate the "gains in human dignity" offered by a
society without freedoms of speech, assembly, political choice, religion
or
labor organization is beyond absurd. For that matter, so is calling the
Chinese economy a model of free-market progress, when it's actually a
system
that depends almost entirely on ongoing, intimate interference from the
world's most ubiquitous and domineering central government.
That the pope's letter inspires such hysterical stupidities speaks to how
deeply upsetting it must be to our guardians of mainstream opinion. But
what
exactly has all of these people so upset?
To me, all of this speaks to the weirdly cultist, neo-Randian, Road to
Serfdom vibe that is increasingly swallowing up the American cultural and
intellectual mainstream.
Capitalism and competition aren't merely thought of as utilitarian
systems
for delivering goods and services to people anymore. To people like
Brooks
and Rand Paul and Charles Murray (also known as Jeb Bush's favorite
author),
the free market is also a sort of religion that can address every
important
human question.
We used to think of wealth and spirituality as being two completely
separate
things. But in the minds of some in modern America, they're becoming
fused.
The way Brooks and others clearly imagine it, one achieves wealth first,
then dignity follows behind. We're losing the ability to imagine a
dignified
life without money. Which is pretty messed up.
In the past, it was completely natural for a religious leader like a pope
to
suggest that our economic system leaves important spiritual questions
unanswered. After all, that's what religion was supposed to be for,
addressing the non-material parts of our lives. But in modern times, this
idea offends many people.
Hence this bizarre wave of criticism directed against an elderly cleric
in
a
funny hat who is being blasted for being impractical, unrealistic and
insufficiently appreciative of the material, despite the fact that it's
precisely a pope's job to be all of these things.
I'm not religious, and I'm not particularly a Luddite or an
anti-capitalist.
But I'm open to the idea that there should be something else in life
beyond
money, or that we may be losing something important when we communicate
by
clicks and drags instead of face-to-face meetings. Is that really such
revolutionary thinking, especially coming from a pope? It seems like such
a
strange thing to get angry about.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
