Carl,
Did you actually read the article? That was sort of his point along with a
few others that are critical of all the fuss about the Pope. However, if
you wonder what the working people think, just remember how high Donald
Trump's numbers are in the polls and also, don't forget that America is
rated as one of the most religious countries in the world. Yes, I am tired
of all of this emphasis on the Pope's visit to the US and all of the
pretense that what he says is actually influencing what our corporate state
does. But I am also getting a bit tired of the glorification of the working
class. Tue, working people are used and manipulated and they get the short
end of the stick every time. But they are people with all the flaws that
people have; selfishness, gree, pdrejudice, , worship of material success,
and worship in one or another religion.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Friday, September 25, 2015 11:05 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Why Do We Care Whose Side the Pope Is On?
Skimming through this article, I notice quotes by both George Will and Pope
Francis. Lots of space is now being given to what people of high status are
thinking. Not that the Pope thinks as much of himself as does George Will.
But this is the rub. Why should I care what either of these men think. Am
I supposed to be taking one side or the other?
How about me deciding what I think, and then taking appropriate action?
It's not to say that what George Will and Pope Francis have to say should be
ignored.
Certainly our own beliefs are shaped by the thinking and opinions and
beliefs of all sorts of folk, starting with our mothers. But why don't we
see headlines that say, "Working men and women think America needs a
redistribution of its wealth"? Or, "American Working Class will stop
producing unless serious steps are taken right now, to end pollution".
You see, while I am interested in what Pope Francis and George Will think,
I'm far more involved in what the American Working Class thinks...and what
it ultimately does.
Carl Jarvis
On 9/24/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
parents.
Taibbi writes: "Much in the way Mormons believe Jesus will ultimately
return to earth and settle in Missouri, conservatives have long
accepted that the pope should be a secret American who believes in
free enterprise, cries during Band of Brothers and would build his
home in the United States if he had it to do all over again."
Pope Francis departs the Vatican's diplomatic mission in Washington,
D.C., on September 23rd, 2015. (photo: Cliff Owen/Corbis)
Why Do We Care Whose Side the Pope Is On?
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
24 September 15
So the pope is here. His arrival has spawned a Drake/Meek Mill-style
diss battle within the pundit class, pitting conservatives bemoaning
the pope's false prophecy against liberals swooning over his
platitudinous anti-capitalism.
It's like the Colts-Jets game from Monday night. I can't decide which
side I want to lose more.
It's been a long time since the left and right in America have had had
a real fight for primacy in the religious space. For almost a
generation now liberals have mostly conceded the very word faith,
letting Republicans smother and monopolize the term like overprotective
Overt religiosity is the norm on the GOP side, with God-stalkingall over again.
nutballs like Michele Bachmann or Ben Carson perennially front and center.
Meanwhile,
the closest thing to a famed religious liberal that America has seen
over the span of many decades was probably Susan Sarandon's nun
character in Dead Man Walking, an anti-capital punishment parable
whose religious message wasn't believable even though it was a true
story.
But now the script has flipped. The Republican frontrunner is Donald
Trump, a man who is worse at naming Bible verses than Sarah Palin is
at naming Supreme Court cases. And this week's arrival of the world's
most famous religious leader is being celebrated in the lefty press
like the premiere of Fahrenheit 911.
Pope Francis won over urban liberals through writings like his
184-page encyclical on climate change, which described the earth as an
"immense pile of filth." Raised in Peronist Argentina, he also talks
with varying degrees of vagueness about the "perverse" inequities of
global capitalism, complaining for instance that a two-point drop in
the stock market makes the news, while nobody notices when a homeless
person dies of exposure.
This past weekend's column by George Will perfectly expresses the
sense of abject betrayal conservatives feel at a pope allowing himself
to be appropriated by the global left, when he could be just railing
against abortion and moral relativism like his recent predecessors.
You can always tell how mad George Will is by how much alliteration he
uses.
"Pope Francis's Fact-Free Flamboyance" predictably seethes from the start:
"Pope Francis embodies sanctity but comes trailing clouds of sanctimony.
With a convert's indiscriminate zeal, he embraces ideas impeccably
fashionable, demonstrably false, and deeply reactionary. They would
devastate the poor on whose behalf he purports to speak."
The notion that Will is upset with this pope on behalf of the poor is
hilarious, but understandable. Conservatives loved the pre-Francis
Catholic strategy for dealing with the poor. First, you create lots of
cheap third-world factory labor by discouraging contraception. Then
you give lip service to alleviating poverty by pushing a program of
strictly voluntary charitable donations.
That Catholic Church has always been a great ally to the industrialist
aristocrats George Will represents. So it's not surprising he's not
feeling this whole "we need to reform capitalism" thing.
But conservatives feel betrayed on another level. Much in the way
Mormons believe Jesus will ultimately return to earth and settle in
Missouri, conservatives have long accepted that the pope should be a
secret American who believes in free enterprise, cries during Band of
Brothers and would build his home in the United States if he had it to do
Thus a lot of the criticism from the right this week implies that thispope.
pope is insufficiently worshipful of America and Americans. They think
his lack of reverence for God's chosen symbol of the miracle of
capitalist production traitorous, and moreover they're offended that
he doesn't seem to think Americans are the best and most generous
people on earth. Pollution and greed aside, doesn't this pope know
that some of us claim hundreds of dollars a year in charitable
deductions?
"Does this pope understand America?" moaned Brian Kilmeade on Fox and
Friends. "He's talking about the greed of America, but does he
understand what the capital of America has done for charitable causes?"
Will put it best, noting that what the pope fails to recognize about
us Americans is that our greed and selfishness are actually our best
qualities.
"He stands against. the spontaneous creativity of open societies in
which people and their desires are not problems but precious
resources," Will wrote. "Americans cannot simultaneously honor him and
celebrate their nation's premises."
For his offenses, Pope Francis has earned himself a ticket onto the
ever-expanding enemies list of the American political right, joining
Black Lives Matter, Mexican immigrants, Muslims, feminists, Hollywood
actors, college lit professors, Occupy Wall Street, whales, the
French, Bill Maher, Canada, Sesame Street and other such undesirables.
"Pure Marxism," cried Rush Limbaugh about the pope's ideas.
"Hand-selected by the New World Order. The same people who gave us
Obama gave us this pope," cried Michael Savage.
"Part of the globalist plan to destroy the world," chimed in Alex Jones.
But for all of the right's sourpussing, the papal Beatlemania on the
other side has been just as revealing.
The commercial media is of course doing its thing, making the pope's
arrival into the Biggest Live Coverage Event of all time. This
whole-week Popetacular will be like a baby-down-a-well story times a
Kursk rescue times a presidential inauguration. Atheists are advised
to keep their TVs off.
Even Donald Trump will be a footnote to reporters while His Holiness
is in the country. (Although, humorously, Trump's biographer Michael
D'Antonio squirmed into the headlines this week by comparing Trump to the
"They're both completely authentic guys," he said.) But it's theinequality."
defenses of the pope by left-leaning media that are really striking. A
spate of articles in traditionally liberal newspapers and websites has
appeared, each praising the pope and appropriating him as one of their
own.
Should you, the progressive, embrace the head of one of the most
socially conservative organizations on earth? "Yes. Yes, you should,"
says Jack Jenkins at ThinkProgress. "Especially if you want
legislative action on immigration reform, climate change, or income
Mary Elizabeth Williams at Salon took particular issue with Georgeblue-state:
Will's broadside against Francis, which I get. But beyond that she
went after Will for misrepresenting Catholic values, which may tilt
"I find it interesting when conservative guys like Will lose theirparents.
minds over the idea of someone with a fair degree of authority on the
subject of Catholicism - like, say, a pope - pointing out the actual
stated values of one of the richest and most powerful religions in the
world. Values that include, uh oh, charity, humility and non-materialism."
Suzy Khimm at the the New Republic pointed out several of the more
transparent attempts to turn Francis into a Democratic-leaning hero.
She cited the liberal-backed American Bridge project, which is
releasing a report that will "reveal how the Republican Party is
opposed and actively working against Pope Francis's priorities on many
issues." This comes on the heels of another report arguing that the
Koch Brothers are "on the wrong side of the Holy Father."
All this stuff is a drag. The American left is always at its most
unlikeable when it's being pious. And that's just the secular,
hey-that-joke-isn't-funny kind of piety. If we have to add actual
religious piety to the equation, we're suddenly taking a lot of the
charm out of not being a Republican. Watching progressives fawn over a
pope is depressing and makes me want to go watch a Cheech and Chong
movie.
I was raised Catholic. To me the Church is just a giant evil
transnational corporation operating on a dreary business model, one
that nurtures debilitating guilt feelings in its followers and then
offers to make them go away temporarily in exchange for donations. I
realize the Church does some nice things with the money it raises and
that other people have a different opinion, but this is my experience.
And this pope, for all his good qualities, is to me a modern version
of an old religious scam. In Tsarist Russia you'd have some wizened
starets show up at an aristocrat's estate in rags and preach to the
ladies of the house about the evils of wealth in exchange for wine,
pastries and a few nights in a feather bed.
This version is a pope arriving in America with a gazillion-member
entourage to reassure young professionals in New York how right they
are about climate change and income inequality. He says a lot of very
vague things about the wrongs of society that everyone is sure
coincide with their own opinions.
George Will is right when he says Francis speaks "in the intellectual
tone of a fortune cookie," saying things like, "People occasionally
forgive, but nature never does."
Meanwhile Francis chugs along as the head of one of the most socially
regressive organizations on earth, doing nothing to take on the
Church's indefensible stances on things like birth control, gay
rights, discrimination against women, celibacy and countless other
issues. He claims the moral authority to reform global capitalism, but
he's somehow not ready to tell teenagers it's OK to masturbate, which
seems bizarre.
People have such impassioned political fights over the pope because
everyone wants the endorsement of the guy closest to God. But what if
he's not closer to God, and is just a guy in a funny hat? Doesn't that
make all this fuss and controversy ridiculous? It seems strange that
it's the year 2015, and we still can't say that out loud.
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valid.
Pope Francis departs the Vatican's diplomatic mission in Washington,
D.C., on September 23rd, 2015. (photo: Cliff Owen/Corbis)
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-do-we-care-whose-side-th
e-pope
-is-on-20150923 -
ixzz3mfaTNbLahttp://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-do-we-care-
whose-
side-the-pope-is-on-20150923 - ixzz3mfaTNbLa Why Do We Care Whose Side
the Pope Is On?
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
24 September 15
o the pope is here. His arrival has spawned a Drake/Meek Mill-style
diss battle within the pundit class, pitting conservatives bemoaning
the pope's false prophecy against liberals swooning over his
platitudinous anti-capitalism.
It's like the Colts-Jets game from Monday night. I can't decide which
side I want to lose more.
It's been a long time since the left and right in America have had had
a real fight for primacy in the religious space. For almost a
generation now liberals have mostly conceded the very word faith,
letting Republicans smother and monopolize the term like overprotective
Overt religiosity is the norm on the GOP side, with God-stalkingall over again.
nutballs like Michele Bachmann or Ben Carson perennially front and center.
Meanwhile,
the closest thing to a famed religious liberal that America has seen
over the span of many decades was probably Susan Sarandon's nun
character in Dead Man Walking, an anti-capital punishment parable
whose religious message wasn't believable even though it was a true
story.
But now the script has flipped. The Republican frontrunner is Donald
Trump, a man who is worse at naming Bible verses than Sarah Palin is
at naming Supreme Court cases. And this week's arrival of the world's
most famous religious leader is being celebrated in the lefty press
like the premiere of Fahrenheit 911.
Pope Francis won over urban liberals through writings like his
184-page encyclical on climate change, which described the earth as an
"immense pile of filth." Raised in Peronist Argentina, he also talks
with varying degrees of vagueness about the "perverse" inequities of
global capitalism, complaining for instance that a two-point drop in
the stock market makes the news, while nobody notices when a homeless
person dies of exposure.
This past weekend's column by George Will perfectly expresses the
sense of abject betrayal conservatives feel at a pope allowing himself
to be appropriated by the global left, when he could be just railing
against abortion and moral relativism like his recent predecessors.
You can always tell how mad George Will is by how much alliteration he
uses.
"Pope Francis's Fact-Free Flamboyance" predictably seethes from the start:
"Pope Francis embodies sanctity but comes trailing clouds of sanctimony.
With a convert's indiscriminate zeal, he embraces ideas impeccably
fashionable, demonstrably false, and deeply reactionary. They would
devastate the poor on whose behalf he purports to speak."
The notion that Will is upset with this pope on behalf of the poor is
hilarious, but understandable. Conservatives loved the pre-Francis
Catholic strategy for dealing with the poor. First, you create lots of
cheap third-world factory labor by discouraging contraception. Then
you give lip service to alleviating poverty by pushing a program of
strictly voluntary charitable donations.
That Catholic Church has always been a great ally to the industrialist
aristocrats George Will represents. So it's not surprising he's not
feeling this whole "we need to reform capitalism" thing.
But conservatives feel betrayed on another level. Much in the way
Mormons believe Jesus will ultimately return to earth and settle in
Missouri, conservatives have long accepted that the pope should be a
secret American who believes in free enterprise, cries during Band of
Brothers and would build his home in the United States if he had it to do
Thus a lot of the criticism from the right this week implies that thispope.
pope is insufficiently worshipful of America and Americans. They think
his lack of reverence for God's chosen symbol of the miracle of
capitalist production traitorous, and moreover they're offended that
he doesn't seem to think Americans are the best and most generous
people on earth. Pollution and greed aside, doesn't this pope know
that some of us claim hundreds of dollars a year in charitable
deductions?
"Does this pope understand America?" moaned Brian Kilmeade on Fox and
Friends. "He's talking about the greed of America, but does he
understand what the capital of America has done for charitable causes?"
Will put it best, noting that what the pope fails to recognize about
us Americans is that our greed and selfishness are actually our best
qualities.
"He stands against. the spontaneous creativity of open societies in
which people and their desires are not problems but precious
resources," Will wrote. "Americans cannot simultaneously honor him and
celebrate their nation's premises."
For his offenses, Pope Francis has earned himself a ticket onto the
ever-expanding enemies list of the American political right, joining
Black Lives Matter, Mexican immigrants, Muslims, feminists, Hollywood
actors, college lit professors, Occupy Wall Street, whales, the
French, Bill Maher, Canada, Sesame Street and other such undesirables.
"Pure Marxism," cried Rush Limbaugh about the pope's ideas.
"Hand-selected by the New World Order. The same people who gave us
Obama gave us this pope," cried Michael Savage.
"Part of the globalist plan to destroy the world," chimed in Alex Jones.
But for all of the right's sourpussing, the papal Beatlemania on the
other side has been just as revealing.
The commercial media is of course doing its thing, making the pope's
arrival into the Biggest Live Coverage Event of all time. This
whole-week Popetacular will be like a baby-down-a-well story times a
Kursk rescue times a presidential inauguration. Atheists are advised
to keep their TVs off.
Even Donald Trump will be a footnote to reporters while His Holiness
is in the country. (Although, humorously, Trump's biographer Michael
D'Antonio squirmed into the headlines this week by comparing Trump to the
"They're both completely authentic guys," he said.) But it's theinequality."
defenses of the pope by left-leaning media that are really striking. A
spate of articles in traditionally liberal newspapers and websites has
appeared, each praising the pope and appropriating him as one of their
own.
Should you, the progressive, embrace the head of one of the most
socially conservative organizations on earth? "Yes. Yes, you should,"
says Jack Jenkins at ThinkProgress. "Especially if you want
legislative action on immigration reform, climate change, or income
Mary Elizabeth Williams at Salon took particular issue with Georgeblue-state:
Will's broadside against Francis, which I get. But beyond that she
went after Will for misrepresenting Catholic values, which may tilt
"I find it interesting when conservative guys like Will lose their
minds over the idea of someone with a fair degree of authority on the
subject of Catholicism - like, say, a pope - pointing out the actual
stated values of one of the richest and most powerful religions in the
world. Values that include, uh oh, charity, humility and non-materialism."
Suzy Khimm at the the New Republic pointed out several of the more
transparent attempts to turn Francis into a Democratic-leaning hero.
She cited the liberal-backed American Bridge project, which is
releasing a report that will "reveal how the Republican Party is
opposed and actively working against Pope Francis's priorities on many
issues." This comes on the heels of another report arguing that the
Koch Brothers are "on the wrong side of the Holy Father."
All this stuff is a drag. The American left is always at its most
unlikeable when it's being pious. And that's just the secular,
hey-that-joke-isn't-funny kind of piety. If we have to add actual
religious piety to the equation, we're suddenly taking a lot of the
charm out of not being a Republican. Watching progressives fawn over a
pope is depressing and makes me want to go watch a Cheech and Chong
movie.
I was raised Catholic. To me the Church is just a giant evil
transnational corporation operating on a dreary business model, one
that nurtures debilitating guilt feelings in its followers and then
offers to make them go away temporarily in exchange for donations. I
realize the Church does some nice things with the money it raises and
that other people have a different opinion, but this is my experience.
And this pope, for all his good qualities, is to me a modern version
of an old religious scam. In Tsarist Russia you'd have some wizened
starets show up at an aristocrat's estate in rags and preach to the
ladies of the house about the evils of wealth in exchange for wine,
pastries and a few nights in a feather bed.
This version is a pope arriving in America with a gazillion-member
entourage to reassure young professionals in New York how right they
are about climate change and income inequality. He says a lot of very
vague things about the wrongs of society that everyone is sure
coincide with their own opinions.
George Will is right when he says Francis speaks "in the intellectual
tone of a fortune cookie," saying things like, "People occasionally
forgive, but nature never does."
Meanwhile Francis chugs along as the head of one of the most socially
regressive organizations on earth, doing nothing to take on the
Church's indefensible stances on things like birth control, gay
rights, discrimination against women, celibacy and countless other
issues. He claims the moral authority to reform global capitalism, but
he's somehow not ready to tell teenagers it's OK to masturbate, which
seems bizarre.
People have such impassioned political fights over the pope because
everyone wants the endorsement of the guy closest to God. But what if
he's not closer to God, and is just a guy in a funny hat? Doesn't that
make all this fuss and controversy ridiculous? It seems strange that
it's the year 2015, and we still can't say that out loud.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
