Meals From The Marketplace

            You can hardly be blamed if you’ve completely turned your attention away from the ridiculous slugfest that has been going on in the Republican Party’s ongoing effort to select a presidential nominee.  The enmity that Newt Gingrich has developed for Mitt Romney has created a war of campaign ads and debate retorts such as the Grand Old Party hasn’t seen since Ronald Reagan issued the edict that no Republican should ever speak ill of another Republican.

            Gingrich, despite his claims to bear the mantle of Reagan’s legacy, has hardly been attentive to that piece of scripture, as he has sought to pummel the former governor of Massachusetts by painting him as almost as venal as the hated liberal media, if not Barack Obama himself.

            But in between his excoriations of his rival, Gingrich attempts to show his brilliance by dropping names and speaking of historical events with enough bravado to convince the casual listener that he actually knows what he’s talking about.

            And one of the names he has been dropping regularly, in both his stump speeches and his Q and A sessions with reporters (when he deigns to speak to those despised members of the fourth estate), is Saul Alinsky, whom Gingrich mentions whenever he gets to the part of his remarks where he wants to sound like the savior of the great American experiment in democracy.

            “This campaign,” he will say, “is a battle between American exceptionalism and the radicalism of Saul Alinsky.”  Or he’ll proclaim, “I will draw the contrast between the Declaration of Independence and Saul Alinsky.”

            He speaks about this Alinsky fellow as if he must have been an ally of Vladimir Lenin or maybe Leon Trotsky.  Certainly the guy must have been a card-carrying communist, at the least.

            In fact, Saul Alinsky (1909-1972) was a Chicago born community organizer who is generally considered to be the founder of modern community organizing.  During his lifetime, he was praised by no less a conservative icon than William F. Buckley (the founder of the “National Review” magazine and long-time host of “Firing Line”) as “very close to an organizational genius.”

            Alinsky was certainly a liberal, but he was no communist. His efforts were devoted to improving the living conditions of the poor in America and, later, to doing the same for African-American ghettos in America’s inner-cities.  At one point, “Time Magazine” declared of him that he was “altering the nature of American democracy.”

            Alinsky’s primer on community organizing, “Rules for Radicals” (published a year before his death) became an immediate Bible for college students protesting the Viet Nam War.  But his teachings had been widely adopted from the outset of that struggle.

            Alinsky’s methods are hardly the sole province of the left, however.  In fact, no less a conservative stalwart than Dick Armey (the former Republican leader of the House of Representatives who is often credited with being the father of the Tea Party movement) gives copies of “Rules for Radicals” to leaders of the Tea Party.  A shortened version of the book, called “Rules for Patriots” is distributed to the movement’s entire membership.

            So, you ask, why is Gingrich turning this patron saint of the country’s neo-revolutionaries of both the left and right into something of a bogeyman in his presidential campaign?  The answer has far more to do with the former Speaker of the House than it does with the deceased community organizer.

            Gingrich is a blowhard.  There, I’ve said it.  He is no more presidential material than your favorite barfly who can rant for hours about everything that is wrong with the country while those who do listen to him laugh at his vacuity.  And that this phony windbag has commanded the wildly enthusiastic support of a sizeable segment of his party is all you need to know about how pathetic that once revered political body has become.

            Team Obama would love to run against this guy.  His nomination would guarantee a second term for the incumbent president at a time when his re-election should be very much in doubt.  That’s why the Republican establishment came out so strongly against him last week.  Their collective rejection of him, coupled with Romney’s excellent debate attacks, turned a double-digit lead coming out of South Carolina into a double digit defeat in Florida.

            But apart from being one of the least attractive possible presidential nominees for his party, Gingrich has almost single-handedly made the election of the probable nominee (Romney) far less likely than it should have been.  The turning point was Iowa, where Romney unleashed his super-PAC against Gingrich to crush his potential victory.

            In a span of two weeks, Gingrich saw his lead in the polls evaporate, and he finished a distant fourth in the actual caucuses (behind eventual winner Rick Santorum, Romney and Ron Paul).  Furious, Gingrich then began his personal vendetta against Romney, in the process providing the Obama re-election camp with all the ammunition it will need in the fall.

            Like most blowhards, Gingrich has a massive ego, so massive that he could not abide the idea that his life-long dream (to be the next sculpture on Mount Rushmore) had been crushed by the likes of someone as craven and duplicitous as he believes (or has convinced himself) Mitt Romney is.  And so, he proceeded to reveal Romney to be just that – craven and duplicitous. 

            And, of course, Romney, because he is Romney, gave him all the evidence he needed, starting with his career at Bain Capital, and continuing with his ham-fisted hemming and hawing about whether he’d release his tax returns and with his declaration that he only earned pocket cash (over $350,000) for his speaking engagements.

            But Gingrich isn’t done.  He still has that ego to feed and that vendetta to finish.  And if a few inappropriate references to Saul Alinsky find their way into his rants, he certainly won’t apologize for besmirching a good American’s name, assuming the self-declared “master historian” he claims to be even knows who the man really was.

            Rob Bell has gained notoriety within the evangelical community for his views, among other things, on Heaven and Hell.  In his 2011 book, “Love Wins” (HarperCollins Publishers), the founding pastor of the Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, presents cogent, if simplistic, arguments for his views and beliefs. 

            The book is a relatively easy read for the casual lay person, but it might be more demanding of true believers, especially those who would be inclined to take issue with Bell’s positions.

            Bell is clearly an expert on the Bible, as would be expected of a minister, but his take on many aspects of the “good book” are definitely subject to attack.  Or at least that is the perspective of many who have been resistant to Bell’s thesis, which seems to be that the Biblical references to Heaven and Hell are more metaphorical than factual.  He paints a picture of the two that is more suggestive of life in the here and now than in the life-after-death-hereafter that most evangelical preachers emphasize.

            But Bell doesn’t stop there.  He also argues forcefully that an afterlife in a burning prison for all eternity to which non-believers are consigned is antithetical to the Christian image of God.  This part of his book is, perhaps, the most controversial, for it rejects the idea that only those who believe in God can be “saved.” 

            Instead, he asserts that God is all about love, in the sense that God offers salvation through His love.  That point isn’t all that radical, since God’s love, through the gift of Jesus Christ and his ultimate sacrifice for all humanity, is a cornerstone of Christian theology.  But in Bell’s view, the salvation isn’t in an afterlife existence, but in the existence we all experience while living.

            Where the book is less convincing is in explaining just how that love is supposed to work.  Bell suggests that just accepting this love is salvation in and of itself.  It’s a nice thought, but probably would be found wanting by those who are suffering all the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune that can make life truly miserable for even the most devoted and faithful believer.

            Furthermore, Bell seems to profess a view of Christianity that goes beyond “faith alone” to “accept alone,” meaning that the Heaven on Earth he believes to be God’s real gift is attainable merely by accepting this divine love.

            That thought raises more questions than it answers.  How, for example, is acceptance of God’s love supposed to lead to a heavenly existence in an environment where mere survival is a struggle and all manner of abuses are commonplace? 

            But Bell doesn’t explain how the love he believes is available to everyone translates to better lives for everyone.  Instead he seems to assume that readers will reach a single irrefutable conclusion, to wit: By accepting God’s love, we’ll all “just get along.”

            Nor does he really explain why religion matters at all, since he devotes much of his text to arguments that effectively discount the importance of adherence to any specific religion (or, for that matter to any religion at all).  He is adamant that a God who is all about love cannot also be a God who condemns those who don’t accept his word or a specific interpretation of his word.  Indeed, were he not an evangelical preacher, he could easily be confused for a humanist philosopher.

            But of course he is an evangelical preacher, and he provides ample evidence of that fact with several extensive interpretations of Bible stories—all given a gloss appropriate to the point he is seeking to make.  In that light, he devotes a long chapter to his take on the Prodigal Son story (from the Book of Luke, chapter 15). 

            Bell’s take on this parable that is attributed to Jesus is that the older son—the faithful one who stayed with his father and worked in the fields steadily while the younger son (the prodigal) went out and caroused and did nothing his father should have been pleased with—complained unnecessarily.  Bell says the parable is intended to represent that God’s love is always available, just as the father’s presumably was for the older son in the parable.

            It certainly isn’t an outrageous interpretation of the story, albeit the older son is usually not the main character in most sermons based on it.  But Bell shows his preacher-stuff in fashioning a 30-page chapter (entitled “The Good News Is Better Than That”) around it.

            “Love Wins” is at once well-considered and less than satisfying.  It effectively presents a God who is too good to punish and too loving to reject any of His creatures.  What it doesn’t do all that well is suggest how the love of that God can create Heaven on Earth.

            With three different candidates winning the first three contests, the Republicans have established that the race to their party’s presidential nomination will not be decided early in the process.  While the lesser lights (Cain, Bachmann, Huntsman, and Perry) have all bowed out, four intrepid souls are still very much in the game as the first big-state primary in Florida is set to occur next week.

            One of them will most probably end up as the party’s nominee, but any number of scenarios might lead to that result.  Or, someone not even in the current field could emerge with the party’s nomination.  Here are a few possible scenarios that could develop, unlikely though they might currently appear:

            Scenario A

            Newt Gingrich again loses favor with the voters, the result of a steady barrage of anti-Gingrich ads (mostly from Romney and his Super-PACs) and his own “grandiosity,” as when he says something like, “Social Security enslaves more people today than the South did in the pre-Civil War years.” 

            Looking desperately for an alternative to Romney, the rank-and-file coalesces around Rick Santorum, who manages to avoid speaking his mind on social issues and instead sounds like an economic populist.  His campaign picks up steam and Romney continues to get no more than 30 percent of the vote in primaries and caucuses.  Ultimately, Gingrich, unable to pull off yet another Lazarus act, drops out, endorsing Santorum as he does. 

            Santorum locks up the nomination with a big win in California, where, ironically, wild-eyed Republicans reject Romney as too much a product of Hollywood packaging.

            Scenario B

            Santorum, handicapped by a lack of funds, runs poorly in Florida, finishing a distant fourth.  He reluctantly “suspends” his campaign, never to be heard from again.  In his absence, Gingrich builds a sizeable anti-Romney following.  He continues to score well with the voters by attacking the liberal media and the socialist Obama while claiming that Romney is a liar and a fraud. 

            Romney responds by parading a dozen current and former members of Congress before the press.  They all claim that Gingrich was an incompetent Speaker and that he would be a dangerous president because of his lack of leadership skills and his massive ego. 

            As the two battle viciously against each other, Ron Paul gets more attention from the voters.  He softens his positions ever so slightly (sounding a little less like a pacifist and a little more like an economic centrist), and thereby begins to gain traction in the mainstream media.

            The three arrive at the convention in August with Romney and Gingrich each holding about 40 percent of the pledged delegates and Paul holding the other 20 percent.  Paul makes a backroom deal with Romney, securing the VP slot for his son Rand, and Romney gets the nomination.

            Scenario C

            Gingrich pokes Romney in the eye again in Florida, leading the Republican establishment, which has to this point been firmly in Romney’s camp, to reassess his “electability.”  But, still disdainful of Gingrich, and believing him to be a certain loser who would drag down the party’s House and Senate prospects, the party’s leaders seek to get a late entry into the race.  As a result, a sudden “draft-Christie” movement materializes that presents the New Jersey Governor with yet another opportunity to weigh his “interest and readiness” for a national campaign.

            Christie has been firmly in the Romney camp, but political alliances can shift quickly, especially when one of the allies is suddenly imbued with “presidential fever.”  In this scenario, Christie stays out at first, waiting to see if Romney can recover. 

            But when Romney, despite his massive financial war chest, is unable to rebound by the end of the February contests, Christie starts putting out subtle messages about his willingness to “accept a draft.”  With establishment support pushing for him to announce his candidacy, Christie finally does jump in.

            Despite his late entry into the race, Christie wins the primaries and caucuses he gets into.  As the nominating contests come to a close, he has 20-25 percent of the committed delegates, as do Paul, Gingrich, and Romney.  Santorum has the rest, and he throws his support to Gingrich. 

            The convention goes through four ballots before Romney loses his delegates to Christie, who then gains enough additional votes to secure the nomination on the sixth ballot.

            Scenario D

            Romney rebounds from his South Carolina defeat by winning decisively in Florida.  He then prevails in the super-Tuesday contests and is declared the presumptive nominee by the media.  Following a few more contests with similar results, Santorum first and then Gingrich drop out, throwing their support to Romney.

            Paul announces that he will not abandon his cause and will instead accept the mantle of presidential candidate on the Americans Elect ticket.  Americans Elect has by then succeeded in gaining a spot on all 50 state ballots and, at its convention, nominates Paul as its candidate.  Paul selects South Carolina’s junior Senator, Jim DeMint, as his running mate, planning a Southern/tea party strategy for the fall campaign.

            That last scenario may not be as bizarre as it sounds.  Americans Elect is a serious grass-roots movement (funded primarily by a wealthy individual named Peter Ackerman) that is planning an Internet convention whereby everyone will be able to vote for a presidential ticket to run as a third party in all fifty states.  To date, the organization has gained official ballot status in 15 states, but it appears on track to secure that status in most, if not all, of the remaining states. 

            Assuming it does, someone will be its standard-bearer.  Ron Paul hasn’t shown any overt interest yet, but Paul is the kind of ideologue who will easily eschew his party label if he believes he can gain a viable platform to air his views.  Americans Elect could well be that platform.

            Which of these scenarios will ultimately lead to the fall campaign?  Maybe none of them; but if one of them does unfold more or less as I’ve suggested, please remember where you first saw it mentioned as a possibility.

            At the end of the long opening scene of Steven Spielberg’s 1998 film, “Saving Private Ryan,” American troops gun down German soldiers who have attempted to surrender.  The Germans had earlier in the long scene (depicting the D-Day invasion of Omaha Beach) killed hundreds of the American GIs as they began their assault.

            I watched that movie with my father, a World War II vet who had been a battalion surgeon in the D-Day operation and who devoted his entire professional life to saving, not taking, lives.  He was not at all chagrined at seeing the Americans kill the surrendering Germans.  In fact, he chuckled when I questioned his sense of it.

            “Perfectly understandable,” he said.

            And, of course, it was, if human nature is the gauge for such actions. 

            Human nature is complex, as if you didn’t know.  The same being who can love passionately can also kill wantonly, and often for “perfectly understandable,” even justifiable reasons.

            But the wanton side of the species usually lies dormant, at least in those who conform their behavior to what might be considered the societal norm.  But that wanton side can and will express itself when pressed by circumstances, or put another way, everyone has a breaking point, and that breaking point had been reached by the GIs who succeeded in overtaking the Germans’ encampment in the D-Day assault.

            Sam Peckinpah brilliantly captured that side of human nature in his 1971 film, “Straw Dogs,” in which a meek and unassuming husband (Dustin Hoffman) discovers superhuman strength in defending his home from invading townsfolk intent on raping his wife (Susan George) and pillaging his home.  In the climactic scene, Hoffman’s character, previously a timid and mild-mannered mathematician, embodies human savagery in killing the invading village brutes.

            Both films present otherwise barbaric acts as acceptable reactions to events thrust upon the individuals.  The GIs in Spielberg’s film and Hoffman’s character in Peckinpah’s are no less human in acting as they do, even though we (meaning the rest of humanity) would condemn those same acts in different circumstances.

            War is such an event, as the recent news of the four marines who urinated on dead Taliban fighters more than amply reveals.  The marines were doing nothing more, indeed, considerably less, than Spielberg’s GIs were depicted as doing. 

            They were expressing their unrestrained rage in a ritualistic exaltation of victory not dissimilar to Achilles’ desecration of Hector’s corpse in Homer’s “The Iliad.”  The insult, there to the defeated Trojans, and in Afghanistan to the enemy Taliban, was fully intended and no doubt fully felt.

            Of course, the fiction of the Greeks’ war with the Trojans is one matter, while the United States’ counter-insurgency against the Taliban in Afghanistan is quite another.  And it is that aspect of the perils of war that makes the marines’ urination desecration especially noteworthy.  Stated bluntly, the reaction of the Afghan populace to the news is not likely to be favorable.  As counter-insurgency, the marines’ actions probably violated just a few of the rules in the “book.”

            U.S. military and administration officials were quick to condemn the marines, who are now facing criminal charges.  A full-fledged investigation into broader leadership issues within the command structure is also underway, but we all know how that will end.  (A mid-level commander will get slapped on the wrist, and everyone else up the chain of command will be exonerated.  Duh.)

            Have we seen this movie before?  Yes, we have, all too frequently, and not just courtesy of Hollywood.  This scene has been replayed countless times as young men (principally, but not exclusively; recall Lynndie England’s active participation in the Abu Ghraib torture of Iraqi prisoners) have engaged in wanton acts of barbarity or worse in the heat of battle. 

            The My Lai Massacre in Viet Nam during that war is the classic example.  There, a battalion of U.S. Army forces, led by a Second Lieutenant (William Calley) executed an entire village of wholly innocent South Vietnamese civilians.  The action, in which as many as 26 U.S. soldiers were involved (all members of the “Charlie Company” that Calley commanded), was brought to light by three members of the company who tried to protect the villagers from the onslaught.

            Calley was eventually convicted of 22 counts of murder and was sentenced to life in prison.  But he only served three and a half years under “house arrest” before he filed a successful habeas corpus petition (claiming his trial had been prejudiced by pre-trial publicity) and was released.

            As with Abu Ghraib, superior officers in Calley’s chain of command were initially investigated before being exonerated of wrong-doing.  The same result will occur in this latest incident.  It is almost certain that no one ordered or even encouraged these marines to do what they did.  It’s also almost certain that behind closed doors, senior NCOs are saying something very similar to what my father said when watching that scene in “Saving Private Ryan”: “Perfectly understandable.”

            And so it is.  War is a lever that can unleash the worst instincts in the human species.  That it does so as rarely as it seemingly does is more a product of keeping a tight lid on what really goes on than on superhuman exemplary behavior.

            But the real issue that needs to be explored is the decision to send troops into battle in the first place.  It is that initial decision, which can only be made by a nation’s leaders, that sets in motion the subsequent circumstances that lead to a My Lai or an Abu Ghraib or the marines relieving themselves on the bodies of their vanquished foes.

            The decision-making calculus needs to include something akin to Colin Powell’s Pottery Barn warning, issued to then-President Bush in the prelude to the Bush-Cheney decision to invade Iraq back in 2003.  “If you break it, you’ll own it,” Powell is reported to have counseled his commander-in-chief.

            Predictably, he did break it, because “breaking it” in war is as inevitable as the scene of wanton murder was in the Spielberg film.  It’s a side of human nature and is “perfectly understandable.”