A photo a day, #3


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The abbey on Iona is a heavily visited tourist destination. It was, easily, the least interesting place on the four Scottish islands that Ken and I visited — Mull, Ulva, Gometra, and Iona. The isle of Iona itself, though small, is fertile and beautiful. But, to me, the abbey is just another outpost of the ugly Roman religion, which as it metastasized over the centuries destroyed superior cultures on earth as effectively and mercilessly as a mile-wide asteroid.

The abbey on Iona was founded by Saint Columba, who was from Ireland, in 563. Some archeological remnants of the early settlement remain, but the current building dates from the 13th Century. The building has been heavily restored and is now packed with tourists, many of whom seem to consider visiting Iona a kind of New Age pilgrimage. I always get a bad vibe from evangelicals. I felt that bad vibe very strongly on Iona, particularly inside the church, which has a loft fitted out with all the electronics that is used these days for “praise” music in evangelical churches. It’s an odd mixture — such an old church with such hip (and probably made in America) music. But they’re definitely raking in the dough, just as Saint Columba did by catering to rich clan chieftains.

According to Wikipedia, Saint Columba was the great-great grandson of Niall of the Nine Hostages, the 5th Century Irish king who is said to have brought Patrick to Ireland. Though King Niall, technically, is prehistoric, there is all sorts of evidence, including genetic evidence, that he was a real person and that he left a great many descendants. In fact, DNA testing shows that I have the genetic marker of Niall’s descendants (the marker is common in Ireland, especially in the north). However, if I am descended from Niall, the greater-by-far odds are that I’m of bastard descent, whereas Columba was legitimate. Though the interpretation of the Y-chromosome marker for Niall’s descendants has been questioned, nevertheless I interpret the DNA evidence as a pretty reliable indicator that my own pagan ancestors were in Ireland during the 5th Century. Thus my own ancestors were caught up in the Christianization of Ireland and Scotland. For that reason, I take rather personally what I see as genocide — the Christian destruction of pagan cultures. To me, the saints Patrick and Columba represent an enduring shame, as those of us who live in Christianized cultures continue the work of throwing the Roman religion off our backs — its crummy texts, its infantile (and borrowed) stories, and its ossified and primitive notions about ethics, morality, and epistemology, which in spite of the Enlightenment still exert their 13th-Century influence, poisoning our politics and ruining the minds it touches.

I apologize for the rant. But I hated the abbey on Iona, and I grieve for what the place stands for.

For now, a photo a day


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In a few days, I’ll have lots of Scotland photos and a long post. Sorting and prepping the photos is going to take some time. Plus, Ken took lots of photos as well, and I will include some of Ken’s photos in a future post. For now, I’ll try to put up a photo each day. Above, Ken, my indefatigable hiking companion, crosses a stile near Calgary on the isle of Mull. We saw lots of stiles — from very simple ones to complex works of functional art — and photographed them all.

New from Acorn Abbey Books

Ken’s three very popular books are published by New York publishers. However, Acorn Abbey Books, as a small-press “indie” imprint, is honored to release one of Ken’s short books in paperback format. That’s The McCandless Mecca: A Pilgrimage to the Magic Bus of the Stampede Trail. It’s priced at only $6.99, and you can buy it at Amazon.

This book has been available in Kindle format since 2013. The paperback edition, and the Kindle edition, have been revised to include a new afterword. The book also now includes 18 photos.

For the record, Ken’s other books are Walden on Wheels: On The Open Road from Debt to Freedom, Trespassing Across America: One Man’s Epic, Never-Done-Before (and Sort of Illegal) Hike Across the Heartland, and This Land Is Our Land: How We Lost the Right to Roam and How to Take It Back.

Time flies

While retrieving my passport from the lock box, I flipped through all my old passports. There are five passports altogether. It was in April 1984, I was reminded, that I made my first trip to the United Kingdom, including my first trip to Scotland. What a trip that was!

At the time, I had a Welsh friend, now deceased, who was a solicitor practicing in London. He was a political wonk, and though he was descended from Welsh coal miners and felt guilty about it, he was a supporter of Margaret Thatcher. He had requested tickets from his member of Parliament, and we attended the Prime Minister’s question day in the House of Commons, with rather amazing seats in the Sergeant at Arms’ private box. Somewhere in my archives I still have the front page of the next morning’s Times of London. The newspaper would supply the political context, controversial at the time, which I have forgotten. But I will never forget the most dramatic line of the day. A member of the opposition party asked the Prime Minister a long and hostile question. Mrs. Thatcher’s reply was very short a brought a round of laughter: “I do not speak for Mr. Haig.” I can almost still hear her voice.

My upcoming trip to Scotland will be only my second trip to Scotland. I’ll be in Edinburgh and the isles of Mull, Ulva, and Gometra. I have enough memory cards for about 2,500 photos. When I return, I’ll be at risk of boring you all with Scotland posts. I probably will not be able to post while traveling, because I’m taking a bare minimum of electronics.

Catholicism in Ireland, R.I.P.


Saint Patrick, Wikipedia

One of the newspapers that I check each morning is the Irish Times. Today’s paper has a very fine essay by Fintan O’Toole. It’s an obituary for Catholicism in Ireland:

It’s too late. Not even Pope Francis can resurrect Catholic Ireland

Catholicism in Ireland had a long run — from the 5th Century to around 2000, after the many atrocities of the church were exposed starting in the 1990s. Now that Catholicism is dead in Ireland, it’s fair to ask the question: What did Catholicism ever do for Ireland? If newspapers are the first draft of history, then O’Toole’s essay suggests that history will take a dim view of Catholicism in Ireland. It’s a question for historians. I’m not a historian, but for what it’s worth, I have an opinion. That opinion is that Catholicism in Ireland, during its 1,500-year run, did very little good and a great deal of harm.

It’s necessary to start with some historical questions and to try to answer those questions as best we can: What did Christianity displace in Ireland? Was the church better than what it displaced? The church, everywhere it goes, destroys what it displaces. So we know much less about early pagan Ireland than we ought to know. But some evidence remains. For example, there was the Brehon Law, which gives us a pretty good picture of pre-Christian pagan ethics in Ireland. The pagan Irish were doing just fine before the church took over. I’d take a Brehon over a bishop any day. So would most of the Irish, but ultimately the Irish weren’t given a choice — until now. And the church lost.

While the church has been dying, Ireland has been undergoing a powerful cultural (and economic) renewal. The Irish Times has regular features about the reversal of the Irish diaspora and the Irish returning to their homeland.

Again, I’m no historian, and weighing the record of the church in Ireland is above my pay grade. But insofar as I know anything about the Irish, and insofar as I know anything about the church, my view is that the Irish people would have been much better off if the church had never existed. One of the greatest skills of the church is, and was, making white people (and their cultures) dull, dumb, and despicable. I don’t think that “despicable” is too strong a word, given the crimes of the church in Ireland that have now been exposed and which surely went on for centuries.

Now if only I live long enough to read the obituary of white fundamentalism in the American South.

Loyalty vs. justice


Matthew Trudeau Photography via Wikipedia

Regular readers here know that I find Jonathan Haidt’s “moral foundations theory” a very useful tool for understanding the minds of conservatives vs. the minds of liberals. However, I part company with Haidt when Haidt asserts that the moral foundations of conservatives and the moral foundations of liberals are equally valid but just different. My claim is that the moral values of conservatives are inferior. For my previous posts on this subject, search this blog for “Haidt.” But, just as a quick reminder, Haidt’s theory identifies liberals’ primary moral values as justice, fairness, and caring. The primary moral values of conservatives are authority, loyalty and purity. In this post, I want to raise a new complaint against conservative moral values: Conservative moral values are pervertable. But liberal moral values are sound, even under stress.

Yesterday was Aug. 21, 2018, the day Paul Manafort was convicted and Michael Cohen pleaded guilty. Those who previously were too blind to see the criminality and treason of Donald Trump (and of those who surround Trump) ought to have a clearer picture now of what Trump is. Trump’s “Tweets” today reveal a great deal about the conservative notion of loyalty. Trump praises Manafort and calls him “brave” for refusing to “break.” In Trump’s mind, loyalty (to Trump, naturally) is a higher and braver virtue than justice under the law. In Trump’s mind, to betray the conservative value of loyalty for the liberal value of justice means that a person has broken. The depravity of such a view is flabbergasting, but most conservatives won’t even think to question it.

Here is the New York Times headline:

My claim is this: The primary liberal values cannot be perverted. Justice will not harm those who have done no harm. Fairness will not harm those who are fair. Caring will not harm those who care, nor those whom they care about. But the primary conservative values all have a lurking dark side. Where does loyalty to the wicked lead? When authority is wrong, where does loyalty to authority lead? What if an idea is pure, but also wrong?

Conservative values can be valuable if they can yield to higher values. But in our Trumpian age, conservatives can hardly even see the higher values of fairness, justice, and caring. Authority, loyalty, and purity are what matter in their world.

A simple case study: How propaganda works

There are very few exceptions: Right-wingers and the Republican Party cannot win elections or have their way without lying and cheating. Without a sophisticated propaganda system (and, increasingly under Trumpism, the demonization of the responsible media), the right wing would be exposed as what it truly is: A radical minority with a highly unpopular agenda, and no principles, that gets its way only insofar as it can get away with lying and cheating.

This is an interesting case study, because Ken recently had an article in High Country News (a newspaper for the western U.S.) that explains what is really going on. The article is here:

‘No trespassing’ laws create personal playgrounds for the wealthy

The video above shows how right-wingers and Republicans use lies to enact laws that benefit the rich while pretending the opposite. This video — unlike more sophisticated right-wing propaganda with more subtle or hard-to-detect lies — actually is an example of bad propaganda because it’s relatively easy to detect the deception and the attempt to use fear to manipulate people.

In the video, we have a typical American family of three going about their morning routine in a typical American home. Clueless hippies and hikers are encamped on their front lawn, even though there’s a white picket fence. Sheila is out in the yard cooking hot dogs on someone else’s Coleman stove. A man is fishing in their swimming pool. We are given to understand that this is what will happen to typical Idaho families unless the Idaho legislature approves what may now be the most radical trespassing laws in the country.

But the easy-to-see truth is that a typical suburban Idaho family (are there even suburbs in Idaho?) is at no risk. Existing laws already have got them covered. The real story (as Ken shows in the article) is that this is a billionaire’s law.

There are more subtle messages in the video that are very disturbing. One is that nice people don’t camp and fish. Those who do camp and fish (that is, if they’re liberals) are careless and clueless and utterly disrespectful. Nice people, of course, stay in their atomized suburban homes and see the world only on their televisions, or maybe through a window if they ever open their shutters and curtains. The young daughter of the family raises her hand and starts to wave to the fisherman. But her dad pushes her hand down and says, “No; no, no.” The message is that nice people don’t even associate with people like that. That is probably the ugliest and most subtle message contained in this 47 seconds of propaganda: Civility can be dangerous if extended to the wrong people. Civic involvement is one of the last things Republicans want (unless its done through an organization controlled and financed by right-wing money, such as the Tea Party). Nice people stay home, watch television, believe what they’re told, and don’t get involved. Liberals are not only clueless, they’re also a threat to nice normal people. Why doesn’t the dad of the family just go out and ask the campers to leave, or call the police? Because the ad wants people to believe that, unless a new law is passed, the dad has no right to do that — a rather blatant falsehood.

Contrast this with how progressive political elements try to get their message out. This propaganda video is a nice contrast with something I posted two days ago, Environmental justice: The people fight back. The method used in that case was to leverage the media power of famous people to tell the stories of poor people who otherwise are ignored. The most important part of the news conference that I wrote about was not the speechifying by Al Gore and the Rev. William J. Barber (though they gave great speeches). The most important part, rather, was the parade of ordinary people who told true and verifiable stories of devastating illnesses and early deaths caused by living in proximity to coal ash.

For progressives, the challenge is how to draw attention to the truth. That’s what Ken was doing with his op-ed in a Western newspaper, on a subject on which he has done a great deal of research and written a book. For right-wingers, the challenge is designing effective lies, connecting those lies to an emotion such as prejudice or fear, and pumping those lies into the propaganda system.

I propose a game. The Nov. 6 election is coming up. Soon, television screens all over the country will be full of right-wing political ads. Analyze the ads as propaganda. Look for the lies. Were the lies obvious, or was some research required to expose them? Keep your list of fallacies handy. How many fallacies can you identify? What does the propaganda assume that people don’t know, so that it can take advantage of ignorance? What emotions does the propaganda try to stimulate? Whom does it demonize? What is the propaganda’s overt intention? Are there also disguised intentions? Is divisiveness intended? If so, who is being played against whom, based on what element of distrust or fear? Who paid for the ad? Whose interests does it serve? Google them and see if you can follow the money (that may be hard!). Feel free to apply the same checks to ads for liberals, and do your best to apply the same methods to scoring liberal vs. right-wing political ads.