After the Republican Convention

The horrible freak show that was the Republican National Convention has now come to an end, with a red-faced candidate shouting at the faithful that America is on the edge of violent collapse and their only hope is to trust in Him as the Second Coming of Richard Nixon, or is it Mussolini? Thankfully, a more sunny scenario was offered today by the Democrats, when Hillary Clinton introduced Tim Kaine as her choice to be her Vice President, should they win the election. Finally, after days of gloom and doom and angry mobs shouting for blood, we saw two relaxed, very intelligent and very experienced public servants offering hope rather than hate, compassion rather than anger. I think Hillary summed it all up when she said, earlier in the day on Friday, "Love trumps hate." Kaine reached out to the growing numbers of Hispanic Americans by speaking Spanish...FLUENTLY.

For me, one of the most important issues here is experience. Hillary was a U.S. Senator for eight years and Secretary of State for four, not to mention eight years as First Lady. She can also boast of earlier years spent in advocating for children's issues. Kaine has been a city councilman, the mayor of Richmond, the governor of Virginia, and a U.S. Senator for three years. He also worked with Jesuit missionaries in Honduras when he was just out of college.

Trump has zero experience in public service and government, and his much-vaunted business experience is clouded by all those bankruptcies and law suits that seem to buzz around him like flies around, uh, food. All he does is shout about how great he is and how he can fix everything, without ever giving any details! At least his VP pick, Mike Pence, has some solid experience as a U.S. congressman and a governor.Though I do not agree with his political views, I appreciate that Pence has a calm and thoughtful temperament. Problem is, the experienced and thoughtful Pence is not at the top of the ticket. The very loud but completely inexperienced and unthoughtful Trump is the boss, and poor Pence is his "apprentice."

If you believe that important jobs, like President and Vice-President of the USA, should be done by experienced and intelligent people, the obvious choice is Clinton-Kaine. That is my view, anyway!

Reflections on violence and violent gods in Paganism still forthcoming....

Peace Without Justice Is No Peace At All

The word "peace" has a pleasant ring to it, but it is thrown around much too easily, often without much thought as to what it really means and requires. When we think of peace as a desirable thing, it is not a "peace" floating in space, devoid of any social context or history or social obligations. It is a peace that makes people content to refrain from conflict because their needs have been satisfied to some extent, and because they feel respected and understood by those with whom they have been in conflict or disagreement.

In a couple of situations that have been very much in the news in recent weeks, the Palestinian-Israeli attacks, counter-attacks and ongoing animosity, and the tensions between protesters and police in Ferguson, Missouri following the police slaying of the unarmed, 18 year old young black man, Michael Brown, I note the tendency among many observers, commentators and politicians to plead for "peace," by which they mean an immediate cessation of violence. This make me reflect on how, for many people who do not think very often or very deeply about these matters, there is a very simple solution to such conflict situations: just stop fighting. Palestinians, stop shooting rockets and killing Israelis. African-Americans of Ferguson, stop throwing rocks and flaming bottles at the police. Embrace "peace." Lion and lamb, please come together, and all the surrounding sheep will BAAAAA in agreement!

This kind of quick, easy and empty "peace," a cessation of conflict without any resolution of the underlying grievances and injustices that drove the conflict in the first place, is not only simplistic, short-sighted and disrespectful to those who have risked bodily harm or even sacrificed their lives to voice their grievances in these actions, but often ensures that there will be more conflict and violence in the future, for the simmering grievances will not become less heated over time simply because "peace" has been declared or imposed.

In the two cases cited above, most of our news media and political leaders tend to side with whoever the dominant power in the situation is, and to show much more sympathy for their suffering and losses than those of the other side. So, in the violence between the Palestinians and Israelis, we hear much more about how the Israelis are justified in using force against the Palestinians than we do about why the Palestinians are rising up in the first place. If an Israeli civilian such as a mother or a child is killed by a Hamas rocket, this is lamented and dramatized, but less so when Palestinians are killed or have their homes and communities reduced to rubble by Israeli missiles and soldiers, even though many more Palestinians have been killed by Israelis than the reverse, in this and past conflicts as well. Still, the Palestinians are expected to accept the destruction of their communities, pick up the pieces and move on, and live happy, "peaceful" lives despite their poverty, trauma and despair, which Israeli policy enforces through such measure as the "Separation Wall" that seals off the Palestinian territories, the Israeli military-manned checkpoints that they have to pass through on a daily basis, to their great frustration and humiliation, and the Israeli-imposed economic blockade that strangles their economic life and ensures continuing poverty and desperation. Where is the sympathy and understanding for that? It seems to me that in much of our media and among many of our leaders, it is only the suffering of the Israelis that receives attention.

In Ferguson, though there is sympathy expressed for the death of Michael Brown, the protesters who have turned to violence are seen as unreasonable hooligans, unlike the "good" protestors, who march in the daytime in the streets holding signs and flowers without resorting to any violence. The state's governor, Jay Nixon, and senior senator, Claire McCaskill, have also embraced this narrative of "good" peaceful protestors versus "bad" violent ones who dare to threaten the police. When the state authorities send in National Guard forces and fire tear gas at protestors in the streets, this may be questioned as to whether it might be a bit excessive, but is still seen as understandable because something must be done to keep the protestors from getting out of control. This understanding attitude toward police use of force, coupled with an unwillingness to allow citizens to use force to fight back against the force used against them, overlooks the deeper reality that the violent protestors are not merely responding to the slaying of Michael Brown but expressing their burning resentment over months, years, and even decades of abuse and harassment that African-Americans in Ferguson have endured at the hands of the Ferguson police and other local and state authorities. There is the stubborn reality of decades of white flight, white-dominated government agencies, including the police, and economic disinvestment in the Ferguson area that have made the black community as poor and troubled as it is. So, when the African-American community here or elsewhere explodes in violence, it has to be understood as an explosion that was caused first and foremost by a long and continuing historical experience of injustice and suffering. Where is the sympathy and understanding for that? It is my impression that for many in our media and among many of our leaders, it is only the violence of the angry African-American protestors that is condemned, not the social conditions and police brutality that drove them to this point.

If we could have "peace" of the sort that our media and politicians seem to be calling for in these situations, a cessation of violent actions before there is any resolution of the issues driving the violence, what an empty and horrible thing it would be. It would mean that people in such situations as the Palestinian territories or the African-American community in cities like Ferguson would have to accept a life as a disrespected, disempowered second class of people, with no effective ability to oppose those who oppress, brutalize and disenfranchise them, vulnerable at any moment to violent treatment by state authorities, with no means of redress. This would be similar to the kind of peace that the Nazis were hoping to achieve, a nice peaceful society of clean, orderly, white German people after all the dirty and disorderly Jews and Slavs and others had been done away with. It would indeed have been very peaceful, but not at all very just.

Though I regret violence and loss of life of any sort, I do not condemn those in harshly oppressed situations who turn to violence when they reach the desperate conclusion that they have no other way of asserting their needs and concerns. Since the creation of Israel, the grievances of the Palestinians pushed out of their homes and off their land to make way for the nation of Israel have never been fully addressed or resolved. Israeli groups continue to build settlements on land that still, according to international law, belongs to the Palestinians, and so the Palestinians, already disadvantaged by the way in which they were treated during the creation of Israel, see their lands further diminished by these continuing encroachments, while they endure such hardships as the checkpoints and embargoes mentioned above. Who can blame them for exploding into violence, as regrettable as its effects may be? And answer this: would the world pay any attention to the Palestinians, would many people outside Palestine actually know or care about their issues and grievances, if they did not occasionally attack Israel? Do the proponents of empty "peace" expect them to simply suffer and die in silence, so that Israeli communities can flourish in peace and security and never have to worry about the people living right next to them in abominable conditions that they, the Israelis, helped to create and now help to maintain, who live under constant fear of the Israeli police and military? When the Palestinians rise up out of their segregated areas to fire rockets at the Israelis, could this not be compared to the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, when the disadvantaged, oppressed Jews decided to fight back courageously against their Nazi oppressors? This is indeed a most painful and horrible irony of the situation of the state of Israel and its troubled co-existence with its Palestinian citizens and neighbors.

And in Ferguson, if there were not violent protestors out in the streets at night throwing Molotov cocktails at the police, would anyone really know or care about the death of Michael Brown and the suffering of the black people of Ferguson? Would the national news media or politicians really pay much attention to quiet, peaceful protests? If the African-Americans there had only protested peacefully, without the drama of violence, would anyone really pay attention or care?

When the long-suffering, oppressed people of any location rise up in violence, it is only because they have been pushed to the brink by authorities that have often preferred to bury them than to care for them. If you want to stop the violence of tomorrow, start thinking about the disadvantaged, underprivileged, and either overtly or subtly oppressed people of today, and start thinking about how we and our institutions and authorities can help those people have a better life today and tomorrow, so that there will be no need for anyone to turn to violence to express the anger, sorrow, humiliation, bitterness and despair that we see in all too many places in our troubled and all too often indifferent world, and don't ask people to respect "law and order" when they have never seen any benefit or justice from that so-called law and so-called order.

Peace without justice is no peace at all. We need peace with justice and caring for the needs of all, not just for certain classes or colors of people, who get to live the good life while others have no life at all.

And to put a Pagan twist on this, I once again reject the narrow tribalism of ethnic division that some Pagans embrace. Just look at Ferguson and all the other communities in America where there is a sharp division between predominantly black and white communities. There are your clearly demarcated tribes, and there you have injustice and hate. Look at Israel and Palestine, and you find the same thing. We need to build bridges, not fences, and break bread together, and look for the good of all humanity, not just one enclave walled off from another and played off against it. Ethnic traditions such as songs, prayers, myths and forms of folk art that come to us from the past are beautiful things, but they are part of the common human heritage and should be respected and enjoyed as such. They should bring us together in moments of sharing and appreciation, and discovery of commonality across the range of diverse expressions of human spirituality and local culture, and not be used to separate us or inflame us against one another.

They Scare Me: My Fear of Fascism in America

At the end of each academic year, when I see my students' final essays and research papers, I have time to reflect more deeply on the material that I teach and how it is interpreted by my students and related to their own experiences of life and their own views of the world that we live in. As my students come mainly from lower and middle class backgrounds, I feel they afford me a fairly representative window on the state of mind of Middle America. Not the elite, more liberal and cosmopolitan America of privileged enclaves on the east or west coast, but the more conservative America of less cosmopolitan, more average and ordinary Americans. And every year, what I see when I peer into this collective mentality scares me.

In teaching a World History class that surveys the interaction of civilizations and peoples around the world from about the Renaissance onward, a major theme I try to convey is the huge and continuing impact of colonialism. I strive to explain that the West greatly benefitted from the centuries of colonialism, including the long period of African enslavement, while other regions suffered, and that even the supposed end of colonialism in the 20th century has not meant an end of Western control over and meddling in other regions, with the post-WW II and even moreso, the post-Cold War political and economic order paving the way for substantial corporate control over many nations and their resources, amounting to a new type of colonialism, a corporate colonialism, with America now the inheritor of the mantle of colonial master-in-chief. When we get to the end of the course, I attempt to impress upon my students that resentment toward colonialism, and toward America in its role as global military enforcer of the current, corporate business-centered order, is a key factor that inspires and drives international terrorism, such as the 9/11 attack and other radical Islamist actions. I talk about how the American government, through its military forces, through the CIA, and most recently, through remote controlled drone attacks has often used force against other countries, including assassination, and that this is part of what motivates people around the world to dislike, resent and even hate America to the point of engaging in violence.

Furthermore, I tell my students that we are in a very dangerous time. If we Americans continue on the path laid down by Bush and largely continued by Obama of using force against an ever-expanding range of terrorist targets around the world, meaning that we kill and terrorize ever growing numbers of people through what we believe to be legitimate anti-terrorist actions, we will run the perpetual risk of simply inciting more acts of violence by people seeking revenge against us for acts of violence that we have perpetrated against them. By killing terrorists we will create them. Witness our killing of Osama bin Laden. That really stopped Islamic terrorism once and for all, didn't it?

I comment that a cycle of bloody revenge can become a self-perpetuating dynamic that can go on for decades or centuries, and I ask my students if this is what they want for America and the world. I tell them of the simple but important concept of "blowback" as something that we Americans should take more seriously. We cannot simply use force around the world as often as we like, set up military bases everywhere, send our troops and CIA everywhere, and expect everyone else in the world to cooperate and agree with us and love us unconditionally and never get upset with us, never disagree with us, and never strike back against us. That is unrealistic and short-sighted, but it seems to remain the guiding principle of American foreign policy.

I suggest to my students that there could be an alternative path for America to follow in its relations with other countries. America could try to treat other countries with more respect, withdraw our military forces from places where they are not welcome, and negotiate with countries or groups that we have tensions with. In my view, this would greatly reduce the risk of perpetual terrorist blowback and revenge cycles. However, REAL negotiation has become fairly alien to American foreign policy. What passes for "negotiation" these days is American representatives telling other governments or groups what they must do to avoid brutal punishment from us, including economic sanctions that can cause as much suffering and death as military invasions. That is not negotiating; that is just a slightly diplomatic form of bullying. Real negotiation would mean sitting down at the table as equals, saying here are our priorities, our needs, and listening to those of the other side as well, and then trying to work out a deal.

I would like to think I am a fairly insightful observer and a somewhat persuasive advocate for my ideas, but when I see my students' views on world affairs as expressed in their end-of-term papers, I realize I am sadly mistaken about my ability to make a dent in the view of the world that many of my students seem to share. After all the discussion of colonialism, the resentment of foreign domination resulting in terrorist blowback and the dangers of an American foreign policy resting mainly on the use of military force, what I hear from my students is that colonialism is all over, terrorists and Islam are evil,and that America must continue to use military force to "protect our freedom."

I am struck that the young of America have been very effectively brainwashed into this simplistic, militaristic, pro-bully, anti-terrorist, anti-Muslim view of the world. From the coverage of the tragedy of 9/11 that never really looked hard at other countries' and peoples' grievances against the USA to President Bush hailing "Mission Accomplished" about our great work in Iraq to President Obama's celebration of the assassination of Osama bin Laden, from the long-running television drama "24" to "Zero Dark Thirty," the recent cinematic tribute to the CIA, to the military and to the use of torture, to the paucity of voices in the news media, even the so-called "liberal media," questioning our militaristic foreign policy, to the proliferation of video games that train people in the visceral pleasures of blowing away your enemies, there is little that lone educators like me can do to resist the overwhelmingly militaristic and jingoistic mentality reigning in America. I hope to plant a few seeds of critical thinking here and there, inspire a few students to imagine something more than endless war as the natural order of things, but it may be useless. I will keep trying but without great confidence that I am achieving much.

Something else I teach about in presenting the history of the 20th century is Fascism. For most of my students and I would imagine for the vast majority of Americans, Fascism is something that they confidently believe has been dead and buried since World War II. Yes, Hitler and Mussolini were bad and the Holocaust was horrible, but it is all over now,they would say if asked. If only I could take refuge in a similar belief that the world has truly closed the book on Fascism! Instead, I fear that Fascism is reviving and that it now waves a red, white and blue flag. Obviously, this is not the exact same thing as German Nazism or Italian Fascism or any of the other extreme right-wing movements that afflicted Europe in the 1920s and 30s. I know that the original Nazi movement is gone. I know that Mussolini is dead. But I see certain trends and tendencies, certain preferences, that to me seem strongly reminiscent of Fascism in 21st century America.

Fascism is actually quite hard to define, as anyone who has investigated the scholarly literature can attest. As a professor teaching introductory course, however, I have to find simple, direct ways of defining and explaining things. I therefore have come to understand Fascism as a style of social organization, and indeed a view of the world, simultaneously both a way of being and a way of thinking that is centered on the use of brute force to attain and maintain authority and dominance. On top of this there is typically overlaid an ideology of extreme nationalism, with intensive devotion to the flag and other patriotic symbols, but I think the raw love of brutality is really the more fundamental feature. What serves brutality is valued above all, and so there is a powerful devotion to weapons, to soldiers, to policemen, to any thing, person or social institution that is related to the use of violence. In fact, it might be said that the ideology of nationalism is just a means to the end of the worship of violence; that the love of the nation or the flag is just the excuse for enjoying hating, shooting and killing the enemies of the flag and feeling really really great about being really really brutal. Nazis were extremely patriotic, let's not forget. They really loved their flag, their nation, their uniforms, their military, their Fuhrer, and they felt perfectly justified in using force against others and invading and attacking other countries.

Loving violence (think video games and action movies). Respecting brutality (note the rising popularity of super-violent sports like mixed martial arts and cage fighting). Glorifying professional agents of violence (endless proclamations in the media and our politicians that soldiers, policemen and trained assassins like Special Ops soldiers and CIA agents are the finest Americans). Assuming that our country is always justified in using force (think of the Iraq and Afghan wars,the drone attacks in Yemen, Pakistan, "war games" training exercises and military maneuvers right on the borders of Iran and North Korea, and many of our politicians not wanting to limit America's freedom to use military force by signing international treaties or submitting to any kind of international authority). This is America today. Is this also Fascism? I fear that it might be, or if not, something disturbingly similar.

It is late now, and I am tired. It is dark out and it seems dark in here too. Perhaps in the morning when the sun is shining and I can smell spring blossoms on the breeze I will feel differently, but I doubt it. I have been watching this train rolling down the tracks for a long time, and I know it is going to keep on coming. The train is called America, and it scares me.

Still, history is full of surprises. Things can turn and change quite suddenly. All that seems solid can crumble unexpectedly. No one saw the Fall of the Berlin Wall coming, nor the Tiananmen Square protests. Maybe the forces of Fascism can yet be derailed. I do hope so, and I would like to see Paganism as part of that effort, hence my call for non-violent, non-militaristic, non-nationalistic, pro-ecological, and pro-artistic forms of Paganism. The same tendencies should be applauded among other forms of religion as well.

Death by Corporation

I have recently been thinking about how so many of the world's most serious problems today are either caused or made worse by the powerful business entities known as corporations. It is not just that large corporations engage in practices and sell products that may be harmful in various ways. It is also the case that such corporations are also able and willing to use their considerable economic power, media presence and political clout to block or confuse any efforts to address serious problems from global warming to childhood obesity to gun violence, to name just a few.

Global warming. It is a serious threat to humanity's future. Warmer temperatures are causing more and more extreme weather with damaging, even lethal consequences, with the "superstorm" Hurricane Sandy on the East Coast of the USA in October of 2012 and the raging fires caused by excessive heat and drought in the New South Wales region of Australia in January of 2013 as two recent examples of the environmental juggernaut that is bearing down on us. In the judgment of most scientific authorities, we have to alter our patterns of energy consumption, in particular our dependence on carbon-based fossil fuels like oil, coal and natural gas, in order to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases that are building up in the atmosphere and triggering a warming of the climate that is in turn warming the ocean waters, that in turn cause more warmth and moisture to rise into the atmosphere and produce the storms, droughts and other weather effects causing increasing damage to life, land and property. However, the carbon fuel industries have poured money into an intensive media campaign, particularly prominent on right-wing news outlets like FOX News but also finding its way to other media channels as well, to discredit the very idea of global warming or climate change, convincing a good many Americans, and no doubt others elsewhere, that either global warming is a kind of scientific hoax, or, that there is no clear proof that it is the result of human activity,and no proof that human activity can halt it. Therefore, it would be foolish to undertake actions such as reducing the burning of fossil fuels, since such actions would be disruptive to the world economy without any certain environmental benefit. This has confused many people into a state of apathy. The Victors: corporations that profit from fossil fuel production and consumption. The Losers: all of us who want the planet to remain livable. The reason: the incredible hunger for profit that blots out all other concerns and values is proving capable of drowning out the world's scientists and visionary leaders concerned about the future.


Childhood obesity. This is an increasingly common condition in the USA and is growing in the UK and elsewhere too. It is not just that young people are becoming more massive in their size. They are also manifesting diseases such as diabetes that threaten their health and longevity. Scientists are not clear on all the causes for this situation, and there may well be many from lack of exercise due to more sedentary lifestyles and pastimes to the ingestion of growth hormones given to farm animals and ending up in American food to overeating of "junk food" filled with fat, carbohydrates, salt, sugar and/or corn syrup, and chemicals that add appealing color and addictive taste. No one objects to the government encouraging young people to exercise more, such as First Lady Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" campaign, but when Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of NYC, made an effort to restrict the bottle and/or serving size of sugary drinks such as soda, there was a huge outcry from the soda and beverage industry,and a media campaign accusing the mayor of robbing Americans of their "freedom," presumably the all-important freedom to eat and drink non-nutritious foods and beverages and develop heart disease and diabetes. Once again, corporate greed attempts to override human interests.

Gun violence. As I have addressed this recently, I will not rehash the whole discussion, but just focus on the corporate profit dimension. Guns and gun-related paraphernalia are big business in the USA, highly profitable indeed. The main pro-gun lobbying organization, the NRA, is largely funded by gun manufacturers. With so much money at stake, the purveyors and manufacturers of guns are definitely not going to let a mere public outcry by the majority of the people of the nation over problems of gun violence get in the way of the profits that their stockholders feast upon. And once again, we find a sophisticated media campaign funded by gun manufacturers and amplified by right-wing media that any reduction or restriction of guns in America is an assault on fundamental freedoms and evidence of a totalitarian government in the making that is best resisted by --you guessed it-- guns. So go out now, all you freedom-loving folk, and prepare for war against the big bad government that thinks of nothing else but how to oppress and enslave you. I keep wondering when someone will start championing the right to bear nuclear arms. If possessing personal weapons without restriction of ANY sort is so important, then why not allow patriotic Americans to have their own nuclear bombs and missile launch systems? Wouldn't that be the ultimate demonstration of the most important American "freedom?"

The defense of the "right" to eat and drink unhealthy foods and the "right" to own and use a limitless number of guns is almost identical to the way that tobacco companies used to champion the "right" to smoke. The skillful effort to confuse and discredit the overwhelming scientific consensus that global warming/climate change is a planet-threatening problem RIGHT NOW is also reminiscent of how the tobacco companies argued for decades that there was no good scientific evidence that smoking was harmful to human health, even though the companies themselves had done their own research proving that point!

We cannot trust corporations to watch out for our health or the future well-being of our planet. Corporations just want us to buy buy buy whatever crap they are producing, no matter what the cost to health, to society, to the environment,and they will do everything in their power to prevent anyone from interfering with their business activities. As a college teacher, I am sad to see how many of my students seem to believe that the American style corporate economy, the so-called "free enterprise/free market" system, is not only the best economic system, but indeed the ONLY one that is possible. This is the result of the past 30 years of American politics in which the Reaganite vision of government-BAD, businessmen-GOOD; regulations-BAD, profits-GOOD; compassion for others-STUPID, selfishness and individualism-SMART has been dominant. For the sake of the planet and ourselves, I pray that this paradigm is now losing its allure and that we will be able to have a different kind of conversation about such issues as mentioned above. One thing is for sure, every step of the way, powerful corporations will fight like hell to prevent any changes that might deprive them of their all-important profits. They do not care about the future, so we are going to have to care twice as hard.

In Snorri Sturluson's version of the myth of Baldur, his death causes widespread sadness, and his mother lets it be known that if all beings will weep for him and show their love, he will be returned to life. The whole range of living beings are ready to cooperate, but only one creature refuses, a female giant that is actually the mischievous god Loki in disguise. She says, "Let Hel (death) keep what she has...I will not weep for Odin's son!" This is the kind of hard-heartedness that we can expect from the giant corporations of our day. When we tell them the children are being killed by an oversupply of dangerous weapons and unhealthy food, that the oceans are rising and destructive storms are washing away our shores and threatening our cities, and when we urge them that we have to change the way they do business so that future generations can walk on the earth in safety and enjoy the light of the sun, the blue of the sky and the greenness of the earth, they are not going to want to listen. We have to keep at it until they do. Today's corporations are caught in a web of evil that they have spun for themselves, but the corporations are at bottom human institutions, and we must strive to reawaken that glimmer of humanity that still exists somewhere inside the armies of lawyers, the billion dollar marketing teams, the disinformation campaigns, the corporate boardrooms obsessed with financial figures.

Above all, we have to reject the idea that profits are all that matter. People are more important than profits. Nature is more important than profits. The well-being of us all and our planet is more important than profits. We need new economic arrangements that honor our deepest, most sustaining and inspiring values and reject the false idols of narrow-minded greed and profit. We need to revisit the very idea of what corporations are for, who they should serve, and whether they should bear more responsibility to society and nature in a broader sense, and not just be answerable to their shareholders and the stock market.

As a Pagan, I can easily relate this to the Pagan love of nature, but there is in fact no religion I know of that tells people they should seek to destroy each other and all in nature for the sake of gold and greed.

Our Supremely Disgusting Court

Yesterday (June 28, 2011), the U.S Supreme Court struck down a California law that restricted sales of violent video games to people 18 and over by placing hefty fines on the sale of such items to those under that age. See http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/28/us/28scotus.html . The law was clearly intended to attempt to resist the rising glorification of violence in our society, something that this blogger has often reflected on. The Court found that the principle of "free speech," as manifested in allowing children to play games in which they fantasize perpetrating all manner of ultra-violent acts on an endless series of victims, outweighed the possible ill effects of young people immersing themselves in endless hours of gruesomely violent fantasy play. Writing for the majority, Justice Scalia reasoned that there was no tradition in the USA of censoring portrayals of violence. He rejected the proposition that restrictions on video violence were comparable to restrictions on pornography.

I am saddened and disgusted by this turn of events. It is such a pathetic verification of the old criticism of American culture as a twisted world in which violence is valued and sexuality is repressed. Your kid spends his free time in games in which he can kill ten thousand people an hour, hack them to pieces, set them on fire, run them over with tanks? Perfectly fine. Show one woman's naked breast or vagina to a thirteen year old? Criminal act. Backwards priorities, to my thinking. The hippie saying, "Make love, not war," may have originated in America but it never reflected the majority mindset, and still does not today.

Again, I hope that all branches of Paganism will not side with the dominant trend in America toward glorification of violence. We are going down a very dark road, I fear. A culture that values sadism, cruelty and brute force over all else cannot have a very bright future. Worse still, the evolution of our military is toward the use of remote controlled drones that are operated very much like video games.
See http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/20/world/20drones.html. So, the young kids who grow up on violent video games will be perfectly suited to be the conscienceless, long-distance video game soldiers of the future. Perhaps the final result will be for the some video game corporation, say Hyperviolence Inc,,to take over the US military and run it as a subsidiary, feeding the live footage of people being shot or blown up by our brave drones in places like Pakistan and Yemen back into the games for every patriotic citizen to enjoy, the younger the better. Why not do the same with police and security services, and have the whole country under a brave new regime of video violence: pay-per-view law and order.

At least there was good news in New York about gays and lesbians getting the right to marry.