Location of the proposed Cordoba House relative to ground zero. Photo credit: wikimedia commons.
The ADL (Anti-Defamation League) publicly opposes the construction two blocks from Ground Zero of the Cordoba House (also known as Park 51), which the planners imagine as hosting a range of activities similar to those offered at the 92nd Street Y and would include a Mosque at which Muslims could worship. The plan, supported by Mayor Bloomberg, is opposed by some who have consistently used the attack on the World Trade Center as justifications for war and for stoking fear and hatred of Muslims.
ADL leader Abe Foxman presented the position of this organization, which claims to oppose discrimination, by reading a formal statement that seemed to be a perfect example of “shooting and crying” (first you attack brutally, then you cry about how sad it is to be put into this difficult position, often blaming the victims for having “forced” you to attack them). The key to that statement was this:
Proponents of the Islamic Center may have every right to build at this site, and may even have chosen the site to send a positive message about Islam. The bigotry some have expressed in attacking them is unfair, and wrong. But ultimately this is not a question of rights, but a question of what is right. In our judgment, building an Islamic Center in the shadow of the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain – unnecessarily – and that is not right.
This kind of argument is deeply mistaken.
Last night my husband Douglas Smyth, who writes about politics and economics, mentioned Paul Krugman’s op-ed piece in the New York Times “Defining Prosperity Down.” Krugman expresses concern that “those in power will soon declare that high unemployment is “structural” — a permanent part of the economic landscape.” Where is the public outrage at this cavalier government acceptance of high unemployment, my husband wondered? People, he said, have become so passive.
At which point, I became outraged. Who is passive I wanted to know? Aren’t many of us signing petitions and making phone calls to representatives almost daily? And before the invasion of the Iraq, didn’t people take to the streets in large numbers in almost every small town and city in the country not to mention the rest of the world? Don’t people organize and join boycotts? (I had just that day written to CEOs at Target who are now exercising their rights as a “corporate person” to buy elections.) Don’t people volunteer in the political campaigns of those they believe will make a difference? I make no claim to being a model activist. But I am not passive or indifferent, and I don’t believe that most people are no matter what their political stripe or lack thereof.
Esther-Hicks channels magnetic entities which she calls "Abraham"
Rhonda Byrne, author of the best selling DVD/book "The Secret" is releasing a sequel in August called "The Power."
We must understand that the founder of a cult or new religion has no room for compromise: absolutes are necessary. True believers in mystical psychotherapy will not embrace a gospel with modest claims: it must be all or nothing. – Martin Larson
“He could go to school and daydream.” That was the advice given by positive thinking guru, law of attraction teacher and “channel” Esther Hicks aka “Abraham” to a black woman who asked how her son should approach learning about the difficult history of slavery in school. After telling the curious mother “none of that [slavery] has anything to do with him,” and that “he won’t have to deal with it” Abraham-Hicks proceeded to equate the teaching of African-American history with a family legacy of passing down “bad” feelings. But this is nothing compared to what she said about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. When the woman asked her about a way to interpret his life in an empowering way for her son Esther-Hicks launched into something that can be best described as an ignorant stream of psychobabble. She described his vision in the vaguest of terms and then said, “He lost sight of his dream momentarily…he began to push against. And when one pushes against in a very fast moving stream abrupt things happened…It’s trying to get others to agree with us about our dreams that causes backlash. But when we just dream them ourselves…the resources of the universe come into alignment with us.” Blaming Dr. King for his own death was paired with her instruction to the woman to not tell her son about the unjust things that Dr. King had to struggle against. Her point was that slavery, racism and segregation are all “negative” and so therefore we aren’t supposed to think about them. And if all of this wasn’t bad enough, when responding to a question on Oprah’s radio show about how the law of attraction would lead to a young girl attracting her own rape and murder, Esther-Hicks responded by saying parents don’t teach their children how to think properly and they are influenced by the negative thinking of the adults around them. She told Oprah, “if they are listening to the guidance within they could not comfortably ever settle on the thoughts that would lead them to attract something unwanted.”
How are we to understand the malaise, the feelings not only of disappointment but also of disinterest, depoliticization and even hopelessness that the Obama Presidency has brought in its wake? The “liberal” supporters of Obama, such as David Remnick, Hendrick Herzberg or Jonathan Alter give us two contradictory explanations. On the one hand, the campaign raised too-high expectations, there was bound to be a let down. On the other hand, they also tell us that Obama has been a spectacularly successful President, “delivering” health care, financial reform, and saving us from a Great Depression. In either case “we” – the disappointed Obama supporters, in a word, the left – are subtly reproached for our immaturity, our lack of realism; their’s is a sort of: “thank-you-very-much-for-your-help-in-the-campaign-but-lets-leave-things-to-the-grown-ups-until-the-next-campaign” approach.
There is a deeper way to understand the Obama malaise, however, one that frees us from focusing on the man, and helps us to see our society. That way is to situate the campaign, and the Presidency, historically. In this regard no context is more important than the one that remains the deepest, most important and most unmastered part of our collective history and imagination – the 1960s. For the Obama Presidency was inconceivable without the sixties, and it is precisely the sixties that Obama has repudiated.
Immigration policy and the Hispanic vote have been a point of contention for Republicans since the beginning of the 21st century. President Bush, to his credit, attempted to pass an immigration policy that would have allowed a guest worker program (and incidentally, broadened the GOP tent), but was stymied by right wing elements in his own party. The strategy was inspired by shifting Congressional demographics and, had Bush succeeded, he might have delivered Republican control of Congress for decades.
Demagogues like Rush Limbaugh who rely on an openly racist base for ratings won the day. The party narrowed and took a sharp turn to the right.
