quackquack

Politician known for stance against gay-marriage announces he’s gay after being arrested for drunk driving outside a gay bar. Trying to explain the seeming-inconsistency of the voting record is Wayne Besen of truthwinsout.org:

“It’s a perfect mask for someone who’s trying to stay in the closet,” said Besen in a telephone interview. “They hope that people will think that they’re heterosexual. It’s quite common; we’ve seen it over and over again. … They’re already living a lie and this takes it to a new level.”

He added, “They’re willing to harm themselves to protect an image of who they’re not. It shows how extreme and harmful that homophobia is. The closet will force people to make decisions that will harm their own lives.”

An interesting interview with Quaker activist George Lakey:

One that weighed heavily with me was a sense of demoralization that came out of the ‘60s. Many felt it was all over and we’d failed. So how do you start something new in a largely demoralized bunch of activists? We needed confidence building measures. We needed to know that we could do something now, as well as project a vision and a strategy. Another impulse was making a living. We didn’t picture being a fundraising organization with that subsidizing the activists. Activists had to provide their own income. But, by living communally, the costs go way down. So some people said, “We love the idea of printing, so how about we start a collective print shop?” And that was employment for a lot of people. And a couple other people said, “The cheaper we can get quality food, the better, so let’s start a co-op.” Cheap food, that’s great, and livelihood for the people who’d be managers. So we had a chance to create something and make it work and provide some benefit to the neighborhood. So I think several agendas came together around prefigurative politics.

I wrote about MNS back in April and was involved in a lot of the second-generation post-MNS culture (publishing house, food coop). My interest in this is partially preparation for the New Monastics and Convergent Friends workshop C Wess Daniels and I are going to lead at Pendle Hill this May.

A good article in Business Week on how Google runs a meeting. Takeaways: minimize office politics, don’t run on feelings (“I like”) and take official notes in real-time.

In a shop like Google, much of the work takes place in meetings, and her goal is to make sure teams have a firm mandate, strategic direction, and actionable information, while making participants feel motivated and respected.

In light of some recent political violence in Russia:

Kelly wants neither the escapism of other-worldly piety nor the obsession with here-and-now effectiveness of church-as-social-agency. It is the constant awareness (fading inevitably from foreground to background, and back again) of Divine Presence that gives us both endurance and perspective. As I contemplate how life is not a chess game where we have unlimited time to construct a perfect strategy, it’s a great comfort to me to consider that my only real task at any given moment is to remain in that Presence.

The question of whether it is ever right for Friends to support (or appear to support) one side over another in a conflict is not new. There is a difference between conscientious neutrality,…

Friends are now at a crisis… We can conform to political culture… liberal Friends siding more and more with the democrats, Orthodox/evangelical more and more with the republican Religious right. We…

Yes, it’s coated in a kind of diplomatic double-speak, but listen to it:

“Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near term (next 12 months) — while Afghan security capacity matures — risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible,” General McChrystal writes.

This is an eight year war and the US’s top general is saying he doesn’t think the other side can be defeated without an emergency influx of more troops.

Though rarely remembered by name today, many of the new ways of doing radical politics that the Movement for a New Society (MNS) promoted have become central to contemporary anti-authoritarian social movements. MNS popularized consensus decision-making, introduced the spokescouncil method of organization to activists in the United States, and was a leading advocate of a variety of practices—communal living, unlearning oppressive behavior, creating co-operatively owned businesses—that are now often subsumed under the rubric of “prefigurative politics.”

HT to SmithMilLCreek Jim, who justdropped a comment on my earlier MNS article.

The original intention of these pioneering Quakers was that everything shoud be stripped away so that all that was left was G-d, and Jesus Christ as revealed in the scriptures, and experienced in every person’s heart as our Inner Teacher. George Fox would be rolling in his grave to know that not only has everything been stripped away, but Christianity ITSELF has been stripped away and demolished. Then, erected on this demolition site are some flimsy altars to political and social activism, and some “practices” that look no less like Zen Buddhism.

I’m a big fan of anything Morris does but his reflections are particularly useful since he made a fascinating documentary on McNamara a few years ago:

“How should we remember Robert McNamara? As an engaged public servant who participated in some of the most important decisions of the 20th century? A hawk who served as the chief architect of the war in Vietnam? A technocrat who never fully understood the moral implications of his policies? A hero who steadfastly worked to prevent the escalation of conventional war into thermonuclear conflict? All of the above?”

From Philcooke.com:

The Wall Street Journal reports today on some massive new media buys for advertising causes from the Christian left. As it reports, “The religious left has a long tradition of activism on social issues, including the civil-rights movement.” Left-leaning Christian groups also have started to attract funding from secular donors who share their political goals — and who see Biblical appeals as a promising way to broaden public support.

Martin’s commentary:

Money trumps mission statements. If salaries and status is being paid for by secular donors then sooner or sooner-still the organization will do what it takes to keep them happy. I know plenty of pseduo-spiritual political organizations, both liberal and conservative, that randomly toss out Bible quote to “religiousfy” what’s really just a secular political message.

I’m not against lefty big media or religious media but it’s important to remember they’re rarely the same. Jesus wasn’t a Democrat or Republican and he never made a big media buy.

Via @emergentvillage