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The Expert at the Fall
Examining Doubt thru the lens of Love
“On the occasions when we are directly confronted with what we know, we have three options: change our behavior, offer embarrassing excuses and caveats that make it obvious we don’t really care, or simply admit our lack of concern (which is at least to be respected more than pretending we do care).”
- Peter Rollins, Insurrection (p. 69)
This reflection is inspired by the initial confrontation between my self[i] and a truth that I can no longer deny. This truth is multifaceted, as its very nature has an unlimited scope, maintaining a pervasive presence in both my articulated beliefs, and more importantly, in the manner that my current lifestyle belies the articulated.
The gap between theory and practice, ideal and reality, remains inexplicable – despite my sincere and persistent examination. The past few years[ii] have witnessed a distinct theological and philosophical shift, which has forced me to honestly examine my reality at a demanding rate. And while this foundational shake-up has provided a rare space to question, learn, and grow, it has also provided a space ripe for the insidious nature of apathy. Quite sadly, apathy has, for too long, demonstrated its power and influence in my life. It is precisely this apathetic selfishness that I wish to must confront – particularly in light of my hypocrisy.
My theological shift is constantly evolving, and is at the very heart of my existence. In giving up organized religion (in the Kierkegaardian sense), in giving up the notion of an absolute, literal, inerrant faith, I have opened my head to what my heart demanded I realize: That love, not belief, is the essence of humanity.
In the same manner that my understanding of life progressed, so did my comprehension of love. To freely examine my heart, without fear of a religious reproach, is undoubtedly the most significant existential transformation I’ve experienced. It was not until I left the shelter of faith that I realized I was even sheltered. I was protected from doubt, from questioning, from confronting my hypocrisy – constant prayer and a fervently vocalized testament to Jesus as Savior was all that I needed to be ‘right’. In my enlightened state of love, however, I was broken. I not only realized that my tightly-held beliefs were misguided, but that my unquenchable thirst for maintaining the right beliefs[iii] was an impossible and irrational endeavor. I had no idea of where to turn, so I devoted myself to studying this postmodern, deconstructive theology, with a feverish – and borderline obsessive – spirit.
This new approach to life is one that I’m still adjusting to, and perhaps just now am beginning to comprehend. As my understanding of love has progressed, my actions have slowly become more and more exposed, allowing me to become aware of my selfish hypocrisy. Somehow, I managed[iv] to ignore it all, contenting myself with my enlightened theology – and subsequently recreating the wedge between belief and action.
The power of love is impossible to ignore, however, and I am just now becoming aware of this. I feel at odds with myself. My idealistic notion of love implores me to remove the cancerous apathy that has overwhelmed me, but eliminating apathy is a bitch. I’m required to confront all of my faults, without hiding behind a façade I know can’t sustain me. To be truthful, this is a fight that scares me.
For too long I have allowed myself to ignore my reality, and to simply live in denial. I disavowed responsibility, which began with abandoning grad school, and was epitomized with my departure from all professional aspirations in the field of higher education. Certainly, I needed a break from such responsibilities, as my heart was not committed. But I allowed that fact to justify my apathy all the more, as I convinced myself that floating through life[v] was a necessary element if I were to continue my exploration of doubt.
Moving back to La Crosse was at once refreshing and crippling. Last summer was an amazing period of time for me, in both the experiences I shared with others, and the examination of my self that I was finally prepared to begin.
Unfortunately, the more I’ve developed spiritually, the less I’ve acted physically. I’ve allowed apathy to develop its own set of beliefs, permitting semi-depressive, pseudo-suicidal thoughts to creep into every ambitious ideal I commit myself to. For the past several months, I have determined myself to change only to witness the mighty force of that apathy – often relegating my pursuit of love to be fleeting and unfulfilling.
To confront this apathy, I am forcing myself to vocally express my struggles, rather than meekly internalize them:
- I can no longer avoid my financial obligations
- I can’t allow alcohol to be a means of escape (rather than a source of enjoyment)
- I must end the cyclical nature of my current lifestyle
- I need to tangibly participate in the act of love
- I must establish my identity in a community premised upon social justice
None of this will be easy. I have an addictive personality that predicates itself upon habit. Breaking these habits is not something I have been able to accomplish on my own, and to be truthful, I need to be constantly kicked in the ass in order to do so. Responsibly examining my debt, acknowledging the negative inclinations of my vices, and genuinely confronting my selfishness have proved to be the catalyst for a new ambition - one that beckons me with an irresistible force.
I’ve long realized that I needed to experience brokenness in order to undergo substantive change, but I have long suppressed this notion, as I also understood how lonely and debilitating such an experience might entail. If such an experience could be compartmentalized, it might be less daunting. But brokenness is holistic; it challenges your entire being, and if you are fearful, it will consume you.
There is no doubt that many people have recognized my pain over the past year, but it is doubtful that many truly understand the source. While I remain quite open to sharing myself freely with others, I have disguised the root of my pain with vague adjectives and superfluous pontificating. The root of my pain, as stated bluntly, is this: I am ashamed of my self.
It is embarrassing enough for me to realize how irresponsible I’ve allowed myself to become, but what is more troubling is the manner in which this has developed: I have blatantly dismissed my professed theology of love.
I can no longer claim to care about the hopeless without volunteering my time, energy, and heart to them. I can no longer dissent to the cultural machine of America while continuing to pursue material and superficial interests. And I can no longer claim to believe in love without exacting the principles of empathy, humility, and selflessness in all of my endeavors.
The only measure to which I judge myself is the extent to which I love others. My heart demands nothing else of me, and beats for the sole purpose of providing others with whatever means of comfort I can. What I have discovered, though, is that the conventionally derived logic is true: I can’t truly love others until I love myself.
I don’t understand money. The very function it provides is as baffling to me as it is irrelevant to the sustenance of humanity. The basic human element of greed is exponentially increased with the perceived notion of success, so much so that we put our materialistic dreams ahead of the basic needs of others. This greed has caused and maintained homelessness and poverty; greed has created and perpetuated the American war machine; greed allows our culture to dismiss our hypocrisy, and embrace selfishness. It is sad, and my participation in all of this has disgusted me.
I am content to begin living a life of simplicity, but I can’t accomplish this without giving up material wealth. In subtle ways[vi] I will accomplish this immediately. These steps will both provide a proper perspective given my spirituality, and will also create a new understanding of the ways I can actively live out a life of love.
In order to combat my cyclical lifestyle, I must begin utilizing my time more effectively. I can no longer dismiss responsibility for the sake of my interests and entertainment. Instead, I must find the proper balance, limiting my free time and expanding my devotion to community, volunteering, and finding a 2nd job for supplemental income until I discover the work that my heart is compelled to participate in. My pursuit of materialism and short-term entertainment must be curtailed, in order that my idealistic philosophy becomes a loving reality.
All of this can be accomplished, and it must start now. I recognize, by way of Peter Rollins, that in being confronted with what I know, I have only pretended to care about love. It’s time that I change my behavior, and make love my reality.
[i] To be distinguished from ‘myself’, as this confrontation is largely embedded in the emotional and mental.
[ii] The summer of ’09 is what I recognize to be the start of my spiritual evolution (a transformation as beautiful as it is troubling).
[iii] My theological understanding to this point was enveloped with the demand to believe in the Bible as inerrant.
I passionately, recklessly even, immerse myself into the world of idealized thought, where the abstract meets the concrete; where joy is experienced through pain; where love is discovered amidst the brokenness. And while these thoughts challenge, impress, and embolden me, they remain just that: thoughts that are, quite literally, lost in my mind. Is there a tangible yet accurate, expressive but sincere, way to exact these thoughts? Or are my musings strictly imaginative, only to bemuse myself in order to superficially balance the tension between devoted belief and hypocritical lifestyle?
What to make of love, I’ve yet to discover. But my heart refuses to believe in anything else.
Perhaps I’m just falling in line with a few of my music-loving friends, but given the reality of music’s impact in my life - particularly over the past few years - it seems rather appropriate (and fun?) to create my own list of 2011’s best albums.
There will be some noticeable albums not included below, not necessarily because I don’t like them; rather, I was not exposed to the albums enough to have had a lasting impression on me (I’m speaking of artists such as: Fleet Foxes, The Roots, The War On Drugs, The Black Keys, Gillian Welch, Dessa, Iron & Wine, Talib Kweli, etc.)
Of course, this list is entirely subjective, and is solely influenced by my own interpretation of what is great music. I don’t expect anyone to agree with my choices, which is perhaps what makes this such an intriguing endeavor. At any rate, here are my favorite albums from the past year:
Top 10 Albums of 2011:
10. Bon Iver, Bon Iver
I’m sure folks are incredulous with my placing this album at #10, as it is widely considered to be the best album of the year. And while I appreciate the genius of Wisconsin-native Justin Vernon, the self-titled Bon Iver fails to inspire and embolden me to the extent that other albums from this past year have. Don’t get me wrong: Vernon is an amazing talent, and this is an incredible album. In my estimation, however, it barely makes the cut at #10.
The one song I think you should listen to: ‘Holocene’
9. The People’s Key, Bright Eyes
Conor Oberst’s musical prowess is as spontaneous as it is brilliant. The People’s Key further displays this, infusing a variety of genres and sounds that I’m not prepared to describe. While I doubt Oberst will ever create an album as amazing as I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning, his newest effort provides a uniquely crafted sound with spiritually provocative lyrics, and is an album that certainly belongs in my top 10 list.
The one song I think you should listen to: ‘Ladder Song’
8. No Kings, Doomtree
Before this summer, my experience with hip-hop was, at best, passive. Over the past several months, however, I have found hip-hop (particularly underground artists from The Cities) to be a refreshing and powerful inclusion to my musical palate. No Kings is a rich blend of alternative beats, provocative lyrics, and a uniquely genuine sound that few artists can truly create. The eclectic bunch known as Doomtree outdid themselves with this album, and they are largely responsible for my fledgling foray into hip-hop.
The one song I think you should listen to: ‘String Theory’
7. Modern Love, Matt Nathanson
Nathanson’s sound has evolved considerably over his 20 year career, and while he still maintains shades of the acoustic driven, earthy folk sound that I fell in love with, Modern Love evinces a lucid pop feel that makes him much more accessible to mainstream radio. What hasn’t changed, though, is the genuine passion for his craft, and the ability to make the simplistic sound ornate. One of the best live performers you will ever see, Matty Nate shines with his newest release.
The one song I think you should listen to: ‘Kept’
6. Mine Is Yours, Cold War Kids
CWK will never exact the perfection of 2006’s Robbers & Cowards, and while this appears to be quite critical, the reality is much different. Mine Is Yours flirts with mainstream rock while maintaining the uniquely indie sound fans have come to expect, providing existential lyrics with a constantly engaging sound. Seeing them twice in 2011 certainly helped to influence my love for this album, which rests solidly at #6.
The one song I think you should listen to: ‘Skip the Charades’
5. Nothing Is Wrong, Dawes
Dawes emerged in 2009 with their debut album, North Hills. Appropriately dubbed by Rolling Stone as “authentically vintage”, Dawes builds upon their resume with Nothing Is Wrong. Blending a distinct southern/country rock feel with a rootsy folk sound, Dawes perfectly represents what I consider to be the epitome of music. Lyrically poignant while stripped of all pretense, this album is growing more and more impressive with each listen.
The one song I think you should listen to: ‘A Little Bit of Everything’
4. No One Listens to the Band Anymore, The Damnwells
I began listening to The Damnwells in December, and I already feel indebted to their music. No One Listens to the Band Anymore comes across as an homage to 90’s pop-rock, coalescing with an indie/folk sound that leaves the listener emotionally engaged from beginning to end. I can only imagine how much of an impact this band will have on me for years to come, and if I had listened to this album earlier than December, it may even be higher on my list.
The one song I think you should listen to: ‘The Monster’
3. The Spade, Butch Walker & The Black Widows
If you know anything of my taste for music, you know that I have an unabashed devotion to Butch Walker. My first live experience with Butch was in May of 2010 - a night that forever changed my relationship with music. No other artist provides the unfiltered, introspective, genuine approach to his craft like Butch, and no other artist can span several genres with such effortless grace. The Spade is the perfect follow-up to 2010’s introspective masterpiece, I Liked It Better When You Had No Heart, providing a raucous and raw sound that he previously had not explored. Absolute Punk’s review sums it up perfectly:
The Spade is catchy enough that other pop artists should almost be frightened. Walker seemingly writes ridiculously soaring pop hooks as easily as you or I drink water. This record puts to shame many of the highly advertised pop albums this year, and it does so with resounding force. While The Spade certainly isn’t Walker’s best effort and may not have as much lasting value as some of his past releases, it makes a statement of a songwriter completely owning what he wanted to create.
The one song I think you should listen to: ‘Closest Thing To You I’m Gonna Find’
2. The Head and the Heart, The Head and the Heart
The Head and the Heart’s self-titled effort might be my favorite debut of all-time. Armed with a distinct passion and emotion that is unrivaled in such an earthy, folk-driven sound, you can’t help but engage yourself with every song, every chorus, and every lyric. Perhaps I’m cheesy, but their music does exactly what you’d expect: it fearlessly engages both your head and your heart.
The one song I think you should listen to: ‘Rivers and Roads’
1. Wasting Light, Foo Fighters
The Foo Fighters newest effort, Wasting Light, was my most anticipated album of 2011. The result was not only a masterpiece, but could arguably be considered the greatest album Grohl & Co. have ever created. After a four year absence from new music, the Foo Fighters abandoned the brilliantly polished sound of Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace, returning to the raw, powerful rock sound that made the band famous. Dave Grohl is in the upper-echelon of rock’s great lead singers, something quite prevalent through the entirety of Wasting Light. Produced on analogue tape in Grohl’s garage, we are left with a genuinely vintage sound that is impossible to replicate. I’m not sure where they can go from here, but one thing is certain: the Foo Fighters are the quintessential rock band of this generation.
The one song I think you should listen to: ‘Walk’
Honorable Mentions:
[These are in no particular order.]
a. Vice Verses, Switchfoot
b. This Is Our Science, Astronautalis
c. Loverboy, Brett Dennen
d. Circuital, My Morning Jacket
Excited to announce that I’ll be headlining the Pablove Benefit Concert on January 28th at the Turner Hall in Milwaukee. Tickets are $20 and are on sale today at noon. Come hang out and help fight childhood cancer with love!
My favorite artist, in Milwaukee, for a wonderful cause.
I’m struggling to piece together the vast array of thoughts I’ve had over the past several months into anything that would resemble structure - yet I desire to express my feelings. Rather than my typical format, I present to myself (and anyone who cares to read) a scattered assortment of ridiculousness:
The following article (written by my friend Simon Balto) is a piece that needs to be shared. In a gracious yet courageous manner, the reality of social and racial injustices in our country are examined, thru the specific lens of Hurricane Katrina (and the inevitable aftermath). In this thoughtful piece, we are challenged to explore the reality of the injustices that pervade our country, and how these injustices remain at the heart of our culture - despite our pronounced memorials to those that we have yet to truly learn from, such as MLK.
I implore you to engage the post below.
[You can view the original post here.]
Had Hurricane Irene not intervened on events in Washington, this weekend would have seen an expected quarter of a million people on hand in D.C. to witness the official dedication of the memorial in Washington, D.C. to honor Dr. Martin Luther King. In a nod to civil rights history, planners of the dedication ceremony purposefully scheduled it for this Sunday, August 28, in order that it would coincide with the forty-eighth anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, at which King delivered his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech. The looming threat of the storm unfortunately forced the postponement of the event, which will now be held sometime a bit later this fall, but the scheduled date of the event and the organizers’ efforts to entwine the past and the present are nevertheless significant. Within the context of U.S. racial history, the ceremony promised to be of epic symbolic proportions, with Barack Obama—the nation’s first black president and, for many, the ostensible realization of King’s integrationist dreams—providing remarks on the legacies and meanings of King and his fellow civil rights crusaders. Obama-as-the-fulfillment-of-King’s-dream is, of course, an erroneous and reductive formulation, as if the latter’s visions were either so racially provincial or electorally minded as to be satiated by the image of a black man holding the country’s highest office. Obama’s election represents progress, to be sure, but of a bounded sort that does little in and of itself to realize King’s visions of the possible. Indeed, what King fought for, with mounting urgency and an increasingly global and capacious rendering of the “beloved community,” was the revaluation and restructuring of political and social values and priorities. The point was not to see a black man elected to the presidency; it was to fundamentally reconfigure the nature of an increasingly reckless, intransigent, and immoral power structure in the United States.
The path was fraught. Always. The vitriolic response by the majority of the American people to King’s increasing radicalism as he grew more and more condemnatory of America’s national trajectory and priorities provides some of the evidence. His own murder provides more, and he was neither the first nor the last to lose his life in the service of the struggle. Although King is rightly remembered for his outspoken commitment to nonviolence, he had no say in the fact that violence’s ugly potential still hung round him like a shroud. The history of racial violence in the United States was too pervasive for it to have been otherwise. Less than three months before King’s “Dream” speech, NAACP Field Secretary Medgar Evers was gunned down in Jackson, Mississippi. Less than three weeks after the speech, a bomb ripped through the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, killing four young black women between the ages of eleven and fourteen. And even there at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial that August 28th forty-eight years ago, King could not help but to have his “Dream” speech infused with the specter of violence. Before he unveiled his dream to the nation (this iconic section of the speech, it will be remembered, contained only King’s concluding and most conciliatory remarks), King turned to speak directly to “you [who] have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality.” King himself clung fast to his nonviolent ethos and exhorted even these victims of violence to stay true to their better selves, but he nevertheless warned that “the whirlwinds of revolt” that characterized that 1963 “summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent” would continue to build in the absence of justice. Violence, he warned, whether physical, social, or economic, would beget violence of its own.
Whether King was aware of the shared date or not, the March on Washington at which he delivered his “Dream” speech fell on the eight-year anniversary of the August 28, 1955 lynching of fourteen-year-old Emmett Till in Money, Mississippi. The Chicago-born Till, visiting family in Money for the summer, was accused of making inappropriate or suggestive overtures to a white woman. For his transgressions, days later the woman’s husband and his half-brother kidnapped Till in the dead of night, beat him mercilessly, gouged out one of his eyes, shot him in the head, used barbed wire to tie a seventy-pound cotton gin around his neck, and threw his body in the Tallahatchie River. The images of Till’s recovered body, bloated and disfigured, were splashed across newspapers in the United States and beyond, and his murder by many accounts serving as a catalyzing moment (alongside the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling in 1954 and the 1955-’56 Montgomery Bus Boycott) for the modern Civil Rights Movement. But if Till’s death was important in looking forward from 1955 into and through the nation’s civil rights period, it was also significant for what it revealed looking backward, for Till was simply one of the most famous in a lineage of literally thousands of black Americans who brutally lost their lives at the hands of white lynch mobs in the twentieth century and before. His late-August murder in 1955 served as an acutely tragic, though hardly exceptional, testament to the long and bloody history of American racial violence.
The ghosts of Till, King, and other civil rights martyrs are not the only ones that hang about us this weekend. Although they would not have been afforded a central presence at Sunday’s Washington ceremonies, the spectral presence of the victims of Hurricane Katrina, which made landfall in New Orleans six years ago August 29, are surely also deserving of our attention. Six years ago, when Katrina pummeled the Gulf Coast, the hurricane’s official death toll eclipsed 1,800, the bulk of these coming from poor communities of color in the coastal parishes of New Orleans. That number rises still further—how much is difficult to quantify—when the devastation wrought by the dislocations of the storm’s aftermath are considered: the physical toll exacted upon those that were flung to disparate parts of the nation, with little chance of return; the extended periods through which people went without desperately needed medicines on account of destroyed supplies, prescriptions, and medical records; the psychological anguish that led still others to take their own lives.
Beyond the storm gales and heavy rains, man-made violence also dramatically shaped the face of New Orleans during and after Katrina. The majority was generally not of the same cloth as the guns-and-bombs type that took the lives of King, Till, and others; but some of it was. As more and more evidence accrued in the days, months, and years after the storm that proved the initial reports of black New Orleanians committing rampant acts of violence to be generally false, counter evidence also mounted that showed a post-hurricane wave of racist vigilante terror on the part of white New Orleans residents who violently and sometimes lethally ejected blacks from white neighborhoods when they ventured there looking for safe ground. Such violence at other times took on the face of the state, as during the Danziger Bridge murders six days after Katrina hit, when members of the notoriously corrupt New Orleans Police Department opened fire on unarmed citizens trying to cross the bridge to higher ground, killing two in the process.
The violence surrounding Katrina also assumed structural forms. The ineptitude of the federal government both to prepare for and in response to Katrina is by this point infamous. Michael Eric Dyson calls the scale of what happened to New Orleans an “unnatural disaster,” a result of shortsightedness in addressing the city’s unpreparedness for a hurricane of Katrina’s caliber, an unwillingness to reinforce the inadequate levees that would need (and failed) to hold flood waters back in the event of such a storm, and the restructuring of the Federal Emergency Management Agency under the Bush administration into a disempowered organization marred by cronyism and incompetence. In gauging the local and national governments’ responses to Katrina, Rebecca Solnit has similarly termed what happened to New Orleanians “death by obstruction.” Moreover, in the wake of the storm, these and numerous other scholars and commentators demonstrated the ways in which NOLA’s grinding poverty—frequently contoured by capital interests, racist ethics, and retrograde public policies—exacerbated the effects of the hurricane. The city’s endemic un- and underemployment; the preponderance of low-wage service sector and tourist industry jobs among those that were to be found; the horrible state of the city’s public school system; the regressive war on welfare waged during the Clinton years—all of these contributed to the city’s breathtakingly high poverty rate even before the storm ravaged the city. Thus it was, for instance, that thousands of Gulf Coast residents found themselves unable to leave the city—whether for want of a car, for fear of leaving their jobs, or for lack of funds to make the hundreds-of-miles trip beyond the disaster zone—when Mayor C. Ray Nagin ordered a mandatory evacuation on August 28, 2005. To be sure, thousands more remained of a belief that the storm could be waited out, but their decisions to stay should not condemn them to their fate. Nor does their stubbornness mitigate the devastation faced by those who wanted to flee but couldn’t.
All of these are victims of violence of one sort or another, whether psychological, economic, physical, and so forth. Violence need not leave visible scars and bruises to be destructive and cause real harm. And violence of the sorts that Katrina’s victims endured can only and has only served to further undermine the faith of poor people of color as regards their condition within the United States. Those black New Orleanians whose lives were swallowed up in the immediacy of the storm or in the various turmoils of its aftermath—to hear their survivors speak of them, they too are victims in the United States’ tragic racial history: a “many thousands gone” of perhaps a different sort, but gone nonetheless. Katrina’s victims live on in the hearts and memories of their families, friends, neighbors, and their city, but they also live on as reminders to us of the limitations of our country’s civil rights triumphs, human testaments to the truncations of the visions King and his contemporaries held for a better United States and a more racially and economically just world.
In the days that the city flooded and in the weeks and months after the waters receded, thousands of graffitied pleas for help appeared on the sides of abandoned homes and businesses in the Crescent City. As if to prefigure Obama’s campaign message for the nation three years later, among these were multiple cries that read: “Hope is Not a Plan.” Six years later, hope still will not rebuild the infrastructure of New Orleans, nor will it restore the city’s character or bring the tens of thousands of predominantly black displaced residents back. Neither will the further evisceration of the city’s public services, already bad for the city’s poor communities of color and significantly worse since Katrina, help the restorative effort. Loyola-New Orleans law professor Bill Quigley recently captured snapshots of this in a piece for the Huffington Post: the thousands of public housing units left bulldozed and unreconstructed; the inadequate support networks for those left homeless and jobless in the storm’s wake; the quasi-privatization of schools that has created what the Institute on Race & Poverty of the University of Minnesota Law School, in a direct throwback to the Jim Crow from which King was born, calls “a separate but unequal tiered system of schools.” The tiers, it nearly goes without saying, are first and foremost racially configured.
None of this is to mention the national-level violent assault on support systems for the poor that began decades ago but whose pace has quickened with breathtaking speed since the Republican electoral victories of 2010. The war on public education, “entitlements,” and so forth, which Obama has not unqualifiedly embraced but has more than tacitly accepted, will only spell further misery for those hit the worst by Katrina and those around the nation that face similar sets of social and economic conditions as pre-hurricane NOLA. Since ascending to the presidency, Obama has been roundly criticized by both the right and the left for myriad reasons—many deserved, others less so. But it does seem undeniable that candidate Obama—who promised hope to many, not least of all “the least of these”—has been supplanted by a President Obama who has shown little ability to deliver on that promise as it pertains to the nation’s poor. Hope, as the victims and survivors of Katrina eloquently remind us, was never a plan. But it was a promise, and that promise is fading. One can imagine that were King the man rather than King the monument with us today, he would be there telling us to remember, to restore, and to rebuild—not just New Orleans, but the condition of our world and the way we relate to it and to each other. And he would perhaps have seen it as fitting that, when there is so much work still to be done to achieve his social visions, another hurricane came along and delayed his memorialization.
“Philosophically speaking the claim that the Bible in its entirety is literal and inerrant (i.e. self-evident, internally coherent, and a reflection of the mind of God) operates as a ‘master signifier’. This means that it is a claim without any specific content that is worn as a badge to let you know what team you play for. It doesn’t matter too much how you actually fill in this empty container as long as you make the claim. It functions then as a shibboleth that identifies you as being in a certain tribe.”
