A Song for Today

The hands that built the country we're always trying to keep out...

And a Prayer for today as well...

Happy St. Patrick's Day from DairyStateDad

A Lament, and A Question: Please Weigh In!

Well, if you haven't heard yet, the news from Wisconsin's state Supreme Court race has just gotten positively bizarre: Thanks to a previously unreported 10,000 or so votes, the seemingly-defeated incumbent now appears to have a 7,000-vote margin of victory against the once-triumphant challenger whose paper-thin margin of fewer than 300 votes was wiped away. Given that the race itself had become a proxy war in the highly charged battle over union rights for public employees, the emotional uproar brought on by this revelation is almost impossible to exaggerate.

I have two thoughts about these latest developments.

The first, and big-picture observation, is that except for who actually wins, the new numbers really don't change the overall landscape. Before the vote-canvassing upset Thursday, I thought the smartest (if fairly obvious) observations were from those who saw etched in these numbers the deep and fairly even division of the state's residents. The margin is still in the area of one percentage point; we're talking roughly 1 person for every 8 or 9 square miles in the state, or little more than 100 people per county. So we're likely to see-saw a bit over the next few years, as we have in the past, as momentary circumstances edge first one, then the other party over the top. In that way, we're an awful lot like the whole country. (And our governor's lame claim that somehow it was just "Madison" vs. "the rest of the state" was absolute horse-pucky.)

As an aside, a county-by-county map of the vote [which appears not to have been updated since Thursday's revelation] points out something else: That majorities for one candidate or another are notably greater in individual counties, suggesting that Wisconsin has experienced the "Big Sort" phenomenon that Bill Bishop and Robert Cushing wrote about in a book of that name published three years ago.

There are, of course, already dark conspiracy theories being spun. I am not a huge fan of conspiracy theories. I think Oswald probably did kill Kennedy, acting more or less alone, I don't think 9/11 was an inside job, and so on.

But I do admit to questioning the way the 2000 Florida vote was wasn't resolved. I do think that big, corporate money in campaigns has hijacked our political system in ways that we are only dimly aware of, serving an agenda in the interests of wealth rather than democracy.

As I said to DairyStateMom this morning:

"I don't want to be a sucker for a conspiracy theory. I also don't want to be a sucker for a conspiracy."

And so I end with a question and hope to get some serious responses in comments:

What is the most bizarre theory about a long-hidden conspiracy you can recall that actually turned out to be basically true?

And that latter point is key: basically true according to a reasonably broad consensus. Kennedy theories and 9/11 debunking haven't reached that threshold yet -- nor have any of the other examples I cite above, whether I am inclined to believe them or not.

Any suggestions?

A Passing Thought on Pro-Censorship Unitarians

At UU World, Christopher Walton has a short note about a new book that recounts the history of the Watch and Ward Society, which promoted censorship a century ago.

It strikes me that the 1980s movement to fight pornography and other forms of sexually oriented entertainment from a feminist/progressive stance(Andrea Dworkin, Catharine MacKinnon, etc.) -- a movement that I briefly sympathized with, but later rejected -- were the intellectual heirs of that earlier group.

Relatedly, I believe that some Unitarians and Universalists also joined in with religious conservatives in that earlier era to promote prohibition.

FWIW...

A Tennessee Editor Visits Ground Zero

From The Rural Blog, run by the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky:

Tenn. editor visits Ground Zero, shares the experience with his readers and takes a stand
...
"This country was settled by people seeking religious tolerance, a pillar that was built deep into the American infrastructure. Surely we cannot move that pillar, and threaten the foundation, because of 19 people."

Tweeting the Declaration

Slate had a contest. I read about it here. My favorite:

@Boston1775: "We seek independence based on noble and universal ideas combined with petty and one-sided grievances."

The first March on Washington

A fascinating bit of history, via "Heretic, Rebel, a Thing to Flout"

So Coxey decided to bring the unemployed to Washington to petition Congress. Word of Coxey’s plan spread and attracted wide attention, many came to Ohio to join him.

One very small quibble: Patrick says that last weekend's immigration rally

"...attracted hardly a ripple of interest by the news media or concern from authorities while a couple of thousand Tea Baggers spewing racial epithets and threats at members of Congress over Health Care Reform got all of the attention."

I can't speak for other news outlets, but in fairness, both the Milwaukee and the Kenosha (Wis.) papers played Sunday's immigration rally quite prominently.

Update: When I commented on Patrick's blog, he specified he was referring to national TV and cable coverage. Fair enough.

The last word for now on Haiti...

...goes to Spencer Dew, writing at Sightings.

Money quote:

The image of black slaves shedding their chains and taking up arms contributes far more than any hobgoblins of the evangelical imagination to the historical “curses” that have kept Haiti poor and troubled. The history of American relations with Haiti has been indelibly tainted by America’s true devil – the lingering effects of our own schizophrenic founding as a nation insistent on liberty yet practicing slavery. Just as racist terror helped shape the stereotype of Voodoo as devil worship, so too racist attitudes have dominated the history of American relations with Haiti, from the fearful to the patronizing, from clandestine political machinations to occupation by military force.