The Thomas Chronicles

I watched Bill Hemmer and Meghan Kelly this morning on Foxnews over some warm instant gruel cereal. They were showing the “sights and sounds” of the Pope’s visit to Washington D.C. The camera panned across a jam-packed baseball stadium from field level to the nose-bleeds. There was a sense of quiet excitement, anticipation for the Pope’s arrival. As Catholics poured into the stadium, reports circulated from the organizers that the demand for tickets to the event doubled. Some Catholics drove for miles from other states to just catch a glimpse of the Pope.

Watching this spectacle reminded me of a brief exchange I had with my friend yesterday. We watched an interview with a “common man” Catholic (It was actually a woman.) who said that she anxiously wanted to see the Pope to revive her faith, which had been waning for quite some time. Seeing the Pope, she said, could change all of that.

I turned to my friend and said, “Boy howdy, I’m really Protestant, aren’t I?”

“Yup.”

“I don’t see how a man can reinvigorate a person’s faith.”

My friend said later, today in fact, that to place such weight on one human being has the taste of idolatry in it to us because, well, we’re Protestants to the core.

And yet, when Pope Benedict XVI entered the stadium in his “Pope-mobile”, you could tangibly feel the Holy Spirit washing through the crowd. Faces were suddenly lit aglow and arms and hands waved as he passed. Somewhere nearer the stage, a choir was singing a solemn Catholic liturgical song (It might have been in Latin; I don’t recall.).

When the screen switched back to Bill Hemmer and Meghan Kelly, you could see how taken they were with the scene, and, I don’t know if this is the right word, but they were overwhelmed and looked flushed. They stumbled around for a bit for a segue into Wall Street news on the economy, you have Brenda Buttner, the senior business correspondent for Foxnews, fumble around verbally as well. She said, Wall Street should be looking at the Pope’s public mass to hear Pope Benedict’s message of hope.

Even I, sitting in my recliner over dried fruits and some indecipherable green cereal gruel (It was actually pretty good cereal despite it’s unsavory appearance.) felt the Holy Spirit wash through the television thousands of miles from the actual event. I have not a doubt in my mind that the papacy is a very real phenomenon as “The Holy See”. You can feel its spiritual potency even if you’re not Catholic. I have doubts and serious reservations about the Catholic doctrine of “infallibility” in the Pope and other doctrines which I won’t get into, but I don’t think that it negates the papacy as the successor of St. Peter.

Pope Benedict XVI has be reviled and criticized and shunned throughout most of the world. His comments have precipitated riots and murder in the Islamic world (surprise, surprise), and his comments also garnered the sharp criticism of the European intelligentsia. It has been widely noted for quite some time how the Pope is referred to with disdain, disgust and general disapproval from secularists and others worldwide. I think this is so because of the certainty of his faith, the keen intelligence with which he defends and advocates Christianity and speaking the objective truth without the deliberate ambiguity of moral relativism which adopts and discards “truths” with equal alacrity.

As I said, I’m no Catholic, but I think it says something terrible good and wonderful about our country that we received Pope Benedict with welcoming arms and much fanfare. President Bush, who doesn’t meet anyone at the airport in his entire Presidency and stays in the White House, met the Pope.

Is this yet another sign of a Christian revival in our beloved land? I think so.

As the date on my last post suggests, I haven’t been diligent on blogging lately. This is due to many reasons; not much of which is very interesting. I will be back to blogging more regularly this week.

We have heard dire forecasts for the American Dollar these past few months and it appears that many in the media are predicting a Great Depression Part II. But who has heard of the impending demise of the European Euro?

What will undo the euro: the mounting tension between the inflation-obsessed German bloc (including Austria, Luxembourg and the Netherlands) and the Latin bloc of France, Italy and Spain. The Germans, saddled with memories of the hyperinflation that brought the Nazi Party into power, remain singularly focused on fiscal and monetary discipline. Despite core inflation in the euro zone of only 2.4% and a slowing global economy, the Germans insist that the European Central Bank maintain a tight monetary policy. In direct opposition to Germany, the Latin bloc, joined by Ireland, wants the ECB to lower interest rates.

Spain’s worsening real estate slump dramatically illustrates the problem faced by the Latin bloc. For years Spanish home building and buying outstripped that of Germany, Italy and France combined. Now that the boom has turned to bust, the Spanish central bank cannot lower interest rates. Nor can the treasury devalue the currency. Bound to the euro, Spain can only complain to the ECB, while watching its economy circle the drain.

European heads of state and the European business press are making their discontent public in stark language. “We cannot continue to cope with the autism of some bankers who do not understand that the priority is not fighting inflation, which is nonexistent, but fighting for more growth,” declared French President Nicolas Sarkozy last year. In October, in response to German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck’s comment that he “loves a strong euro,” leading Italian business newspaper Il Sole ran a headline labeling the remark “a declaration of war.” “Italy has lost the ability to grow,” the Italian finance minister, himself one of the founding members of the ECB, admitted recently.

…

Now, as the divisions increase, insiders are beginning to take a dim view of the prospects for continued monetary union. “We believe the euro will not survive in the long run in the absence of some kind of political support,” the president of BusinessEurope, a pan-European business association, stated in early March.

Along with the steep selloff that will precede the disintegration of the high-flying euro, other markets will be shaken. Look for much higher interest rates for prospective euro deserters like Spain and Italy as spreads for benchmark German bonds widen.

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The tight-money Germans will not push to preserve the euro. A poll released at the end of 2007 by Dresdner Bank (other-otc: DRSDY.PK - news - people ) showed that 62% of Germans support reinstating the deutsche mark as the country’s currency. It appears that their wish will come true.

“Context is everything.”

“You’re taking things out of context.”

“You shouldn’t cherry pick comments.”

Many people would have you believe that context is more important than content. That when someone makes a statement it is not enough to hear what he says, one must also take into consideration who he’s talking to, the situation surrounding the speaker, the space he occupies in history. One must weigh into one’s consideration everything surrounding the speaker more than what he actually says since his statement is only one part of a myriad of other factors surrounding the statement.

In short, what a man’s statement does not matter in the least.

When the statements of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and many of our politicians are quoted back to them, the first thing they say is that their statement was taken out of context. For instance, after Michelle Obama’s outrageous statement that “for the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country,” Barack Obama responded with the following:

“Statements like this are made and people try to take it out of contextand make a great big deal out of it, and that isn’t at all what she meant,” Obama said.

“What she meant was, this is the first time that she’s been proud of the politics of America,” he said. “Because she’s pretty cynical about the political process, and with good reason, and she’s not alone. But she has seen large numbers of people get involved in the process, and she’s encouraged.”

This is the typical political response. First, a politician would say that A) the statement made is not really what is “meant”, and then B) that what was meant was something else entirely. The tactic is to deny, then redirect attention away from the original statement.

Have you ever had the feeling that this insistence on “context” is nothing more than overt manipulation and a rationalization of misbehavior? One cannot be simply say he’s wrong anymore and that he’s sorry for what he’s done. Such blanket admission is too blunt, too honest. No, nowadays, if a man is be a politician or a manager of any kind, it is expected of him to deliver long drawn-out explanations, to place his statements into a context. It goes without saying that by placing his statement into context, or a narrative, what he is really trying to do is mitigate the impact of the statement by re-writing what happened.

This mania for “context” is post-modernism coming into full fruition.

Post-modernism is a philosophy and a world view that reject facts and an objective view of reality. Post-modernism believes that all our beliefs and traditions are constructs that were created long ago by very self-interested men of influence. If such a small cadre of humans, indeed a narrow subset of all humanity, can produce a value system for all Western Civilization, then surely our civilization cannot claim moral rightness over any other. Western Civilization would be the moral equivalence of the Oriental cultures, the Chinese, the Japanese, Islam, Communism, Nazism— it is simply the difference of preference. With post-modernism, Christianity and Western values can stand shoulder to shoulder with a culture that believes in human sacrifice and butchery. It demands that they be morally equal since truth, whatever truth you can think of, is simply a grand narrative implanted into your consciousness by your society and the manipulators of society.

A narrative, like any story, can be changed, revised, edited one moment to the next. In other words, post-modernism and this insistence on context is nothing more than rationalizing away misbehavior and lying.

When you arrive to a meeting on time, you don’t offer the “context” of waiting in horrendous traffic, dodging the garbage truck and leaping over parking meters to make the meeting on time. But one would be tempted to offer these kinds of tall tales if one is late. When you’re late and have succumb to the temptation of being Paul Bunyan after all, by the time you breathlessly explain all these things, your bosses and co-workers would be amazed you made it to the meeting at all and in one piece.

Context is oftentimes a device to let a man “off the hook” rather than a tool that promotes understanding as many people claim.

In contrast, the virtue does not need context. A man who arrives to work on time, who pays his taxes, who doesn’t cheat on his wife, who does not embezzle company funds, who speaks plainly and forthrightly does not need “context” to mitigate his actions. His words and actions stand on their own two feet apart from the psychological roots behind his actions, from the epistemology of his choice of words, apart from the whole history all such similar statements.

The old adage of “Say what you mean and mean what you say” is relevant because this is what’s called integrity, where your actions and your words line up. From such forthright integrity, you know where the speaker stands and you can make your decisions accordingly. A statement that has integrity has no need of context because its meaning is clear, self-evident.

Of course, anyone can take any statement and twist it semantically into pretzels in an act of willful obfuscation, but this is not a deficiency in the statement but rather it speaks to the dishonesty of the legalist. He’s not taking the original statement out of context. He’s trying to take the statement and shove it into a context of his choosing, usually an unflattering one. This muddies the waters of your thoughts, which is, of course, the reason for the semantic legalism.

If someone decides to listen to the spin, the semantic legalism rather than what the original statement said, that is his watch.

Unfortunately, as the title of this post declares, for many pundits, politicians, bloggers and a whole host of people, context is indeed king. It is not surprising then the pervasive lack of clarity in discussing political topics or any topic.

Would it not be better to dispense with rhetorical gymnastics and look at what the person actually said?

A great man and a great actor has past away today. Most people would remember Charlton Heston as the charismatic Judah Ben Hur in the epic Ben Hur. He was outspoken with in his advocacy of civil rights and marched alongside Blacks and other minorities. But the thing that most distinguishes him in my book is he’s so quintessentially American.

God bless his soul.

Here is a statement released by his family:

“To his loving friends, colleagues and fans, we appreciate your heartfelt prayers and support. Charlton Heston was seen by the world as larger than life. He was known for his chiseled jaw, broad shoulders and resonating voice, and, of course, for the roles he played. Indeed, he committed himself to every role with passion, and pursued every cause with unmatched enthusiasm and integrity.

We knew him as an adoring husband, a kind and devoted father, and a gentle grandfather, with an infectious sense of humor. He served these far greater roles with tremendous faith, courage and dignity. He loved deeply, and he was deeply loved.

No one could ask for a fuller life than his. No man could have given more to his family, to his profession, and to his country. In his own words, “I have lived such a wonderful life! I’ve lived enough for two people.”

As much as I don’t like Ann Coulter, sometimes she’s hits it spot on. Her article yesterday on Barack Obama’s autobiography was about as devastating as it gets, and what makes it so devastating is because most of the article directly quotes from Obama himself.

If characters from “The Hills” were to emote about race, I imagine it would sound like B. Hussein Obama’s autobiography, “Dreams From My Father.”

Has anybody read this book? Inasmuch as the book reveals Obama to be a flabbergasting lunatic, I gather the answer is no. Obama is about to be our next president: You might want to take a peek. If only people had read “Mein Kampf” …

Nearly every page — save the ones dedicated to cataloguing the mundane details of his life — is bristling with anger at some imputed racist incident. The last time I heard this much race-baiting invective I was … in my usual front-row pew, as I am every Sunday morning, at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.

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Obama’s gaseous disquisition on the “white man’s rules” leads to this charming crescendo: “Should you refuse this defeat and lash out at your captors, they would have a name for that, too, a name that could cage you just as good. Paranoid. Militant. Violent. Nigger.”

For those of you in the “When is Obama gonna play the ‘N-word’ card?” pool, the winner is … Page 85! Congratulations!

When his mother expresses concern about Obama’s high school friend being busted for drugs, Obama says he patted his mother’s hand and told her not to worry.

This, too, prompted Obama to share with his readers a life lesson on how to handle white people: “It was usually an effective tactic, another one of those tricks I had learned: People were satisfied so long as you were courteous and smiled and made no sudden moves. They were more than satisfied, they were relieved — such a pleasant surprise to find a well-mannered young black man who didn’t seem angry all the time.”

First of all, I note that this technique seems to be the basis of Obama’s entire presidential campaign. But moreover — he was talking about his own mother! As Obama says: “Any distinction between good and bad whites held negligible meaning.” Say, do you think a white person who said that about blacks would be a leading presidential candidate?

The man is stark bonkersville.

He says the reason black people keep to themselves is that it’s “easier than spending all your time mad or trying to guess whatever it was that white folks were thinking about you.”

Here’s a little inside scoop about white people: We’re not thinking about you. Especially WASPs. We think everybody is inferior, and we are perfectly charming about it.

In college, Obama explains to a girl why he was reading Joseph Conrad’s 1902 classic, “Heart of Darkness”: “I read the book to help me understand just what it is that makes white people so afraid. Their demons. The way ideas get twisted around. I helps me understand how people learn to hate.”

By contrast, Malcolm X’s autobiography “spoke” to Obama. One line in particular “stayed with me,” he says. “He spoke of a wish he’d once had, the wish that the white blood that ran through him, there by an act of violence, might somehow be expunged.”

Forget Rev. Jeremiah Wright — Wright is Booker T. Washington compared to this guy.

For years the Democrats have lambasted the Republicans with accusations of cronyism and deals done in smoke-filled back rooms. The way they’ve been talking these past eight years, there always seem to be a cackling, hand-rubbing white, Protestant, Anglo-Saxon Male Gepetto pulling the nation’s strings somewhere back in the cloakroom whenever they found enough time away from fondling pages and whatnot.

Now in this election, we have a very public cackling Democratic Presidential candidate– enter Hillary Clinton– and a Party that is urging all sides to strike a back room deal. As it stands right now, neither of the candidates can win the nomination even if they win in gargantuan landslide victories all the way to the convention. There just aren’t enough delegates left to put either one over the top. Unlike the definition of the word “is”, numbers aren’t ambiguous.

I find it interesting that all these Obama supporters are speaking out forcefully that Hillary Clinton couldn’t possibly win the nomination. She simply can’t get the required delegate numbers to clinch the nomination for the Democratic Party. Yes, this is true. But perhaps Obama’s supporters should pay more attention to their sums:

If all the outstanding 333 undeclared superdelegates were, however unlikely, to declare suddenly for Obama, he still would miss the required 2023.5 delegates required to win the nomination. If he received all of them, that would give him 1960. And, of course, if Hillary Clinton received all of the undeclared delegates, she wouldn’t win either. But it’s conceivable that she can still win.

But we have a nice tradition here in America that perhaps the Democratic Party have currently forgotten in their infighting. That’s Democracy with a capital “D”. When did it become dangerous and undesirable for a people to work out their own will, their own self-determination in a democratic institution?

Did I miss the memo that freedom and enfranchisement was vetoed last election? Perhaps this singularly undemocratic memo by the Democratic Party was buried under another memo titled, “Ignorance is Strength.”

It may be a passe concept but my understanding is that if the primary process failed to present the party with a clear winner, political Conventions were instituted by the political parties to elect and nominate their nominee for the general election. Liberal aristocrats like Pelosi, Dean and all the superdelegates should not be the ones choosing nominee for a party but the people would make up that party.

“We the People” should decide, not a group of self-congratulatory men and women who are nothing more than public functionaries. Bureaucrats and technocrats and politicians should be the last people to have a say in who America elects as presidential nominees, not the first.