Why I assume a god

Note: This is posted to another blog of mine on wordpress: coincidencelog.wordpress.com about “coincidences” in our lives versus miracles. But I wanted to post it here to since I don’t know that I’ve ever put into writing these thoughts.

We all have different reasons for assuming a god. Mine personally are numerous, but briefly, they include:

  • The knowledge that if the universe and this planet were a fraction of a fraction different, life would not be supported here.
  • And, the realization that, unless you assume a god, anything is permissable. Without the assumption of a god, we become nothing more than chimps. Learning a little along the way, yes, but still relegated to live and die and make room for another generation who will invariably do the same ad nauseum. Law and moral codes become of no use. Yes, without a god, men would establish them because civilized man needs order for life to make sense, but laws without the assumption of a god are based on what? Nothing. If there is not god, there is no moral framework. Even atheists proclaim the golden rule of, “Do unto others as you would have done unto you.” While an atheist certainly didn’t utter that phrase, many certainly live by it. Some would argue that conscious is dead. I would argue that without the assumption of a god, conscious is even deader, for what is there inside of me that is good? Not one thing. At my core, I’m a selfish, lustful liar. Children are no different, and we have to teach them many ways to be nice to people and to be more selfless. But why do we teach them? Why do (some) strive to be better people? I believe it’s the moral compass that we all share and the ascertainment of something better and higher than ourselves. Without the assumption of a god, we would be attempting to pull something from nothing, and we might as well cash in our chips and go home.

Just imagine waking up one day and finding out for 100 percent fact that God does not exist. Would people feel liberated or desolate? Under such a discovery, I personally believe hope itself would cease to exist. You will eventually get cancer or have a heart attack and your life will be over. Your days are ticking down and even if you wouldn’t have believed in him anyway there is no god to save you. So you might as well live it up. Burn through your credit cards, amass thousands of dollars in debt and go fly around the world. See Athens, the Louvre and London. Go skydiving. Swim with the fishes. Buy a yacht and beach house in the Keys. Have sex with that goddess from work you’ve been eyeing. What difference does it make? And when the last tickle of pleasure leaves your body, what are you left with? Emptiness and less days on your life than you had before.

Without the assumption of a god, what else is there to believe in? Humanity? That’s funny. If you haven’t been paying attention the last 4,000-plus years, man seemingly loves destroying himself with holy wars, political wars and failing to care for the sick and hungry. Believe me, humanity is not worth believing in, dying for … and it’s certainly not worth living for. After all, what’s so special about us? We’re all just really intelligent, cognitive chimps, right?

‘Sicko’ no comedy

Speaking of humor: “Sicko” is full of laughs. They’re mostly the kind that burst from you when confronted by a lie so outrageous and obvious that the absurdity is overwhelming, but they’re real laughs. They get little or no mention in most of the reviews and op-ed pieces I’ve seen. — Twin Cities Daily Planet

Frankly, I understood the attempts of humor in this film. I would have smirked. I would have smiled or laughed, had I lived in some other country. But I live in America. As such, I could not smile or laugh. At times while watching it, I looked over at my wife and said something to the effect: “I know that’s supposed to be funny, but I can’t bring myself to laugh.”

I will be brutally honest here: At times while watching this movie, I was ashamed to be in this country. I wanted to hop on a ship and set up camp somewhere else. I had a sincere feeling of desolation. I had a sincere feeling that this country, in some ways, is no different than some like, let’s say Zimbabwe, that cares nothing for its own. One look at http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/ will show that, while we spend an enormous sum on health care, we are, in fact, far behind most industrialized countries in overall health. Yet, we have no universal health care system. Some accuse Michael Moore of painting too rosy of picture of those countries who have socialized health care systems, but the record speaks for itself. Currently, we are ranked #23 in life expectancy, right behind Bosnia. We are also behind Japan, Britain, France, Canada, Switzerland, Norway, Australia, Iceland, Italy, Israel, Austria and the Netherlands.

As the “Universal health care” article in Wikipedia says:

The United States is the only wealthy, industrialized nation that does not have a universal health care system. The government directly covers a little over one-quarter of the population through health care programs for the elderly, disabled, military service families and veterans, children, and some of the poor.

To supposedly be the champion of all things democratic, honest and fair, this is sad and deplorable. We have the best military in the world, but just a mediocre health care system and one run by an insurance industry that is amassing great wealth off people’s suffering. Watching the film, one truly does get the sick feeling that, not only are we behind the curve, but we aren’t even on the graph. We’re the walking dead. We love our money, our fatty foods, our cars, our greed too much to let it go, yet it will be these things, especially this country’s greed, that may one day destroy it.

 Here’s Tony Benn’s chilling words from an interview with Moore for the documentary:

Well if you go back, it all began with democracy before we had the vote. All the power is in the hand of the rich people … and what democracy did was to give the poor the vote, and it moved power from the marketplace from the polling station from the wallet to the ballot. … If you can find money to kill people, you can find money to help people …. if you have power, you use it to meet the needs of you and your community. …

An educated, healthy and confident nation is harder to govern, and I think there’s an element in the thinking of some people. We don’t want people to be educated, healthy, and confident because they would get out of control. The top 1 percent of the world’s population own 80 percent of the world’s wealth. It’s incredible that people put up with it, but they’re poor, they’re demoralized, they’re frightened and therefore, they think that perhaps the safest thing to do is to take orders and hope for the best.

On Dobson’s ‘dissection’ of Obama’s June 2006 speech

Let me preface this by saying I hope one reads this in the sincere spirit of concern in which it is written. I have long listened to James Dobson’s radio broadcasts and am familiar with who he is and what he’s about. I think he means well. But I think he, like so many other Christian leaders in this country, skate about it the wrong way. While I am interested in politics on a person level, thus why I write about it, I believe Christian discourse should, as much as possible, stay above that fray. If it doesn’t, the door stands wide open for the problems I will point out in this post. When Christians become so irrevocably married to a political party or to a certain world ideology (i.e. left-wing or right-wing), it tends to cloud judgment and control all a person says and does. Thus, Christ becomes not the most important topic of discussion, but a tool or vessel used to begin conversations that support a manmade party or ideology. This is the flaw I see in this broadcast, and these comments are intended not to intentially blast someone (because I do think Dobson is sincere in some ways), but an exhortation to keep a Christian-based program what it should be: about Christ.

Near the end of a broadcast from Focus on the Family Action, Christian leader James Dobson and Tom Minnery, senior vice president of government and public policy for Focus on the Family Action, dissected one of Barack Obama’s speeches from way back on June 28. 2006. Dobson told listeners he could spend two days going over Obama’s speech to “let people know what Barack Obama thinks of religion …”

First, I think it would have been more prudent to allow people to watch Obama’s speech for themselves, rather than filtering it, pulling out sound clips out of context and dictating to folks about how they should feel about Obama. To that end, watch for yourself:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFOdOht5Ccs]

And follow this link for the other parts of the speech, or download the text.

The broadcast about Obama’s speech on citizenlink.org seemed to construe some of Obama’s points, thus unraveling the Democratic principles summoned by Dobson and Minnery in mentioning the Constitution and George Washington in their broadcast. One point of contention mentioned in the broadcast was Obama’s failure to acknowledge that 75 percent of people in the country identified with the Christian religion. It’s true. Obama merely said “organized religion” and did not specify that that religion was Christian, but I think given the long tradition of Christianity in this country, that was not necessary. Given the venue and since everyone under his voice probably fell into that 76 percentile, it was likely assumed. Prefacing the percentages, Obama said:

… But over the long haul, I think we make a mistake when we fail to acknowledge the power of faith in people’s lives … and I think it’s time that we join a serious debate about how to reconcile faith with our modern, pluralistic democracy. And if we’re going to do that then we first need to understand that Americans are a religious people.

After presenting the figures, he said:

This religious tendency is not simply the result of successful marketing by skilled preachers or the draw of popular megachurches. In fact, it speaks to a hunger that’s deeper than hunger that goes beyond any particular issue or cause.

Here, it’s clear Obama is speaking about the “something” inside us that makes us unsatisifed with this life and the “something” that makes us long for that which is above and beyond our carnal selves. And that is a hunger for the spiritual, at its most rudimentary expression, and a hunger for God Almighty in its fullest form. After relating an upbringing that was at best skeptical of religion and at worst, atheistic, Obama, who has publicly made no qualms that he believed in Christ as his savior, told of how he became active in church. He said:

Because of its past, the black church understands in an intimate way the Biblical call to feed the hungry and cloth the naked and challenge powers and principalities.

Faith doesn’t mean that you don’t have doubts,” he said a couple sentences later. “You need to come to church in the first place precisely because you are first of this world, not apart from it. You need to embrace Christ precisely because you have sins to wash away – because you are human and need an ally in this difficult journey.

But this personal testimony was left out of the broadcast, and instead, the choice was made to denigrate Obama. After presenting the percentages, Minnery read a portion of Obama’s message (which skipped at least 500 words or more down into the speech), where he said America is not just a Christian nation, but a Muslim nation, a Hindu nation, a Jewish nation, etc. etc. followed by Minnery’s exacerbated sounding, “Excuse me?”

First, can I ask: Are we a theocracy? If the answer is no, then in no way can it be concluded that we are a Christian nation. So long as 1 percent of the population is something else, we can’t logically be described as anything but a mix. Yes, the percentage of Muslims, Hindus and Jews in the country is small, but the percentage of non-believers is not as small, at 14 percent. While Christianity may be the pervailing religion of choice in this country, we can’t act as if is it is the only religion or even that is should be the only religion. This is not a Christian nation, and nor should it be. This is only my opinion, but the religious DNA of a country should be inconsequential to the call of a Christian, for Christ didn’t come to earth to die just for white, Republican evangelicals or for America in general. He came for all, and guess, what? He came to die for Muslims, Jews and atheists too. As He loved them so should we. One must ask oneself: if I were a Muslim or Jew or Hindu or atheist listening to this broadcast, would I be more inclined to believe in Christ or more inclined to become exacerbated with the level of flippancy toward those of other faiths. To me, this is the test of whether a broadcast, like Focus on the Family or like the organization, Focus on the Family Action (which seems to be the politically opinionated branch of Dobson’s outreach and supported by contributions that aren’t tax deductible). I myself am a Christian, and I was growing increasingly agitated by listening to this broadcast. The level of vitriol is enough to leave a sour taste in anyone’s mouth.

By the way, in this portion of the broadcast, Minnery said: “He’s (Obama’s) not even acknowledging the strong Judeo-Christian tradition” in the country. But, let’s point to another portion of Obama’s speech that was not mentioned, where Obama clearly states: “Our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.”

Minnery then moved to a portion of Obama’s speech which mentioned James Dobson. Minnery sequed and said, “and then, he begins to diminish you,” speaking of Dobson. In the next clip, Obama asked the rhetorical question that if we expelled every non-believer in the country, whose form of Christianity should we follow: James Dobson’s or Al Sharpton’s. To me this is an easy questioned compared to a more perplexing one that I’m sure non-believers ask frequently: In lieu of the 10+ major denominations of Christianity in this country alone, including Catholism, Baptist, Pentecostal, Presbyterian, Lutheran and others, which should we follow?

For some reason, Minnery said that Obama was comparing Dobson to Sharpton, when in fact, Obama was contrasting the two, saying they have two distinct ways of reading the Bible. This would be a true statement. The nature of Obama’s argument was in the form of a contrast, not a comparison. That was pretty clear from reading the speech. Yet, Dobson, who noted he had read the speech, said:

Obviously, that is offensive to me, I mean, who wants to expel people who are not Christians? Expel ’em from what? From the country? Deprive them of constitutional rights? Is that what he thinks I want to do? … He also equates me with Al Sharpton, who is a reverend. I am not a reverend. I’m not a minister …

At least the final portion is true. While Obama was contrasting Dobson and Sharpton, perhaps mentioning the two in the same sentences garners some level of comparison. True, Dobson is not a minister, but he is clearly one of the most revered Christian leaders in the country. He has as much influence as any pastor, with the exception, perhaps, of Billy Graham. I understand the humbleness, but why would Dobson skirt away from that and attempt to deny that he isn’t one of, if not the most influential white Christian leader, while Sharpton is one of the most influential black Christian leader. When the average American thinks of Christian leaders, it cannot be denied that names like Graham, Robertson, Falwell and Dobson are immediately summoned.

Next, the broadcast looks at the next portion of the speech, where Obama, again rhetorically, asks whether we should follow the precepts of the Old Testament or the New, and in my mind, levels one of the greatest defenses of Jesus I have heard:

Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is ok and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount – a passage that is so radical that it’s doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application?

First, this was a rhetorical thought and the portion of this quote about the Old Testament was, if one listens to the speech, said tongue-in-cheek. Second, the final sentence of this quote speaks to me as much as any sermon ever has. Simply, the Sermon on the Mount is so radical that our own supposed peace-keeping entity would crumble under its weight. We can’t fathom the peace and forgiveness implied by its application.

Third, Dobson and Minnery are, of course, correct that those laws mentioned by Obama are specific to the Israel people and to their time. But what of the thousands today who would desire to put up copies of the Ten Commandments in every courthouse and school in the country? What portions of the Old Testament should we adopt as pertaining to our lives and what portions should we religate as being bound to a specific time and for a specific group of people? Obama is not a theologian, and despite these criticisms, Dobson minutes earlier admitted he wasn’t either. Regardless, for non-believers looking on, if we were to assume Obama was serious (which I believe he wasn’t with regard to the Old Testament comments) these are legitimate questions, and I don’t feel should be glossed over, and they certainly shouldn’t be viewed with such exacerbation, as if to say, “How dare someone ask that question?!?” Believe me, millions around the world ask that question. A better use of the broadcast’s time during this segment might have been to explain more in depth the old law versus new law and Jesus’ impact on both.

Now, for my last point (I could chew up 10,000-plus words on this), Dobson claims in this broadcast that the speech had just recently “gone viral on the Internet.” This is not true. Try it for yourself. Search “Obama’s June 28, 2006 speech” in Google and what do you find? Go on … browse to the second of third page of search results. One finds transcripts of it and articles about Dobson’s reaction to it. One doesn’t find that Obama’s speech had gone viral prior to Dobson’s broadcast but because of it. It’s two years old; it was going to go viral, it would have done so long before now. We are just now reading about it two years after it was delivered!

Conclusion: I want to believe Dobson is sincere. In some ways, as a Christian, I believe he is in many ways sincere in what he says, but like George Bush and others, I believe he’s being fed lines from “trusted officials,” like Minnery, who tell him what to say and who feed him misconstrued messages that he either has no time to investigate for himself or no inclination, thus fueling punditry in the guise of Biblical exposition.

In either case, if he has no time or inclination to weed through the biases and figure out for himself what presumptive presidential candidates truly believe and deliver a Biblically sound, sincere analysis based on his own studies, he has no business running broadcasts like this. And further, I would argue he has no business running broadcasts like this for either a) the purpose of contention and b) for the purpose of denigrate one political party or its ideologies over another. That’s not the call of a Christian. The call of a Christian is to denigrate no one, love all and make disciples of every nation. The Great Commission indeed becomes a challenge when one spends air time talking about personal issues and politics.

If I were in a position of leadership, or in any position, some one else would not tell me what to believe, nor would another person in my organization give me “his version” of current events. I would have the honor, as poet John Milton, to seek and know pray and read for myself. Either Dobson seeks and knows for himself or he does not. The current evidence, while we should hope it’s not true, at least based on this broadcast leans toward the latter.

‘Heaven’s waiting down on the tracks …’

The screen door slams, Mary’s dress waves
Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays
Roy Orbison singing for the lonely
Hey, that’s me and I want you only
Don’t turn me home again, I just can’t face myself alone again
Don’t run back inside, darling, you know just what I’m here for
So you’re scared and you’re thinking that maybe we ain’t that young anymore
Show a little faith, there’s magic in the night
You ain’t a beauty but, hey, you’re alright
Oh, and that’s alright with me

You can hide ‘neath your covers and study your pain
Make crosses from your lovers, throw roses in the rain
Waste your summer praying in vain
For a savior to rise from these streets
Well now, I ain’t no hero, that’s understood
All the redemption I can offer, girl, is beneath this dirty hood
With a chance to make it good somehow
Hey, what else can we do now?
Except roll down the window and let the wind blow back your hair
Well, the night’s busting open, these two lanes will take us anywhere
We got one last chance to make it real
To trade in these wings on some wheels
Climb in back, heaven’s waiting on down the tracks

Oh oh, come take my hand
We’re riding out tonight to case the promised land
Oh oh oh oh, Thunder Road — “Thunder Road,” Bruce Springsteen

So, Adam Duritz of Counting Crows has sung these lyrics numerous times during live versions of “Rain King.” During Tim Russert’s memorial service in Washington, D.C., Springsteen, a favorite of Russert’s, appeared to sing this song. Near the end of the service, a rainbow appeared, and the closing song was somewhere over the rainbow. Here’s a video, albeit one that I think Russert would even call to “pie in the sky.”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBddo1RGiJU]

And here’s a good article about the service from Newsweek: http://www.blog.newsweek.com/blogs/stumper/archive/2008/06/19/the-russert-miracles.aspx.

The most moving part of the article is:

“After the magical experience of this service, to come out and see the rainbow and Luke at the bottom of it made the last dry eye weep,” said NBC News executive Phil Griffin. The last song in the memorial service was, fittingly, “Somewhere over the Rainbow.”

When asked his reaction to explain the sudden appearance of the rainbow at the exact moment, Luke Russert, his sparkly smile so reminiscent of his father’s, said: “Is anyone still an atheist now?”

I don’t deny that I’ve had doubts and will probably always have some doubts about faith and the cosmos and philosophy and all of it, but one thing is clear: I’m only 30, and I’ve seen way too many of these “coincidences” in my lifetime to dismiss God as an invention of man. I mean it really is startling how these things happen, not just once every 10 years, but frequently in our lives to continually point us to the fact that things don’t just happen haphazardly. In fact, that gives me an idea. Perhaps I’ll start a new blog and only use it to record these “coincidences.

Horrificity personified

So, my wife and I watched the movie, “Cloverfield,” last night for the first time. Well, correction. She watched it for the first time. I watched it the night before by myself after she had went to bed because I was curious to see what it was all about. I can report today that I still don’t really know what it was about, but apparently, that seems to be the intention of the filmmakers.

I don’t have to redraw the plot here since it’s well recorded on a million websites by now. But, long story short — or maybe that should be short story made even shorter, since the movie clocks in at only 84 minutes — but Rob, the main character, got a job in Japan and his friends held a going-away party for him. During this short period is really the only time you get some character development, and even then, it’s sparse because, well, some horrificity starts going down. During the party, Rob learns that his friend — and clearly romantic acquaintance — is with some other guy. Not too long after Rob has this revelation and his brother, who later falls prey to aforementioned horrificity and friend try to console him, the horrific-ness begins. They think an earthquake has befallen the city, when in fact, it’s the horrificity of a 30-story monster known as Cloverfield. Why was it named Cloverfield, one may ask? That’s a good question. I’ll have to Google that sometime because they don’t really help us out on that one. Needless to say, here’s the main promotional shot from the previews:

Cloverfield poster

And here’s shot of the horrificity:

Cloverfield mug shot

Nice, huh? Anyway, the audience gets about 15 minutes of party talk, minor character development, etc. etc. and then what follows is the destruction of much of Manhattan, including every person we get to know and love previously at the party. Again: pleasantness personified. But this movie isn’t about happy endings — if you know of a way to have a happy ending with a ticked off and scared, 30-story monster wreaking havoc on one of the most populous cities in the world, by all means, let me know.

The moviemakers said the movie is less about the monster itself but about how people would react to a cataclysmic event where the Statue of Liberty’s head goes flying and other unthinkable unpleasantries go down. I understand that. I also understand the movie makers’ desires to make a true “monster movie” reminescent of King Kong, where the only assumption is that a monster is destroying the city. There is no historical framework. No great philosophical hypothesis about where a giant monster came from, why he is there and what that means for religion, philosophy, science, mankind or anything. It’s just there. Sort of like a chronic disease: doctors have no cure, no one’s going to sing a song for you — you just have some horrific problem and you are on your own. Sort of like our health care system and the Republican way of caring for people and leaving people to fend for themselves. But I’m getting the cart before the horse. More on that later, perhaps.

Needless to say, I was left with a certain sick, unfulfilled feeling when “Cloverfield” abruptly ended as a small bridge in Central Park supposedly collapsed on top of Beth and Rob. The last two words: they each uttered, “I love you,” and in less than a second, a thud, then the view of a camera buried in rubble … roll credits. The next sequence was of a portion of the tape that didn’t get copied over of Rob and Beth at Coney Island in New York. Beth’s last words were, to paraphrase: “It’s been a good day.” Good day indeed, all except for perplexed movie-goers. But still, this movie is remarkably enjoyable in some shallow way. There is no depth. There are no questions answered. Just 84 minutes of havoc. But to the movie’s credit, it was havoc that was fun to watch.

In defense of Hispanics (expanded thoughts)

For the better part of a month, most traveling in the Upstate have likely seen 10th District solicitor challenger Sarah Drawdy’s mind-stumping “Deport & Convict Illegals” signs posted along area highways.

Endemic to an ideology that summons people’s fears and anxieties as a way to drum up votes and cater to a largely white, blue collar vote, the signs apparently didn’t work to the degree needed to seal a win for Drawdy, who unsuccessfully challenged incumbent Chrissy Adams for the 10th District solicitor spot.

If you actually like Hispanics, don’t mind them being here and think America’s immigration policy, like its drug policy, is problematic and hypocritical, I suppose that’s good news. But Adams, the winner, who at least seemed to understand the roles of her office, appears to be hewn from the same anti-immigrant ball of yarn.

At the center of this stew, which for Drawdy seemed to be based on a platform solely focused on deporting illegals — a task which only federal officials can perform — seems to be the irrational fear this country will be somehow irrevocably changed by an influx of Hispanics.

The New York Times in a recent and blistering editorial against the injustices done to immigrants called this fear, “The Great Immigration Panic.” Referring, in part, to a raid by government officials on a meatpacking plant in Iowa, the editorial said:

A nation of immigrants is holding another nation of immigrants in bondage, exploiting its labor while ignoring its suffering, condemning its lawlessness while sealing off a path to living lawfully. The evidence is all around that something pragmatic and welcoming at the American core has been eclipsed, or is slipping away.

According to the article, “hundreds” of workers were imprisoned, while the company that hired them remained unscathed.

Yes, many immigrants are living in the Upstate and elsewhere illegally. Yes, they broke the law by coming here. But what many seemingly fail to grasp — or don’t want to or are afraid to — is that illegal or not, immigrants are still people, not aliens (Consequently, this is a a term some, like Rush Limbaugh and Neal Boortz, use to dehumanize them, while skirting around their humanness and refusing to recognize it).

Thus, politicians and talking heads can summon God, justice, freedom and liberty in every other breath as much as they want, but the simple truth is the Beatitudes of the Bible they supposedly hold so dear are clearly misaligned with policies that bolster the wealthy and trample on the weak and poor. Suppose, as some claim, that America is a Christian nation. Not in a metaphorical sense but truly a theocracy, and imagine the local pastor is president. Would the citizenship of the U.S., that being a congregation of 304 million, turn away the hungry fleeing from the south or would it embrace them and try its best to meet their needs?

But we most certainly are not a Christian nation, and in many ways, we are a quite unpleasant and easily spooked people. We hold dear to what we have; we clutch our possessions as if we birthed them. We shutter when new groups of people — first, African-Americans, then Asians, then Irish, now Hispanics — slip in. Only by excessive hemorrhaging (i.e. the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crowe and the Civil Rights movement) do we ever render change for the better. Thus, the central rhetorical force behind Drawdy’s political signs was fear and nothing more. 

 

So much so that the law sometimes has to save us from ourselves. While the law treats people with more dignity than many conservative Christians who convict and crucify people in their minds before the gavel falls, immigrants aren’t afforded even this human decency. And fear is central the reason. It must be a terrible thing to live with a gnawing fear

After much wrangling, gnashing of teeth

So, after much wrangling, temper tantrums, etc. etc., I completed Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels for the first time last night (June 8, 2008). For those who don’t know, it was released as a sequel to the original Mario Bros. game, but apparently because of the difficulty level, it wasn’t marketed in the U.S. — only in Japan. A full remake, however, was included with Mario Bros. All-Stars, which was a release of all three U.S. released of Mario plus The Lost Levels.

The Lost Levels

I’m 30 years old now, going on 31, tragically, so I grew up in the heyday of Mario Bros. I long ago beat the first Mario Bros. and have beaten Mario Bros. 3. Mario 2 was my least favorite of the series, but it was, admittedly, the most unique of the three. Now, my wife wants me to go through Mario Bros. No. 1 again (for some reason), so I guess I’ll do that next, although I’ve told her that I already beat it like 15 or more years ago. In reference to my “Pocketful of quarters” post, I am also thinking about “training” a little and trying to see how many points I can rack up to submit to Twin Galaxies. The No. 4 person in the world clocked in with about 294,000 (point total for 5 lives), while the leader had a little more than 1 million points. I got 200,000 last night without trying and even making a couple of careless mistakes. So, I like my chances. More updates to come. And yes, my geekdom knows no bounds.

More Hispanic workers die on job; South Carolina holds highest rate

—Interestingly, the day after I submitted the previous post, The Associated Press ran a story about high death rates among Hispanic workers. The full text can be found here: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jdpxinePZgOwybkhwlComPxQ0o6AD9142EEG0 and the details of a study referenced in the story is here: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5722a1.htm

Long story short, the story attributes language and literacy barriers as partial contributors to this.

“Many of the Hispanic workers in construction are undocumented, and many of those who are recently arrived do face a language barrier,” said Rakesh Kochhar, associated director for research at the Pew Hispanic Center.

“A language barrier hinders understanding of a job, or the risks associated with it, or safety precautions,” said Kochhar, who was not part of the new study. — The Associated Press, June 5, 2008

Also, because of the nature of their condition, i.e.: lack of formal education, financial need, most of these folks work tough, physical jobs that are demanding on the body and often risky. The other noteworthy point of the article was that South Carolina boasted (probably not the right word) the highest death rate among Hispanic workers in the country at 23 out of 100,000 laborers. The article attributes a recent influx of Hispanic workers into the area as inflating the numbers to that degree.

Here’s some graphics to that end:

Hispanic worker related deaths/injuries versus others

Most common ways to die

State by state

In defense of Hispanics

A particular candidate here running for solicitor, or district attorney, has put up campaign signs around the county I live in which read: “Convict & Deport Illegals.” State-level district attorneys can do no more in deporting illegals than you or I. The race is for South Carolina’s 10th Circuit seat. Chrissy Adams is the incumbent, and Sarah Drawdy is the challenger. To Adams’ credit, at least she seems to understand the basic roles of the office she holds.

Addressing Drawdy’s claims that she would get tough on illegal immigration, Adams said:

(Drawdy) doesn’t understand the system, or she is playing on the heartstrings of people. If I could deport them, I would.

All we can do as solicitor is convict criminals. Judges sentence based on the crime committed. If a crime calls for probation, that is what a person gets. Judges’ sentences are based on facts, not immigration status. The federal government is the only agency with the authority to deport.

— Anderson Independent-Mail, May 17, 2008

But local and state-level candidates and elected officials (especially in the South) know all one must do to drum up votes is say they hate brown folks and want them out of the country to cater to their white, blue collar demographic, many of whom apparently feel they aren’t getting a fair shake economically. Thus, someone has to take the fall. If that demographic did not harbor those feelings, politicians would simply move on to the next hot-button issue that may excite and swing voters their way.

At the center of it is an irrational fear this country will be changed by an influx of Hispanics. The New York Times in a recent and blistering editorial against the injustices done to immigrants called this fear, “The Great Immigration Panic.” Referring, in part, to a raid by government officials on a meatpacking plant in Iowa, the editorial said:

A nation of immigrants is holding another nation of immigrants in bondage, exploiting its labor while ignoring its suffering, condemning its lawlessness while sealing off a path to living lawfully. The evidence is all around that something pragmatic and welcoming at the American core has been eclipsed, or is slipping away. — NYTimes.com, June 3, 2008

According to the article, “hundreds” of workers were imprisoned, while the company that hired them remained unscathed.

Yes, many immigrants are here illegally. Yes, they broke the law by coming here. But what was their modus operandi for doing so? While many people’s M.O. for breaking the law is sick pleasure or mental illness, immigrants’ M.O. for breaking the law is hunger and the desire for their family to not have to live in poverty anymore. Legal Americans struggling in this country are arrested everyday for the same M.O., but immigrants don’t enjoy the same rights under the law, and more times than not, don’t enjoy similar rights even as people.

What many fail to understand, then, is that illegal or not, immigrants are still human beings. They have families back home or in the states and they have mouths to feed. They want what we all want: a shot at something better. But do we denigrate them to something less than human? Even the worst alleged murderers or sex offenders have their day in court. While many subjectively convict and crucify people in their minds without knowing any details, the law treats people with more dignity than most who call themselves conservatives.

The central irony of the right, or perhaps paradox, is that, while it is supposedly the party most evangelicals swing to, its axioms are often the least Christ-like. We don’t have to examine how the party’s policies on war and retaliation, health care and tax breaks for the wealthy undermine what the New Testament is about.

But such a vehemence against Hispanics, floating under the guise of “the law,” is at best, misguided, at worst, ugly. The folks who rage so adamantly against immigration care about their livelihoods, their legacy and their family’s future and are likely fearful that such things would be wrested from them if en masse immigration were allowed to continue unchecked. But, if they follow the Christian tradition, are these not only secondary benefits to life? Did Christ not say, throw down everything and follow me? According to the Bible, God is unconcerned about whether a person works 30 years to amass some given amount of property, for those things slip away from us more and more each day. He seems more concerned with how much one is willing to sacrifice for others.

Suppose the United States was truly a Christian nation, a theocracy, and your pastor was the president. Would the citizenship of the U.S., that being a congregration of 304 million, turn away the hungry fleeing from the south? Would that sort of U.S. hunker down, shut down its walls, become isolated from the world and ignore Christ’s message of caring for the downtrodden? If so, that’s not the Christianity that I want to be a part of, and it’s not the sort of Christianity read about in the Bible. In fairness, one must remember Romans 13, which says all must obey the laws of the land, while Acts 5 implies one must obey the laws of the land unless they come in contradition with the laws of God. Inhumanity is a law against God. Thus, it’s unclear why some on the right appear to be puppets to the law and so sternly clinch their fists against lawbreakers, when human life, in spite of the law, is being desecrated all around them.

The restrictionist message is brutally simple — that illegal immigrants deserve no rights, mercy or hope. It refuses to recognize that illegality is not an identity; it is a status that can be mended by making reparations and resuming a lawful life. Unless the nation contains its enforcement compulsion, illegal immigrants will remain forever Them and never Us, subject to whatever abusive regimes the powers of the moment may devise.

Every time this country has singled out a group of newly arrived immigrants for unjust punishment, the shame has echoed through history. Think of the Chinese and Irish, Catholics and Americans of Japanese ancestry. Children someday will study the Great Immigration Panic of the early 2000s, which harmed countless lives, wasted billions of dollars and mocked the nation’s most deeply held values.

Too often legal status is confused with identity, and some act as if legal status, like a wayward heart, can’t be rectified. But it can. It’s often much easier, however, just to sear an “illegal” mark branded into people’s foreheads, corral and turn them together into an evil monolith and never, never once look into their eyes and find out what makes them tick. I have a hunch it’s the same stuff that makes us all tick. The “Them and never Us” mentality is something quite the opposite from ideals that put common decency and humanity above all else. We need to nurture, instead, a belief that “They” can, and must, become “us.”