The Deadbeat Religious

A couple dozen Catholic social justice types who know better than Paul Ryan have recently put out a statement against his budget stating that it totally hates the poor: "Catholic Leaders to Rep. Paul Ryan: Stop Distorting Church Teaching to Justify Immoral Budget." Well, ok, they mainly disagreed with his claim that his budget is supported by Catholic social thought. But he does totally hate the poor and wants them to eat dog food—and not even the grain-free kind where deboned chicken is the first ingredient.

I'm talking Alpo!

I'm so moved by their rush to defend the Church against Paul Ryan's alleged misuse of the idea of subsidiarity. The leaders' theological argument could be spot-on, but when discussing poverty and prosperity, I try to stick with economics, not theology, as a framework. 

I was finally moved (read: annoyed enough) to post this because of the implications of their condescending response to Ryan's statements on Church teaching and his budget on CBN. I would never say that these leaders aren't dedicating their lives to the betterment of the poor (I'm sure they all do some kind of service for the changes they're advocating), but I would say that their willingness to render unto Caesar a greater share of the duties that are better left to the Church is very disturbing. Hence the this post's harsh title.

First, some comments from a Catholic opposed to Ryan's budget:

“If Rep. Ryan thinks a budget that takes food and healthcare away from millions of vulnerable people upholds Catholic values, then he also probably believes Jesus was a Tea Partier who lectured the poor to stop being so lazy and work harder,” said John Gehring, Catholic Outreach Coordinator at Faith in Public Life.

Well, that explains the Ryan budget! He believes Jesus is a Tea Partier. Oh, I know that's not what Gehring meant. He just meant that Paul Ryan hates the poor—or is too stupid to realize his plan will make everyone poorer—and is disingenuously using Church teaching for cover. That's much more charitable. 

N.B.: Jesus is actually a Marxist who believes the state's monopoly on force is best used promoting policies that will slow growth and make us all poorer.

Gehring continues:

“This budget turns centuries of Catholic social teaching on its head. These Catholic leaders and many Catholics in the pews are tired of faith being misused to bless an immoral agenda.”

Wasn't there a century or two where the Church and its leaders provided charity and education? 

Here are a few bits from the statement itself:

The dramatic growth in military spending is untouched. Addressing our national debt is essential, but balancing budgets on the backs of the poor and working families is flawed public policy and morally bankrupt.

I wish 50+ leaders from a religion with such a rich philosophical tradition could do better than cliches like this.

“Simply put, this budget is morally indefensible and betrays Catholic principles of solidarity, just taxation and a commitment to the common good. A budget that turns its back on the hungry, the elderly and the sick while giving more tax breaks to the wealthiest few can’t be justified in Christian terms.”

Solidarity with the poor is probably not a good idea if it means we have to embrace policies that will make us all poor.

Rep. Ryan claims his budget reflects the Catholic principle of “subsidiarity.” But he profoundly distorts this teaching to fit a narrow political ideology guided by anti-government fervor and libertarian faith in radical individualism.This is anathema to the Catholic social tradition. In fact, ever since Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical, Rerum Novarum, Catholic social teaching has recognized a positive role for government and our collective responsibility to care for our neighbors. 

What? No cracks about Ryan and Atlas Shrugged?

Subsidiarity recognizes that those social institutions closest to the human person — families, communities, churches — can effectively respond to human needs. But subsidiarity, according to Church teaching, also insists that government has a responsibility to serve the common good when these institutions are unable to address the more systemic issues of poverty, inadequate health care, environmental degradation and other societal challenges.

Who will figure out how many angels can dance on the head of a pin if the religious have to worry about the poor?

Occupation: ___n/a___

[In honor of OWS, this post will be incoherent and pointless.]

A few intrepid Occupiers came up with a video game called Keep Me Occupied that embodies the principles of their movement: it's a throwback to their childhood, derivative, and simplistic, and it lasts about 60 seconds.

Hooray.

As much as I want to bash this game for furthering the soccer-fication of our society and not having a zombie mode (yet), I'll admit it's more ideologically coherent and ambitious than the OWS movement itself.

That is deep!

Motion Gaming

I can't help but think that the physical presence and rollout of the game itself was genuinely novel and thoughtful. I'm not entirely sure why, but it seems like this is the one thing about the entire movement that could warrant a doctoral dissertation in the humanities. 

The developers want to recreate that arcade-y feeling of shared space wherever the game is played, i.e., on the Oakutron console or in the downloadable version which, too, requires 2 players in the same space.

And such an awkward and lunking object demands attention and creates its own scene; as a writer in Wired points out, the procession of the Oakutron at an OWS parade drew a few helpers to keep it rolling. I guess it's also really fitting that the people playing the game are advancing blindly as others push.

Everybody Wins

This RT piece on the game refers to it as a "team-building exercise." It is definitely an exercise in team-building, as well as in coding and thought, more than a standalone game, given its endless progression and its open source code. Sounds Occupy-y to me.

That's an accurate description especially since nobody really loses, and the game is totally collaborative. Here's how Wired describes the gameplay:

In order to advance, one player must hold down a switch while the other passes through the opening gate. When time runs out, the players parachute down to the last switch each tripped, saving their progress, in a sense "occupying" that switch. Although the next players begin the next game back at the bottom of the tower, their final gates from previous games will already be open. Thus can the team progress higher and higher with each turn.

The programmer describes the point:

The game [marries] the idea of the social movement where everyone who's playing contributes to the overall success of everyone . . . Someone's who's maybe not super good at videogames might only get to an early switch, but they'll still stay behind and hold that switch and help all future players to still be contributing something that's significant.

Jesus.

No one wants to build teams by jumping on switches. You build them by shooting zombies and killing hordes of whores with suggestive melee weapons.

Unintentionally Funny Quotes

[RT:] Three developers based out of the Bay Area on America's West Coast have slaved over codes and computer parts to put together a video game in the style of classic 1980's arcade culture. Rather than programming a Pac-Man to gobble ghouls or creating a coin-hungry plumber to pursue a princess, these designers have instead developed a game that they say was motivated by Occupy Wall Street.

But Occupy Wall Street is coin hungry.

[Wired:] The premise of Keep Me Occupied is a simple one, though its execution is unique... It requires no more and no fewer than two players.

Or, in other words, "It requires two players."

"Should I Drop Out of Grad School [in the Humanities]?"

To the caffeine-saturated humanities grad student who Googled this question and ended up here: you're welcome because I have your answer.

The answer is either "Yes, you should drop out of grad school," or "No, because you're really awkward, and you can't be helped."

No Blockhead

From "Walt Whitman, First Artist of Finance" by Robert Schiller:

One of the myths surrounding economic inequality in our society is that high incomes are often the result of selfishness and narrow-mindedness, rather than idealism and humanity. We tend to think that those in careers other than our own are fundamentally different kinds of people. ...

Walt Whitman is one of our most revered poets, and his poetry is among the most transcendent. But he could not ignore more material concerns; he had to make a living. To do so, he turned to fiction -- more marketable than poetry -- and made his name with a commercial novel called “Franklin Evans, or The Inebriate: A Tale of the Times.”

Poets Need Money

The book was an embarrassment to him, but it made money, though apparently not enough to finance his future, more serious work. In 1855, when Whitman self-published the first edition of his masterpiece, “Leaves of Grass,” he offered to set his own type as part of his deal with the printer.

An appropriate way to start this blog...

...is with a quote from someone far wiser, i.e., George Will:

In the nineteenth century, when there was, perhaps, more excuse for investing extravagant hope in "change," Tennyson wrote: "Let the great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of change." We should now know that the key word is "down." —from The Pursuit of Virtue and Other Tory Notions