I've felt guilty devoting what tiny reading time I can scrape together to something completely unrelated to politics, nonprofit startups, volunteerism and social theory. George Lakoff and volumes like What's the Matter With Kansas? cause me to shrink away and immediately think about something else. Like those kooky jokes in Laffy Taffies. I just shoulda been sucking those pertinent books dry, but they had to wait. Instead, for the last months, I've eeked through a random historical text... about the 1883 Krakatoa eruption off the coast of Sumatra, and its deadly tsunamis. 120-foot waves, versus the 40-foot ones this last Sunday, if you can imagine. That one only (if only's the word) killed ~30,000 people. Let's just hope the numbers from this one slow their upward march.

A custom-knit scarf. Board game expansions. Clay poker chip set with gun-metal carrying case. Another Lord of the Rings extended edition. Floppy stretchy frisbee thingy. And a Heritage Foundation calendar.

Yup, it's been a good Christmas. And I was home with the whole family. It was a great Christmas.

One present in particular hearkened back to last year's Festivus south of the equator: the box of Snickers Hazelnut snagged from New Zealand's eBay and shipped across the Pacific for me. As long as the box remains populated, I'm a good guy to suck up to.

A costume:

- T-shirt weather at the coast this last weekend. Had to keep checking my watch to make sure it was December. Life's frickin' grand.

A crunch:

- A seventy-summin contractor backed into (and slightly over) my parked motorcycle today. Led to a pleasant half-hour jaunt to his office, conversations galore, and learning that he did the framing of the Bus building thirty years ago. Pleasant guy. We've got each others' cards, and I ended up with some cash to help me fix up the 'hawk.

A quirk:

- Strange habit around the Bus office: Calling people exclusively by full name. Comes from juggling many hundreds of volunteers. Even when referring to the person they're dating, Bus staff members likely (within our lil' realm) refer to them as Firstname Lastname.

A comic:

- Another mention of Lucas. Because he sends me things I like. Like this strip.

A quote:

- Bill Moyers, from his recent acceptance of Harvard Medical School's Global Environment Citizen Award:

One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the oval office and in Congress.

For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a world view despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts. Remember James Watt, President Reagan's first Secretary of the Interior? My favorite online environmental journal, the ever engaging Grist, reminded us recently of how James Watt told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. In public testimony he said, 'after the last tree is felled, Christ will come back.'

Beltway elites snickered. The press corps didn't know what he was talking about. But James Watt was serious. So were his compatriots out across the country. They are the people who believe the bible is literally true - one-third of the American electorate, if a recent Gallup poll is accurate.

In this past election several million good and decent citizens went to the polls believing in the rapture index. That's right - the rapture index. Google it and you will find that the best-selling books in America today are the twelve volumes of the left-behind series written by the Christian fundamentalist and religious right warrior, Timothy LaHaye. These true believers subscribe to a fantastical theology concocted in the 19th century by a couple of immigrant preachers who took disparate passages from the Bible and wove them into a narrative that has captivated the imagination of millions of Americans.

Its outline is rather simple, if bizarre (the British writer George Monbiot recently did a brilliant dissection of it and I am indebted to him for adding to my own understanding): once Israel has occupied the rest of its 'biblical lands,' legions of the anti-Christ will attack it, triggering a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. As the Jews who have not been converted are burned, the messiah will return for the rapture. True believers will be lifted out of their clothes and transported to heaven, where, seated next to the right hand of God, they will watch their political and religious opponents suffer plagues of boils, sores, locusts, and frogs during the several years of tribulation that follow.

I'm not making this up. Like Monbiot, I've read the literature. I've reported on these people, following some of them from Texas to the West Bank. They are sincere, serious, and polite as they tell you they feel called to help bring the rapture on as fulfillment of biblical prophecy. That's why they have declared solidarity with Israel and the Jewish settlements and backed up their support with money and volunteers. It's why the invasion of Iraq for them was a warm-up act, predicted in the Book of Revelations where four angels 'which are bound in the great river Euphrates will be released to slay the third part of man.' A war with Islam in the Middle East is not something to be feared but welcomed - an essential conflagration on the road to redemption. The last time I Googled it, the rapture index stood at 144-just one point below the critical threshold when the whole thing will blow, the son of god will return, the righteous will enter heaven, and sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire.

So what does this mean for public policy and the environment? Go to Grist to read a remarkable work of reporting by the journalist, Glenn Scherer - 'the road to environmental apocalypse.' Read it and you will see how millions of Christian fundamentalists may believe that environmental destruction is not only to be disregarded but actually welcomed - even hastened - as a sign of the coming apocalypse.

As Grist makes clear, we're not talking about a handful of fringe lawmakers who hold or are beholden to these beliefs. Nearly half the U.S. Congress before the recent election - 231 legislators in total - more since the election - are backed by the religious right. Forty-five senators and 186 members of the 108th congress earned 80 to 100 percent approval ratings from the three most influential Christian right advocacy groups. They include Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Assistant Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Conference Chair Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Policy Chair Jon Kyl of Arizona, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, and Majority Whip Roy Blunt.

The only Democrat to score 100 percent with the Christian coalition was Senator Zell Miller of Georgia, who recently quoted from the biblical book of Amos on the senate floor: "the days will come, sayeth the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land.' he seemed to be relishing the thought. And why not? There's a constituency for it.

A 2002 TIME/CNN poll found that 59 percent of Americans believe that the prophecies found in the book of Revelations are going to come true. Nearly one-quarter think the Bible predicted the 9/11 attacks. Drive across the country with your radio tuned to the more than 1,600 Christian radio stations or in the motel turn some of the 250 Christian TV stations and you can hear some of this end-time gospel. And you will come to understand why people under the spell of such potent prophecies cannot be expected, as Grist puts it, "to worry about the environment. Why care about the earth when the droughts, floods, famine and pestilence brought by ecological collapse are signs of the apocalypse foretold in the bible? Why care about global climate change when you and yours will be rescued in the rapture? And why care about converting from oil to solar when the same god who performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes can whip up a few billion barrels of light crude with a word?"

Because these people believe that until Christ does return, the lord will provide. One of their texts is a high school history book, America's providential history. You'll find there these words: "the secular or socialist has a limited resource mentality and views the world as a pie...that needs to be cut up so everyone can get a piece.' however, "[t]he Christian knows that the potential in god is unlimited and that there is no shortage of resources in god's earth......while many secularists view the world as overpopulated, Christians know that god has made the earth sufficiently large with plenty of resources to accommodate all of the people." No wonder Karl Rove goes around the White House whistling that militant hymn, "Onward Christian Soldiers." He turned out millions of the foot soldiers on November 2, including many who have made the apocalypse a powerful driving force in modern American politics.

I can see in the look on your faces just how bad it is for the journalist to report a story like this with any credibility. So let me put it on a personal level. I myself don't know how to be in this world without expecting a confident future and getting up every morning to do what I can to bring it about. So I have always been an optimist. Now, however, I think of my friend on Wall Street whom I once asked: "What do you think of the market?" "I'm optimistic," he answered. "Then why do you look so worried?" And he answered: "Because I am not sure my optimism is justified."

I'm not, either. Once upon a time I agreed with the Eric Chivian and the Center for Health and the Global Environment that people will protect the natural environment when they realize its importance to their health and to the health and lives of their children. Now I am not so sure. It's not that I don't want to believe that - it's just that I read the news and connect the dots: I read that the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has declared the election a mandate for President Bush on the environment. This for an administration that wants to rewrite the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act protecting rare plant and animal species and their habitats, as well as the National Environmental Policy Act that requires the government to judge beforehand if actions might damage natural resources. That wants to relax pollution limits for ozone; eliminate vehicle tailpipe inspections; and ease pollution standards for cars, sports utility vehicles and diesel-powered big trucks and heavy equipment.

That wants a new international audit law to allow corporations to keep certain information about environmental problems secret from the public. That wants to drop all its new-source review suits against polluting coal-fired power plans and weaken consent decrees reached earlier with coal companies. That wants to open the artic wildlife refuge to drilling and increase drilling in Padre Island National Seashore, the longest stretch of undeveloped barrier island in the world and the last great coastal wild land in America. I read the news just this week and learned how the Environmental Protection Agency had planned to spend nine million dollars - $2 million of it from the administration's friends at the American Chemistry Council - to pay poor families to continue to use pesticides in their homes. These pesticides have been linked to neurological damage in children, but instead of ordering an end to their use, the government and the industry were going to offer the families $970 each, as well as a camcorder and children's clothing, to serve as guinea pigs for the
study.

I read all this in the news. I read the news just last night and learned that the administration's friends at the international policy network, which is supported by ExxonMobil and others of like mind, have issued a new report that climate change is 'a myth, sea levels are not rising, scientists who believe catastrophe is possible are 'an embarrassment.'

I not only read the news but the fine print of the recent appropriations bill passed by Congress, with the obscure (and obscene) riders attached to it: a clause removing all endangered species protections from pesticides; language prohibiting judicial review for a forest in Oregon; a waiver of environmental review for grazing permits on public lands; a rider pressed by developers to weaken protection for crucial habitats in California.

I read all this and look up at the pictures on my desk, next to the computer pictures of my grandchildren: Henry, age 12; of Thomas, age 10; of Nancy, 7; Jassie, 3; Sara Jane, nine months. I see the future looking back at me from those photographs and I say, 'Father, forgive us, for we know now what we do.' And then I am stopped short by the thought: 'That's not right. We do know what we are doing. We are stealing their future. Betraying their trust. Despoiling their world.' And I ask myself: Why? Is it because we don't care? Because we are greedy? Because we have lost our capacity for outrage, our ability to sustain indignation at injustice? What has happened to out moral imagination?

On the heath Lear asks Gloucester: "How do you see the world?" And Gloucester, who is blind, answers: "I see it feelingly."

I see it feelingly. The news is not good these days. I can tell you, though, that as a journalist I know the news is never the end of the story. The news can be the truth that sets us free - not only to feel but to fight for the future we want. And the will to fight is the antidote to despair, the cure for cynicism, and the answer to those faces looking back at me from those photographs on my desk. What we need to match the science of human health is what the ancient Israelites called 'hocma' - the science of the heart.....the capacity to see....to feel....and then to act...as if the future depended on you.

Believe me, it does.

Gradually, Western life sucked me back in. Coming back from the traveling, I walked around for a time without much in the way of shoes. I'm now quite well shod. Started wearing my watch again. I write in journals less (despite the four posts tonight). Got employed. Then employed better. Then employed better. Just fell into the fanciest new job title yet. Leisurely flipping through the favorable abode rental market. Might even buy a couple Christmas presents. Heck, I'm a consumer again.

Still, some distinct changes remain from the traipsing around I did. Perhaps most notably, I'm still a happy vagabond. Comfortable anywhere. As long as I sport my glasses or a thimble of contact solution, the homebody part of me's dead. Sleeping's easy. All I need's my car. Or a friend's place. And the best sleep I've ever had was on the back Bus office couch near the end of the election cycle. The physical manifestation of making the best of anything that hits you.

I'll sort the 11,000 pictures from that trip. I may not be going on another one for a year or three, but that doesn't mean I can't reap the lessons, smirk at the memories, and start plotting the next intentional meandering. There's a steaming plate of fun to have here in the meantime. And I've been digging in. Apologies for the lack of posts over the last month, folks. I'll do better. Maybe.

The look of the Toyota Prius makes me smiley. Wasn't always the case, and that's changed recently. Not because of my research into sustainable power. Not because I drove one to Hood River last weekend. Rather, because it's the closest we have on these shores to this.

The Bus Project earns much press attention. I've grown used to dealing with reporters, and I'm not even the guy who fields most of their questions. From the Wall Street Journal on down, my lil' organization gets stories and mentions regularly. Rarely do they nail what we're about as forcefully as the exceptional Oregonian columnist Steve Duin did today. Featuring the amazing Jefferson Smith, Duin understands us with an aptitude not usually found even in editorial pieces from allegedly like-minded liberals. Government needs an influx of creativity, progressive thinking, and youthful energy. We need to drive the country forward, and we've started with Oregon.

Some excerpts from the full piece:

Smith -- who put the Bus Project on the road in 1999 to get young voters more involved -- agreed our political system is an anachronism and a mess. The Republicans, he said, have spent 40 years assembling what is now "the most conservative government in U.S. history," and progressives are losing something more important than elections:

They're losing the cultural and political argument. They haven't fashioned better solutions to the old problems or novel solutions to the new problems.

"Collect the money we spend on Medicare, Medicaid and emergency room treatment for those with no health insurance," Smith said. "I don't know anyone who would take that amount and spend it precisely the way we do. The answer isn't bigger or smaller government; it's better government. Many of our existing institutions are ill-suited for the challenges ahead of us."



By advancing a creative, color-blind agenda, Smith countered: "The dialogue has been too much about identity and not enough about ideas." The ideas need a great deal of work. Nothing, Smith said, is quite as persuasive as a creative approach that targets a better future instead of mourning an imperfect past.

# posted by Garrett @ 1:04 AM followed by 0 comments

So... I hear all the cool kids are posting in their blogs these days.
I guess that means you're not cool. - Lucas Thompson

A lack of entries can mean only one thing: bliss and harmony in my life.

The political griping in the previous posts didn't carry over into the real world. Just needed a lil' outlet, and this was it. Aside from changing my spending habits so that I rarely indirectly give my consumer dollar to the neocons, life's unaltered. Still can't afford health insurance. To help me fix this, buy Costco (98% of political contributions to Dems) rather than Walmart (80% R). Fill up at Shell. Eschew Circuit City. At the risk of hyperbole, buying Hallmark cards is politically equivalent to executing teachers. Here's the rather attractive holiday-shopping cheat-sheet. J.R., Dunivant, and Bennett: You'll want to buy things in the red column instead, which, for some reason, is on the left. Unfortunately, you guys have much more money than I. A more comprehensive directory.

Easy changes:

Buy HP, IBM, or Apple instead of Dell.

Switch auto/motorcycle/Segway insurance to Progressive.

Shell, BP good. All others, bad.

Fly Alaska.

Consider paying for Adobe products. Consider paying the premium for Sony products.

My contract with T-Mobile's guilt-free! It's the only mobile service company on the blue side.

Circuit City / Office Max / Home Depot / Sears / Meier & Frank all suck.

Target, for the first time ever, disappointed.

Despite the 99 cent menu, Wendy's is *even worse* KFC, Taco Bell,
Pizza Hut and McDonalds. The slightly more expensive lousy food tends
to donate Republican too - Chili's, Marie Callender's, Olive Garden,
Red Lobster, & Macaroni Grill. Arby's sits nearly alone on the side
of good.

Everything involving reading and selling books is A-OK, except for
Hallmark cards. They must be burned.

This confuses me: News Corp, the owners of Fox News, gave 69% of
their earmarked cash to Dems. Clear Channel followed the expectation,
though.

Walmart: need you ask?