https://americancynic.net/Atom Feed for 'review' Articles2022-03-25T19:50:33ZAmer Canishttps://americancynic.net/about/tag:americancynic.net,2022-03-25:/log/2022/3/25/winter_is_coming_the_kasparov_neoconservative-thermonuclear_gambit/Winter is Coming: The Kasparov Neoconservative-Thermonuclear Gambit2022-03-25T17:39:19Z2022-03-25T19:50:33Z<div class="quoteblock">
<blockquote>
Tactics involve calculations that can tax the human brain, but when you boil them down, they are actually the simplest part of chess and are almost trivial compared to strategy.
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<div class="attribution">
— GM Kasparov
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>Twenty-two years ago the world chess champion expressed optimism that Russia’s new president would continue Boris Yeltsin’s liberal reforms.
Garry Kasparov would lose his title in a long match against Vladimir Kramnik later that year (an old nemesis, the <a href="https://www.chess.com/article/view/vladimir-kramnik-and-the-berlin-defense">Berlin Wall</a>, returning to torment him in a new form), but he would never be wrong about Vladimir Putin again.
After Russia annexed Crimea and intervened in support of separatists in the Donbas region in 2014, the sort of things Kasparov had been warning for years that Putin would do, he wrote a book titled <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Winter_Is_Coming.html?id=vQMrCgAAQBAJ&source=kp_book_description"><em>Winter Is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped</em></a>.
I read it in March 2022, three weeks into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine which has imperiled millions of civilians (with dozens being killed every day) as Russian artillery, navy, and air force bomb city centers and neighborhoods).
The title is apparently a reference to the TV show <em>Game of Thrones</em> (though that’s never explained in the book), and in the conclusion he explains that “'Winter is Coming' is a warning, not an inevitable conclusion” (which makes the seasonal metaphor all the more confusing).</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>The prescient introduction, written after Russia’s 2014 invasion of eastern Ukraine, reads like it could have been written today.
The rest of the book reads like a pro-war screed by an American neoconservative.
Maybe a better label would be paleo-neoconservative because Kasparov expresses a strong desire for American foreign policy to return from the murky ‘war on terror’ to the good old days of the anti-Soviet liberal war hawks like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_M._Jackson">Henry “Scoop” Jackson</a>, the former US Senator from <s>Boeing</s> Washington.
Kasparov writes that “I could happily fill several pages with Jackson’s powerful statements on why America had to live up to its ideals of freedom and democracy by actively promoting and defending them abroad.”
I wonder if any of those pages would mention that Jackson’s vision of “freedom and democracy” included the forced exportation and internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>The pages that he did write contain some clear standalone statements that probably almost anyone could agree with.
I especially like his one-line zingers sprinkled throughout (like “And experience has shown that you can often do just fine being on the wrong side of history if you are on the right side of a pipeline,” and “Then the World Cup was checked off Putin’s shopping list, though it’s hard to say which side is the less transparent, the Kremlin or FIFA”).</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>But much of the book consists of Kasparov’s personal commentary on various American and Russian leaders, mostly since 1989.
His strongest praise goes to the “moral clarity and stubbornness” of Ronald Reagan. (“The Wall was torn down as Reagan had demanded and the evil empire fell. Lesser problems were left to lesser men.”)
His strongest condemnation, of course, goes to Vladimir Putin, a hatred to which it seems all of his other political and moral values are subordinate.
His praise for other US presidents correlates with how readily they’ve gone to war.
Bush 41 gets praise for protecting Kuwait (but he “passed on the golden opportunity to remove Saddam from power…​”), Clinton was enamored of Yeltsin but at least he came to the defense of Kosovar Albanians by bombing Yugoslavia (Kasparov says that Clinton’s justifications for that bombing campaign also apply to NATO intervention in the Ukraine crisis today, which is somewhat ironic since Putin <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20220321052547/http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/20603">used the same argument</a> from the “well-known Kosovo precedent” as justification for Russia’s intervention in the ‘independence’ of Crimea), and Bush 43 allowed Afghanistan and Iraq to become expensive distractions from the real enemies in Moscow and elsewhere but at least he kept the idea of American interventionism alive (“Preemptive strikes and deposing dictators may or may not have been a good plan, but at least it was a plan”).
Throughout the book he non-ironically refers to the Bush Doctrine of unilateral and preemptive war as a “freedom agenda” (the sort of doublespeak in defense of war that Putin would be proud of).</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>The only exception is the Obama administration, for which Kasparov has the most criticism.
The ninth chapter of the book is titled “The Audacity of False Hope.”
I remember a major feature of the Obama administration’s foreign policy to involve a complicated proxy war with Russia through its <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American-led_intervention_in_the_Syrian_civil_war">intervention in the Syrian Civil War</a>, so I was surprised by Kasparov’s mostly cold treatment of the 44th president.
I can think of several factors which may explain it.
The first is that Kasparov strongly preferred Republican John McCain in the 2008 elections, who was admittedly a much better fit rhetorically for Kasparov’s neoconservative instincts, so perhaps he was more biased against Obama than against other American presidents from the beginning.
The second is that Russia’s annexation of Crimea took place during Obama’s watch, and Obama failed to use it as an excuse to escalate the conflict with Putin beyond a few additional sanctions.
But the biggest factor, I think, is that for a man who demands war at every turn Kasparov also puts a surprising amount of stock in the <em>speech</em> of politicians, and he seems especially impressed by tough talk (er, “moral clarity and stubbornness”).
It strikes my cynical mind as both refreshing and naive, but he actually listens to and often believes what world leaders say.
I think the importance he places on speech caused him to mistake Obama’s approach to foreign policy of talking softly and quietly carrying out drone warfare as weakness and a willingness to acquiesce to belligerent speakers like Putin.</p>
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<p>The book’s opposition to imperialist wars extends exactly to the Kremlin, turning a blind eye to the much more destructive forces being amassed at NATO bases along the way.
Kasparov details the humanitarian cost of Putin’s invasions but ignores or excuses the cost of American invasions as necessary sacrifice.
Likewise his condemnation of dictators is conveniently limited to those not aligned with the United States (with the exception of Pinochet, for unknown reason but to his credit).</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>But for someone on such inconsistent moral ground, he holds to it consistently to the point that in some cases he seems ready to defend what even other blind adherents to American empire would rather forget.
He criticizes JFK for canceling the second round of bombings during the Bay of Pigs invasion, the CIA’s embarrassing 1961 false-flag attempt to overthrow Castro, for example.
(Kasparov’s grand master-level interpretation is that JFK’s “show of weakness” — and not the embedding unjustified act of aggression — is what prompted the USSR to deploy nuclear missiles to Cuba.)
He claims that “the see-no-evil Western approach to the Russian Civil War in 1919 and Britain’s Munich peace treaty with Hitler in 1938 paved the way for some of the most appalling tragedies of the twentieth century.”
Never mind the false comparison between a popular uprising to overthrow a Russian tyrant (a strange thing for Kasparov to smear given the subject matter of his book) with a treaty between two military powers, he seems to have actually forgotten that Western nations (including the USA and the UK) <em>did</em> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_intervention_in_the_Russian_Civil_War">intervene</a> with tens of thousands of troops in the Russian Civil War!</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>In chess a distinction is made between tactics and strategy.
Tactics are immediate threats, forced combination of moves that provide a clear advantage to one player.
Strategy involves more long-term planning according to heuristics and principles beyond the human ability to calculate concretely in hopes that a good position will later lead to tactical possibilities.
Because in chess, ultimately, tactics win the game and a good position is merely what makes those tactics possible.
This is the inverse of a worthwhile real-world moral and political philosophy in which a good position is the desired result, and short term tactics and compromises are mere means to that position.
Kasparov treats the moral world like a chess game: principles are subordinate to tactics and he gives no greater vision for a human society beyond what he calls ‘modernity’ and what sounds to me a lot like dismal, highly militarized, exploitative liberal empire forever.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>In fairness, the book is intended mostly as a polemical tool to convince Americans to support more anti-Putin policies, a purpose which doesn’t exactly demand subtlety.
But Kasparov’s lack of political circumspection is still striking.
He seems completely oblivious to the possibility that the capitalist world order including American-led NATO wars could actually be undermining security or producing the conditions in which dictators thrive.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>In the first chapter he relates that an early dissatisfaction with Soviet society was that he was made to feel uncomfortable about his wealth earned as a chess player.
“For me to say that my neighbors in Baku should see my keeping the Mercedes I won in Germany as normal, healthy thinking was radical and subversive.”
My impression is that this revolt toward materialism remains an important component of Kasparov’s political inclinations.
After retiring from chess he moved to the USA where he could enjoy his wealth and champion American empire in the name of human rights.
It’s as if Shevek, <a href="https://americancynic.net/log/2021/4/12/book_review_the_dispossessed/">being embarrassed of his orange blanket</a>, moved to Urras and devoted himself to defending A-Io’s wars, crackdowns on dissent, and colonial exploitation of Anrres while always denouncing Thu’s similar policies.
He calls himself an anti-Communist, but other than echoing the shallow Cold War propaganda of both the USA and USSR that equates Communism with totalitarianism and Democracy with capitalism, he gives little hint that those words mean anything to him.
(By those terms, who isn’t an anti-Communist?)
To underscore the confusion, most of his “anti-Communism” is directed at the privatization of Russian property by robber-baron oligarchs during Yeltsin’s liberalization and the far-right authoritarian transformation of Russian society under Putin.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>Of course I hope I’m not mirroring Kasparov’s error of mistaking lesser evil for good by mistaking a lesser good for evil or minimizing the cruelty of Putin’s nuclear mafia state by pointing out that liberal republics are themselves imperfect.
My sympathies lie with all opponents of the wars and abuses of Putin’s autocracy including the work Kasparov has been doing on that front over the decades — and <em>likewise</em> those against America and its allies.
I emphasize the word <em>likewise</em> because it is a subtlety which Kasparov at times demonstrates a difficulty in comprehending.
Such a consistent opposition to state violence he tends to dismiss as “whataboutism”.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>So what is to be done about the current Russian aggresion?
In a <a href="https://www.jpost.com/international/article-698594">Twitter thread</a> after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Kasparov re-emphasized what he has said in <em>Winter is Coming</em> and elsewhere, including:</p>
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<p>Financially isolate Russian billionaires (most of the world is finally taking this option seriously).</p>
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<p>Produce more oil and gas outside of Russia to deprive its war machine of funding (“You can’t save the planet if you don’t save the people on it”)</p>
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<p>Support Ukraine with more weapons (“everything but boots on the ground”)</p>
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</ul>
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<p>In the book he was careful to say he did not favor boycotts that would hurt ordinary Russians, but more recently he has <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/video/russia-thrown-back-stone-age-205350104.html">said</a> the financial and trade blockade should be so thorough that “Russia should be thrown back into the Stone Age to make sure that the oil and gas industry and any other sensitive industries that are vital for survival of the Putin regime cannot function without Western technological support.”
He is now also calling for NATO to implement a no-fly zone above Ukraine (ie, to enter the war on the side of Ukraine and potentially expand the theater of conflict to the entire world).</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>In other words, when Kasparov looks at America he sees a country which no longer polices the world readily enough with its extensive military, doesn’t provide enough weapons to partisans in armed conflicts, and doesn’t frack enough gas.
This is a glimpse at the world through the bizarre neoconservative lens.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>Admittedly, in the immediate moment, my anti-war worldview is not very helpful.
Unilateral pacifism being impossible, the question of Should there be violence? is meaningless when the violence is already happening.
The only questions <em>are</em> tactical matters of weighing effective defenses against potential escalations.
I didn’t complain when NATO used its military might to protect Yazidis and Kurds from the slave “state” of ISIS, and I’m not going to complain if NATO thinks it can protect Ukrainian people without triggering a nuclear war.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>But to allow one’s political view to be entirely structured by these tactical considerations loses sight of a world where Putins and NATOs do not and cannot exist.
And on the last pages of the book, we get a glimmer that maybe Kasparov can imagine such a world after all!:</p>
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<div class="quoteblock">
<blockquote>
And so my last policy recommendation is to listen to the dissidents, even if you do not like what they have to say. They are the ones who reveal to us the dark realities of our societies, the realities that most of us have the luxury to turn away from. […​] Every society has its dissidents, not just dictatorships. They speak for the disenfranchised, the ignored, and the persecuted. Listen to them now, because they speak of what is to come.
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</div>My review of Garry Kasparov's Winter is Comingtag:americancynic.net,2021-04-12:/log/2021/4/12/book_review_the_dispossessed/Book Review: The Dispossessed2021-04-12T16:40:14Z2021-04-12T16:40:14Z<div class="paragraph">
<p><em>The Dispossessed</em> (1974) by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_K._Le_Guin">Ursula K. Le Guin</a> (1929—​2018) is a long, slow, well-crafted science fiction novel set several hundred years in the future when the Earth (Terra) has been driven to ecological ruin by its inhabitants (the Terrans) whose population has dwindled to only 500M.
Those few survive under a totalitarian post-apocalyptic society, and only then by receiving charitable subsidies from the alien Hainish civilization.
I read <a href="http://marx.libcom.org/library/dispossessed-ursula-le-guin">the 2006 HarperCollins ePub edition</a> which is formatted well (with a table of contents) and includes a study guide by Paul Brians.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>But <em>The Dispossessed</em> is not about the Terrans and their struggles.
That planet is only mentioned a few times in the entire book.
Rather it takes place several light years away on twin planets orbiting <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tau_Ceti_in_fiction">Tau Ceti</a>.
Urras is a lush planet with several competing class societies including A-Io, a capitalist state very similar to the present-day USA, and its rival, the state socialist Thu (with “A money economy based on the principle that each worker is paid as he deserves, for the value of his labor,” and apparently doesn’t even pretend to be pursuing Communism unlike its Bolshevik counterparts familiar to Terrans).
The same revolutionary movement that produced Thu as a socialist super power also produced a libertarian revolt within A-Io.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>The libertarians called themselves Odonians, adherents to the anarchist principles espoused by a philosopher named Odo.
This is a little odd from a Terran anarchist’s perspective where, unlike Marxists and academics, we tend not to adopt the name of thinkers for our schools.
There are communist anarchists, for example, but not “Kropotkinists”; and insurrectionary anarchists but not “Bonannonians,” mutualists more so than “Proudhonians”…​
But the greater difficulty for me while reading was that the Odo I know is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odo_(Star_Trek)">the alien cop</a> from <em>Deep Space Nine</em>, which makes for some confusing conflations with the alien anarchist from Urras.</p>
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<p>Rather than risking the spread of Odonian sedition, the A-Io authorities allowed any of the revolutionaries who were willing to settle with clemency on Anarres, Urras’s uninhabited (except for a few mining camps), arid moon-planet.
There, by the time the novel begins, the Odonians have established a worldwide <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-syndicalism">anarcho-syndicalist</a> society on Anarres that has functioned for more than 150 years.
And, conveniently for the Urrastis, it also functions as a productive ore-producing colony that sends several full freighters back to the homeworld every year as part of the peace agreement.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>The way Le Guin sets up this world of exciting hope and experimental freedom embedded in, walled in by, realpolitik considerations, both in the Anarresti dealings with the offworld capitalists but also within the nominally anarchist syndicates themselves, grants it a feeling of authenticity that a naive utopia would lack.
Even if we can defeat or at least escape from the principalities, powers, and rulers of this world, how can we escape from each other?
There’s a Pat the Bunny song I used to listen to before my overnight shifts at Walmart (“We’re up all night dreaming / We aren’t alive as long as there’s a prison guard still breathing / So we’re up all night scheming / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2BU-BeWFLs">We don’t get tired, we get even</a>”) which speaks of this anarchist anxiety Le Guin has organically captured in her ambiguous utopia:</p>
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<div class="verseblock">
<pre class="content">I’ll still be on my own
In the community we’re building.
But that could never change,
Any society is prison to me.</pre>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>One of the stranger aspects of Anarres to me is how its inhabitants, after doing their share of necessary labour, free to do anything, all seem to dedicate themselves to specialized jobs.
We meet a physicist, a fish geneticist, a truck driver, a machinist…​ but nowhere the hobbyist, the polymath, fully realized individual every Terran communist philosopher has promised.
Even the poor playwright driven to insanity by the rejection of his peers just keeps writing the same play over and over again rather than develop his interests in other fields.
These people have freed themselves from exploitative class society, but decided to take their jobs with them into their new world.
I guess that’s about as syndicalist as a revolution can get.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p><em>The Dispossessed</em> tells the life story of Shevek, an Anarresti theoretical physicist and a good Odonian who becomes stifled by his own community and travels to the capitalist world in order to work out his theories.
The Anarresti, you see, have adopted a contradictory policy of “anarchism on one planet” and have grown fearful of any outsiders.
Our protagonist eventually sets himself the task of correcting that, of abolishing borders…​ with science.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>The book is structured so that every other chapter details Shevek’s earlier life on Anarres while the alternating chapters describe his time visiting Urras where he struggles to complete his theoretical work on time on time.
I enjoyed that structure, it helped break up some of the slower narrative.
But even so, the first seven chapters are very dry. Boring, in my experience.
In those chapters, on both Anarres and Urras, Shevek mostly mopes around universities.
He doesn’t have any real friends or enemies, and a major conflict in the first half of the book is when he was slightly embarrassed to live alone with an orange blanket.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>One synchronicity is that the other book I read at the same time was <em>The Man Who Knew Infinity</em>, Robert Kanigel’s biography of the Indian mathematician <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan">Srinivasa Ramanujan</a>.
That book describes the two worlds inhabited by Rmanujan: India, where nobody recognizes his genius, and university life in Cambridge where he briefly lives after being discovered by a famous English mathematician and where he works out many of his most striking theorems.
From quarrels with his mother, travel to another world, separation from his wife, return home, and mathematical glimpses of infinity it feels very similar in tone, structure, and content to <em>The Dispossessed</em>.
But I think the similarities to Ramanujan’s life are coincidence; I don’t think his story was widely known outside of India (to non-mathematicians) at the time Le Guin was writing.
I’ve <a href="http://cedarsolderthanenglish.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-dispossessed-by-ursula-k-le-guin.html">read</a> that Le Guin actually based Shevek’s character on her memories of J. Robbert Oppenheimer (with whom her parents were apparently friends).</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>Even in the boring first half there were some memorable moments.
One is when Shevek and his childhood friends on Anarres learn in school what prisons are.
The other is a conversation between Shevek and a misogynist at an Anarres truck stop through which the reader (if they were like me and assumed otherwise) learns that Odo was a woman.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>Once things do finally start happening toward the end of the book, Shevek seems almost irrelevant as he becomes a passive stand-in for a messianic figure.
With some inspiration from good old Einstein (Ainsetain the Terran) he is able to finish his theorems, and with the help of his servant, Efor, he is able to escape his handlers on Urras and finally meet some Urrasti anarchists and rabble rousers.
Efor is one character in the novel I almost liked.
I thought he was an undercover cop.
But it turns out he was not only legitimately proletarian, but also, conveniently, a revolutionary sympathizer (he mentions his daughter was named Laia, presumably after <a href="https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ursula-k-le-guin-the-day-before-the-revolution">Laia Odo</a>).</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>The reliance on Einstein felt like a leak in Le Guin’s world building, bringing the reader crashing back to twentieth century Earth.
Her political systems don’t namedrop any real social theorist and feel all the more authentic and self-contained for it.
(Though at one point Shevek states that the technology made possible by his theories could threaten the Urrasti’s enemies “With the annihilation of space” which is maybe a reference to Marx’s description of advances in communication technology as “The annihilation of space by time.”)
Her physics, I think, would have likewise felt more authentic without Ainsetain.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>When Shevek meets Efor’s anarchists, they explain to him why the authorities have been preoccupied with confining him.
“It’s not just because they want this idea of yours. But because you are an idea. A dangerous one. The idea of anarchism, made flesh. Walking amongst us.”
He then attends a large protest where he narrowly escapes being shot by police himself, but spends three nights hiding entombed in a cellar with a dying comrade as the police round people up outside.
He then emerges and appears at the friendly embassy of the totalitarian Terrans who immediately agree to publish his theories to the public domain and give him a ride home.
The final chapter is his ascension to the moon.
Easy peasy.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>True journey may be return, but throughout the book, first when nothing happens and then later when Shevek stumbles into his Christological role, I couldn’t help thinking that, like in something out of Monty Python’s <em>The Life of Brian</em>, Le Guin accidentally wrote about the wrong Anarresti and there was a more interesting story happening elsewhere the entire time.</p>
</div>I read Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed. This review contains spoilers of everything; read the book first.tag:americancynic.net,2020-08-18:/log/2020/8/18/a_review_of_jesusa/A Review of J.E.S.U.S.A.2020-08-18T15:54:01Z2020-08-18T15:54:01Z<div class="paragraph">
<p><em>J.E.S.U.S.A.</em> is a documentary film that attempts to counter naive, militarist, patriotic American Christianity with a version of Christianity that is more peaceful and transformative.
I paid four bucks to watch it on Youtube. Unfortunately the rental only lasts 48 hours and it expired in the middle of my second viewing, so this review is written mostly without notes and remains incomplete.
The entire movie is clips from interviews interspersed regularly with what appears to be (often only vaguely relevant) stock footage.
The first 13 minutes of the film consists of proponents of violence giving various Biblical justifications for their religion.
The next 80 minutes is dedicated to several authors and pastors who give their nonviolent understanding of Jesus.
None of the dozen or so interviewees are given any sort of introduction other than, briefly, their name and occupation appearing once on the screen during their appearance (and not always during their first appearance).</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>The film suffers from poor framing in general.
Members of the first group of interviews are proponents of gun ownership and violent policing, and they seem ready to kill their neighbors at a moment’s notice, but they rarely if ever even mention the military or war.
The second group, the nonviolent Christians — including a former SEAL, a former Marine, and a war journalist — focus their denunciations of violence mostly against national militarism and war, and at least two of these advocates of nonviolence make explicit exceptions for police and gun ownership.
It’s a confusing disconnect.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>The selection of the ‘pro-violence’ representatives is also confusing.
The movie opens with a clip of a service at Sanctuary Church in Newfoundland, PA.
It then cuts to an interview with the pastor, identified as “Sean Moon,” explaining how Jesus taught his followers to manufacture “assault weapons.”
What is never mentioned in the film is that Sean Moon is the youngest son of Sun Myung Moon, the founder of the “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unification_movement">Moonies</a>,” a religious sect most famous for their mass weddings.
Moonies view the late elder Moon and his wife as the True Parents, messiahs, who are continuing the work Jesus meant to do before he unexpectedly died.
After his father’s death and a family disagreement about succession, Sean Moon started his church (and his “<a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xwep53/we-spent-a-wild-weekend-with-the-gun-worshipping-moonie-church-thats-trying-to-go-maga">Rod of Iron Ministry</a>”) as a Moonie splinter group.
The young Moon’s church is even more anticommunist than his father’s, and uses pro-Trump rhetoric and outright worship of rifles in order to appeal to the conspiracy- and fear-addled minds of American conservatives.
If <em>J.E.S.U.S.A.</em> is out to investigate the relationship between mainstream American Christianity and empire, using a small offshoot of a South Korean cult is not a representative example.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>The other pro-violence Christian speakers featured in the film are mostly just ex-police grifters trying to sell defense services and training to churches.
This includes <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Grossman_(author)">Dave Grossman</a> who shares his groundbreaking juridical expert opinion that the Bible is against “murder” but not against “lawful killing.”
Not mentioned in the film is that Grossman is most famous for <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETf7NJOMS6Y">his controversial training seminars</a> where he helps American police officers get over their hesitation to kill.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>I don’t think Kevin Miller, the film’s director/writer/producer, set out to create an intentional straw man through his selection of Moon, Grossman, et al.
I suspect the motivation was rather a mixture of spectacle (he wanted shots of people holding AR-15’s in church) and laziness (finding actual representatives of mainstream or even evangelical Christianity’s entanglement with empire would have required more work and subtlety).</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Fortunately for the film and its audience, despite the framing, the heart and redeeming aspect of the documentary has nothing to do with the first group of interviewers or the U.S.A.
About halfway through, the film pieces together several interviews which give quite a decent summary of mythic Christianity.
The documentary’s theology is much more interesting than its politics.
With a focus on a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWTtibmV1IE">Girardian/non-substitutionary</a> theory of atonement, the film presents Christianity as an evolutionary road toward a nonviolent society.
In this view, Christianity with its Abrahamic roots reverses other ancient religions in its recognition of the victims of violence at the foundation and maintenance of society, and founds a nonviolent counter-society, a kingdom of heaven.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>But then, in conformance to the gospel form, betrayal: Brian Zahnd, a pastor who is one of the main interviewees throughout the film, states that being against violence doesn’t mean he is against police (??).
Someone else cites Romans 13 to similar effect.
After explaining for an hour how Christianity exposes and works against violence, they find a little whitewashed urn to sneak it all back in.
(To be honest, I was so disgusted at this point in the documentary that I’m not even sure if I watched the last few minutes. It’s possible these comments were clarified in that time.)</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>If God’s refusal to accept human sacrifice from Abraham founded a religion that exposes and rejects radical violence, and if the execution of Jesus at the hands of political and religious leaders clarifies the subversive road to the kingdom of heaven, then <em>J.E.S.U.S.A</em>, true to its mismash of a title, is stuck somewhere between Isaac and the cross.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>For a more positive and complete review of <em>J.E.S.U.S.A.</em> see <a href="https://orthodoxyindialogue.com/2020/04/22/documentary-j-e-s-u-s-a-reviewed-by-andrew-klager/">Andrew Klager’s review for <em>Orthodoxy In Dialog</em></a> (April 22, 2020).</p>
</div>An incomplete review of a recent documentary about nonviolent vs American Christianity. It is confusing in the opening, good in the middle, and disappointing at the end.tag:americancynic.net,2019-08-01:/log/2019/8/1/utopia_for_centrists/Rutger Bregman's Utopia for Centrists2019-08-01T20:24:23Z2019-08-01T20:24:23Z<div class="paragraph">
<p>“Free money for everyone” is about as pithy as a slogan for <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Robert_Van_Der_Veen/publication/24015173_A_Capitalist_Road_to_Communism/links/54dba1360cf23fe133ad67e7.pdf">a capitalist path to communism</a> can get.
It is also the original title, in Dutch, of Rutger Bregman’s <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Utopia_for_Realists.html?id=auJzDQAAQBAJ"><em>Utopia for Realists</em></a> (Little, Brown and Company, 2017).
The English-language title with its seemingly contradictory terms better reflects the basic dialectic of Bregman’s book: every utopia is its own dystopia and progress consists in seeking out each successive utopia.
He laments that things are so good within our current late-capitalist dys-utopia that we’ve stalled as a society and people are no longer looking to the horizons for what comes next.
He argues for three reforms as paths forward: a 15-hour workweek, a universal basic income (UBI), and open borders.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>I love all three proposals.
They each bear what I consider to be the hallmark of potentially transformative reform: it is equally easy to consider them as lofty-but-possible goals under the current system and as the early <em>results</em> of revolutionary structural changes.
But while they sound like radical reforms, Bregman never fails to insist that they are actually commonsense, evidence-based policy tweaks that any economic-minded conservative would support.
In trying to balance his Utopia with his Realism, however, Bregman often loses grasp of his dialectic and ends in contradiction rather than transcendence.
The book is a roller coaster of revolutionary idealism (“If we want to change the world, we need to be unrealistic, unreasonable, and impossible” (264)) punctually contradicted by reassurances that everything is already going according to plan (“Don’t get me wrong, capitalism is a fantastic engine for prosperity” (46)) in confusing service to sympathetic but quite tame social democratic sentiment.
Bregman opens his book with a slew of statistics in praise of capitalism compared to how bad things used to be.
(Steven Pinker’s endorsement on the cover makes perfect sense after reading the first chapter.<sup class="footnote">[<a id="_footnoteref_1" class="footnote" href="#_footnotedef_1" title="View footnote.">1</a>]</sup>)
As one reviewer noted, <a href="https://www.gla.ac.uk/media/media_603121_en.pdf#page=37">“His frame of reference never strays far from neoliberal economic dogma and there is not a single suggested societal change in his book which is not primarily justified by economic benefit.”</a></p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>One of my favorite sentences comes from <a href="https://thecorrespondent.com/4373/the-solution-to-just-about-everything-working-less/168119985-db3d3c10">the chapter on reducing the workweek to 15 hours</a>: “Is there anything that working less does <em>not</em> solve?” (142).
In that chapter Rutger rightly observes that, unlike the expectations of many noted commentators (“Marx to Mill to Keynes to Ford”), industrial automation has not provided most of the world with a life of luxury.
He quote’s from <em>Principles of Political Economy</em> to demonstrate John Stuart Mill’s optimism about the potential of technology to reduce work.
The paragraph he quotes from, however, is actually pessimistic about the social prospects of technology unless capitalist accumulation can be halted.
It continues:</p>
</div>
<div class="quoteblock">
<blockquote>
Hitherto [1848] it is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day’s toil of any human being. They have enabled a greater population to live the same life of drudgery and imprisonment, and an increased number of manufacturers and others to make fortunes.
</blockquote>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>It is interesting that Rutger chose to quote that particular paragraph from Mill’s <em>Principles</em>, because Karl Marx (another of Rutger’s ‘great minds’ supposedly optimistic about capitalist automation) also quotes it to open <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#S1">the chapter about machinery in <em>Capital</em></a>. (“[Reducing work] is, however, by no means the aim of the capitalistic application of machinery…​”).
Marx’s point is that machinery, as long as capitalist production dominates, will necessarily be designed to extract profit from workers rather than to provide them with luxury.
It’s clear that advances in technology <em>could</em> free us from all kinds of work — but up until now it has been largely wasted by and on capitalism.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Rutger freely criticizes the culture and excesses of actually existing capitalism, but he does so without presenting a coherent theory of capitalist exploitation, Marxian or otherwise.
This leaves his critique feeling very shallow, vacillating between mere reformism and capitalist outright apologism.
In explaining why people have no time in capitalist societies he repeats the old bourgeois explanation that “Economic growth can yield either more leisure or more consumption,” (139)
and as a society we have chosen the latter.
Of course there is a third sink for the output of increased productivity that he does not mention, namely: profit.
By eliding that option the blame for the failures of capitalism to live up to its own ideals is implicitly placed on workers instead of owners.
In the same breath Rutger mentions the fact that “inequality has exploded,” but he does not provide a convincing explanation for that explosion.
Outside of briefly mentioning Piketty’s purely descriptive model (whom he approvingly quotes that “We have to save capitalism from the capitalists”), his best try is less than satisfactory (and seems to get the causality of inequality and capital concentration reversed):</p>
</div>
<div class="quoteblock">
<blockquote>
The reality is that it takes fewer and fewer people to create a successful business, meaning that when a business succeeds, fewer and fewer people benefit. (Chapter 8; no corroborating source is given, but he names Instagram as an example)
</blockquote>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>The most disappointing self-reversal occurs in the conclusion to the chapter on the 15-hour workweek.
After persuasively arguing against work he assures his conservative readers that “the objective here is not to plead for an end to the workweek. Quite the reverse. It’s time that women, the poor and seniors get the chance to do more, not less, good work.” (147)
As I’ve written before, <a href="https://americancynic.net/log/2018/12/3/kivas_interest_rates/">any scheme which promises to improve life by giving poor women <em>more</em> work to do ought to be met and examined with the utmost suspicion.</a>
Giving more work, however ‘good,’ to the most overworked and underpaid members of the global economy is not utopian.
It’s not progressive.
It’s just embracing the same old exploitative and horrific capitalism we already have.
Given my understanding of microcredit as a mechanism to integrate poor women further into the workforce, however, I do appreciate that in <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/immigration-myths-open-us-borders-debunked-2018-8">the chapter on open borders</a> he points out that “there is no hard evidence that microcredit is effective at combatting poverty and illness. Handing out cash works way better.” (211)</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>That chapter contains more of my favorite lines, including his description of the effects of border regimes: “It’s apartheid on a global scale.” (221)
But it also contains the characteristic self-contradictions.
He first spends some time dispelling the myth that immigrants “will undermine social cohesion,” and then a few pages later he develops doubts about the resilience of his utopia:
“Opening our borders is not something we can do overnight, of course — nor should it be. Unchecked migration would certainly corrode social cohesion in the Land of Plenty.” (228)</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>But it is nice, at least, to see UBI and the other ameliorations getting attention in a popular book.
And, anyway, his target audience is not the convinced socialist but the skeptical liberal.
The book originated as a series of articles for the <a href="https://thecorrespondent.com/"><em>Correspondent</em></a>, a Dutch news website, and is written in a correspondingly engaging style peppered with narrative anecdotes.
But anyone looking for a scholarly treatment will be disappointed in its fluffiness.
There is no bibliography, no particular methodology is revealed in a perusal of the end notes, and the few times I was surprised or doubtful enough about a [minor] claim to consult the notes they were less than helpful.
To the claim that some scientists think there are people alive today who will live to 1,000 years, for example, the supporting note is simply a link to a single TED Talk.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>While I enjoyed several sections of the book (like <a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/05/richard-nixon-ubi-basic-income-welfare/">the fun chapter on Nixon’s guaranteed income plan</a> which I had never read about before), his mixed message left me with a mixed response.
On one hand his selection of pet reforms is so good that it is not <em>just</em> another book on saving capitalism by giving it a gentler face.
But they are good reforms pursued for the wrong reasons.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>It is time for UBI, short workweeks, and open borders, yes, but that is because it is (still) time to move beyond capitalism and grand systems of exploitation, not to try to shore them up for another ten generations.
Bregman talks about pushing the Overton window to the left (or in whichever direction he thinks Utopia lies) but pairs the '68 slogan “Be realistic, demand the impossible” with his myopic praise of capitalism.
In the epilogue he exhorts his readers to engage in what he calls Politics with a capital “P” which is “Not about the art of the possible, but about making the impossible inevitable.” (253)
A book inspired by that philosophy would have been a less frustrating read.</p>
</div>
<div id="footnotes">
<hr>
<div class="footnote" id="_footnotedef_1">
<a href="#_footnoteref_1">1</a>. In <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/7/26/8909436/rutger-bregman-utopia-for-realists-ubi-open-borders">an interview with <em>Vox</em>'s Ezra Klein</a>, Bregman made an interesting remark about Pinker: “It seems quite ironic to me that the Steven Pinkers of today don’t like social justice warriors. The great achievements that they’re so happy about have often been achieved by the social justice warriors of the past.”
</div>
</div>A review of Rutger Bregman's _Utopia for Realists_tag:americancynic.net,2018-08-29:/log/2018/8/29/thou_shalt_not_believe/Book Review: Thou Shalt Not Believe by John Ubhal2018-08-29T18:07:24Z2018-09-12T15:03:22Z<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="_ubhal_john_thou_shalt_not_believe_a_refutation_of_the_basic_premises_core_teachings_and_common_arguments_in_defense_of_christianity_ecaiva_books_2016_312_pp_isbn_978_1539057727_14_95">Ubhal, John. <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Thou-Shalt-Not-Believe-Christianity/dp/1539057720/"><em>Thou Shalt Not Believe: A Refutation of the Basic Premises, Core Teachings, and Common Arguments in Defense of Christianity</em></a>. Ecaiva Books, 2016. 312 pp. ISBN: 978-1539057727. $14.95.</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="imageblock">
<div class="content">
<img src="/log/2018/8/29/thou_shalt_not_believe/tsnb.jpg" alt="Photo of Thou Shalt Not Believe">
</div>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p><em>Thou Shalt Not Believe</em> by <a href="https://johnubhal.com/">John Ubhal</a> consists of an introduction, 29 standalone chapters (each of which broaches a reason why Christianity is false or not useful), a conclusion, a biographical postscript recounting the author’s own harrowing experience with Christianity, a Works Cited section, and a useful Index.
The book doesn’t try to be the first or last word on any of its wide subject matter, but it does distill into short, readable chapters many topics and controversies which will likely be of interest to many people (especially doubters) investigating Christianity (from a decidedly non-Christian perspective, as the title suggests).</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Disclaimer: I personally know the author and had some input into an early manuscript.
I purchased the retail paperback copy reviewed here with my own money and was not asked to write a review.</p>
</div>
<div class="sect2">
<h3 id="_i_dont_believe_in_heaven_but_i_do_believe_in_hell">I don’t believe in heaven but I do believe in hell</h3>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>I am a christian who is somewhere outside of Ubhal’s intended audience, which seems to be fundamentalist Christians who are looking for reasons to no longer be fundamentalist Christians.
Many of the chapters simply take a literalist approach to ‘reading’ the bible in order to refute such a reading of the bible, a somewhat frustrating exercise for anyone except maybe an already-doubting biblical literalist.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>The heart of Ubhal’s logical case against Christianity is contained in the first chapter (“The Basic Premises and Core Teachings of Christianity”):</p>
</div>
<div class="quoteblock">
<blockquote>
[I]f people do not need to be saved from sin, then they do not need a savior. If people do not need a savior, then they do not need Jesus. And if people do not need Jesus, Christianity has no relevance for humankind. (13)
</blockquote>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>According to Ubhal’s reading of the bible, the wages of sin are not merely death but eternal damnation (which he insists are quite different).
And since eternal damnation is both cruel and has no basis in human experience, the premise in the above line of reasoning can be affirmed by anyone with a modicum of empathy or scientific rationality, thus: Christianity has no relevance for humankind. ∎</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>This formulation reduces Christianity to a mere mechanism of “salvation,” but what does it save people from?
Ubhal presents a version of Christianity which begins with the concept of sin and its centuries of theological baggage and implicit assumptions, from which he deduces that Christianity offers a non-solution (Jesus as Savior) to a non-problem (eternal damnation).
But this is not my understanding of christianity, which begins, in contrast, with the existential crisis of death and offers, or claims to offer, hope for meaning in a life guaranteed to end.
Sin as a moral category is secondary, a flawed and awkward theological attempt at theorizing death.
To Ubhal, “the Bible very specifically and vividly teaches that hell exists as an eternal fire of everlasting punishment.” (35)
I can’t disagree, but I find in the descriptions of hell put forward by Jesus and his New Testament editors less the foundations for the cartoon hell of popular culture and more the expressions of anxiety about the immense permanence of death and the failure of all previous nationalist and religious attempts at ignoring or transcending its imminence.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Ubhal acknowledges that the biosphere, without any special regard for humanity, “features a constant struggle for survival for all things in the face of scarce resources and numerous calamities, and is full of suffering.” (76)
And this is an author who is confident that humans, who exist nowhere but in the calamity of this fragile biosphere, don’t need saving from anything!</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>In his introduction to <em>The Problem of Pain</em>, C.S. Lewis presents a series of suspicious dichotomies in which first morality, then theism, and finally the mystic claims of Jesus are said to be either the result of madness or of divine revelation.
(Ubhal addresses one version of the latter dichotomy in Chapter 17, “The Trilemma”.)
Lewis thinks it is these divine revelations which illuminate and make humans aware of pain (including death):</p>
</div>
<div class="quoteblock">
<blockquote>
In a sense, [Christianity] creates, rather than solves, the problem of pain, for pain would be no problem unless, side by side with our daily experience of this painful world, we had received what we think a good assurance that ultimate reality is righteous and loving.
</blockquote>
<div class="attribution">
— C.S. Lewis
</div>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Lewis credits human nature, with its consciousness of the moral, for producing Christianity;
Ubhal blames Christianity, with its moralistic nonsense, for obscuring the natural plight of humans in a harsh biosphere.
They both agree that Christianity is the cause of pain in the same way a magistrate is the cause of punishment.
Lewis views the judge as acting according to a real code of law; Ubhal views the judge as acting to an arbitrary (and frankly harmful) code of law.
In my view, both are mistaken.
I recognize pain not because I have assurance of a better reality, as Lewis maintains, but because I can <em>imagine</em> a better reality however impossible.
Ubhal, in particular, is so preoccupied with the idea that <a href="https://johnubhal.com/2017/11/25/my-fundamental-objection-to-christianity-sin-and-hell/">sin is “guilt”</a> or death is “blame” that he mistakes christianity’s grappling for hope in the face of suffering as the source of suffering itself.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>At times Ubhal’s literalist approach to the bible feels like it was designed to discover the most boring reading possible of some of the world’s most engaged-with texts.
Chapter 10 (“Failed Prophecies”), for example, is a list of Biblical prophetic predictions which did not come to pass.
But instead of engaging in the predictions, what their authors were trying to get across, why they were included in a religious canon in the first place, why they are still valued, what the significance of the prophecies have been over the millennia, how or if they can be salvaged and re-applied, etc., he simply notes that they are wrong and so the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy is wrong and so thou shalt not believe in the stodgy version of Christianity that he has decided is the most ‘honest’ version.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>In Chapter 11 (“Empirical Arguments Against the Creation and the Flood”) he takes aim at the historicity of the Genesis accounts.
“Unless the claims of such texts are literally true, they lose all their persuasive power, since they are then mere human creations that do not give any real information about the way things are.” (103)
Or likewise in his conclusion:</p>
</div>
<div class="quoteblock">
<blockquote>
Those who make the Bible say only what they want it to say tacitly acknowledge that they believe the Bible is unnecessary and that people only need their own experiences and reasoning skills to gain the understanding they need or want. Thus it is just as well to throw the Bible out altogether once one starts picking and choosing which passages to take seriously and which ones to dismiss or interpret away. (263-264)
</blockquote>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>But all works of art are “mere human creations”; it doesn’t follow that they have no value or no inherent meaning.
To argue that books are unnecessary (to what end?) because people possess the capacity to reason is a backward and surprisingly anti-intellectual and anti-literate argument to make for someone who has written and published a book.
In fact the reason books are useful is <em>because</em> people read them in light of their own experiences and ability to reason, including the ability to dismiss whatever they find to be untrue or unuseful. Test everything; hold fast to what is good.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect2">
<h3 id="_til_i_return_to_the_communism_of_the_worms_without_god_or_master_there_six_feet_underneath_the_earth">'Til I return to the communism of the worms (without god or master there, six feet underneath the earth)</h3>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>In a famous verse in Matthew 19 Jesus says that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
When his disciples interpret this to mean that nobody can be saved, Jesus reassures them that with god all things are possible.
The lesson Ubhal draws from this passage is that “according to Jesus people can only be moral with the help of God.” (157)
But like the disciples this ignores what Jesus said: that it would require a miracle for a <em>rich</em> person to enter the Kingdom of Heaven (not ‘be moral’).
In his haste to reduce Jesus’s teachings to an impossible moralistic system, Ubhal glosses over Jesus’s core message here: that christians seek a social order without rich people.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>But I agree with and am glad to see his criticism of the authoritarian nature of early christian communism as described in Acts. (173-175)
He briefly notes a distinction between early Christian communism and most socialisms today: The Christian communism did not seem to orient itself primarily as a class conflict.
(Perhaps one of early Christianity’s failings came about because of the success it eventually found among the owning/aristocratic Roman classes, blurring whatever class conflict the first christians were motivated by).
But it is wrong to say early christians completely lacked a conscious class antagonism.
As examples see James' fiery diatribe against the rich (which is considered canon by all Christians) in <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=James+5%3A1-6&version=NRSV">James 5:1-6</a>, and the emphasis by the author of Ephesians that the christian “struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ephesians+6%3A10-13&version=NRSV">Ephesians 6:10-13</a>).</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect2">
<h3 id="_because_at_least_in_hell_theres_rock_n_roll_and_aint_no_jesus_christ">Because at least in Hell there’s rock 'n' roll and ain’t no Jesus Christ</h3>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Disagreements over the interpretation of texts and basic premise of christianity aside, Ubhal raises many valid criticisms of the doctrines, defenses, hypocrisies, and understanding of science demonstrated by many varieties of Christianity.
But so do scores of other books available in the ‘Why I Am Not a Christian and Neither Can You’ genre.
There are two qualities for which Ubhal’s book stands out.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>The first is the author’s background in comparative religions which is apparent in several sections.
Readers interested in Christianity and its failings will also inadvertently learn how other world religions (and especially Buddhism) compare on several points.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>The second is the autobiographical postscript in which the author shifts gears from attacking Christianity on rational grounds to subjectively describing the harmful effects a sincere belief in Christianity can (and has quite often) had on some people’s psyches.
This personal account brings into focus the urgency of escaping the Christian obsessions with sin, guilt, and eternal damnation.
Its potential to lead others who are similarly afflicted by Christianity to the freedom of disbelief makes it the most valuable chapter of the book.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect2">
<h3 id="_typography">Typography</h3>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>The book was produced by CreateSpace, Amazon’s print-on-demand service (according to the date on the back page, my copy was printed the day after I placed my order).
There is no colophon or statement of paper durability, but the book is easy to read, printed in relatively large serif type (with all-cap sans-serif headings) on opaque white paper.
The perfect binding feels durable and has held up without wear to a full read through and much subsequent page flipping.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>My only complaint is about the running headers which consist of the author’s name (verso) and title of the book (recto) throughout, providing no contextual information when navigating the book.
It would be much more useful (especially while taking notes for a review) if at least the chapter title was included in one header.
I only remember seeing one typographical error in the entire book, and it was minor.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>A inexpensive Kindle version is available, as is <a href="https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/672610">a DRM-free ePub from Smashwords</a>.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="sect2">
<h3 id="_the_authors_response_septermber_12_2018">The author’s response (Septermber 12, 2018)</h3>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>John Ubhal kindly took the time to respond to this review on his weblog: <a href="https://johnubhal.com/2018/09/08/response-to-chris-burkhardts-review-of-thou-shalt-not-believe/">“Response to Chris Burkhardt’s Review of Thou Shalt Not Believe”</a></p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>In Section 5 of his response he clarifies that he is
“addressing the Bible as a book or collection of books that many people regard as containing <em>factual</em> claims about the universe and about history that are divinely revealed or inspired,”
and that he is also arguing “against treating books, specifically the Bible, but others as well, as infallible/sacred.”
That summarizes my initial frustrations with his reading of the Bible, which is that he
first insists on reading the Bible as a divine list of facts and then denounces it for being read that way.
But of course, as I wrote in my review, that reading and its refutation articulated in <em>Thou Shalt Not Believe</em> can be valuable to people who have already learned to read the Bible in such a rigid manner and who are now looking for reasons to reject it.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>More interesting to me (since I’m not convinced the Bible is so important anyway) is Ubhal’s alternative to the christian narrative that people need saving from anything at all.
To my insistence that christianity is at least hoping for a meaningful transformation, he writes, with cynical boldness, “Humans don’t need saving from the biosphere. And if they do, death works just fine, so long as there is no afterlife of agony or torment.”
Not entirely satisfied with this Epicurean acceptance of impermanence (has anyone ever been?), he immediately also offers ethical living and technology as potential roads to salvation in peace-of-mind and material comfort.</p>
</div>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>While that is a step forward from the superstition and idolatry rampant in much of Christianity, it is still a ways, in my view, from adequately answering the existential critique which serves as christianity’s philosophic starting point in the radically pessimistic teachings of <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ecclesiastes+1">Qoheleth</a>.</p>
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<div class="sect2">
<h3 id="_see_also">See Also</h3>
<div class="ulist">
<ul>
<li>
<p>John Ubhal’s <a href="https://johnubhal.com/2018/09/08/response-to-chris-burkhardts-review-of-thou-shalt-not-believe/">“Response to Chris Burkhardt’s Review of Thou Shalt Not Believe”</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Louis Burkhardt’s <a href="https://myplaza.xyz/white/Reviews_Books.html#ThouShaltNotBelieve">review of Thou Shalt Not Believe</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p>John Ubhal’s <a href="https://johnubhal.com/2017/11/24/response-to-louis-burkhardts-review-of-thou-shalt-not-believe/">Response to Louis Burkhardt’s Review of Thou Shalt Not Believe</a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p><a href="https://johnubhal.com/" class="bare">https://johnubhal.com/</a></p>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>A review of a friend's book and some thoughts on hell.tag:americancynic.net,2014-12-19:/log/2014/12/18/the_left_behind_series_is_evil_anti-christian_crap/The 'Left Behind' Series is Evil, Anti-Christian Crap2014-12-19T00:35:08Z2014-12-19T00:35:08Z<div class="paragraph">
<p>Fred Clark, who authors a popular liberal Christian weblog called <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/">Slacktivist</a>, wrote an epic review of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_Behind"><em>Left Behind</em></a> series of books by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins which spans 300 of his weblog entries posted between 2003 and 2011:</p>
</div>
<div class="ulist">
<ul>
<li>
<p><a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2011/08/07/left-behind-index-i-posts-1-50/">Left Behind Index I: Posts 1-50</a></p>
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<p><a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2011/08/09/left-behind-index-ii-posts-51-100/">Left Behind Index II: Posts 51-100</a></p>
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<p><a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2011/08/10/left-behind-index-iii-posts-101-150/">Left Behind Index III: Posts 101-150</a></p>
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<p><a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2011/08/11/left-behind-index-iv-posts-151-200/">Left Behind Index IV: Posts 151-200</a></p>
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<p><a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2011/08/16/left-behind-index-v-posts-201-250/">Left Behind Index V: Posts 201-250</a></p>
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<p><a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2011/08/25/left-behind-index-vi-posts-251-300/">Left Behind Index VI: Posts 251-300</a></p>
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</ul>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>I’ve sampled a few dozen of the posts (most aren’t long). And back in high school I read the first five (or six?) books in the series before I lost interest (there are 13 in total). I liked them. They remind me of those painfully unrealistic post-apocalyptic television miniseries (which I also like) — only better, because the surreal religious imagery in <em>Left Behind</em> makes up for some of the implausible bits. I did have to skip over pages of prayers and dialog in every book that were more <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altar_call">alter call</a> than plot developments, but those parts didn’t interrupt the action too much (I also skip the songs and verses when I read <em>The Lord of the Rings</em>).</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>Fred Clark is a better, more entertaining, and more insightful writer than LaHaye and Jenkins, so if you have some interest in the books and their themes I’d recommend reading some of his review series first (or instead). He didn’t like the books as much as I did, though. In fact, Clark (who is an evangelical Christian) thinks the books are <em>evil</em>.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>One of Clark’s predominate complaints, other than the immorality of the characters and the poor telling of their story, is the sheer implausibility of it all (<a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2003/10/23/lb-peace-in-the-middle-east/">“The more you read, the more this book undermines the argument that our world and the world of the End Times are the same thing”</a>). The relationships are shallow, the science isn’t sufficiently explained, and the political actors are irrational.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>Oh, if you’re not familiar with the basic premise of the books, they are based on one of the more imaginative of modern Christian end-times theories (a form of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispensationalism">dispensationalism</a>) which reads some of the metaphorical language in the Bible as literal prophecies that will take place in the [perhaps near] future. In the novels those prophecies include a nuclear war between Russia and Israel, billions of people supernaturally disappearing from earth, and some of the people left behind fighting a guerrilla war against a new world government lead by a freshly incarnate Satan. There are also demon grasshoppers, fire breathing angels, as well as sundry other Bible-type plagues and creatures.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>And Fred Clark thinks the story contains implausible elements. Pfft.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>Of course not even a writer as motivated as Clark would write a 300-part review denouncing a popular post-apocalyptic religious thriller for not being realistic enough. There is a deeper, darker, more harmful aspect of the <em>Left Behind</em> books which Clark’s review attempts to counteract. You see, the books aren’t <em>Christian</em> enough.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>Whereas I read the <em>Left Behind</em> books and thought they were fun (if too long) religious-themed action-thrillers with second-rate delivery based on an intriguing premise which borrows from some of the more colorful aspects of contemporary Christianity; Clark read the same books and thought they were dangerous heretical works that need refuting.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>Unfortunately, the books aren’t like the old, boring heresies of monophysitism or whatnot. To Clark, <em>Left Behind</em> is popular heresy which is having a real, harmful effect in the world. Industrialists are destroying the earth because they believe Jesus will return to fix everything soon (<a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2003/10/17/left-behind-is-evil/">“'Left Behind' is evil”</a>), and fundamentalist Christians want to kill all Muslims in order to fulfill end times prophecy (<a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2003/10/27/lb-why-this-matters/">“L.B.: Why this matters”</a>). More succinctly, as Clark puts it, “These books are evil, anti-Christian crap.”</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>Clark’s idealistic worries that the heresies in <em>Left Behind</em> are a contributing cause to the worst excesses of capitalism and nationalism, I don’t find convincing. But I think he may be correct to worry that people will read those books and think they are representative of what Christians actually believe. Or worse, that Christians will read those books and think it is what they <em>should</em> believe.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>Chief among the alleged doctrinal errors committed by LaHaye and Jenkins in their novels is what Clark calls <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2003/10/20/lb-the-denial-of-death/">the denial of death</a>:</p>
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<div class="quoteblock">
<blockquote>
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Even more disturbing is Irene Steele’s one-sentence summary of the gospel:</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>"Can you imagine, Rafe," she exulted. "Jesus coming back to get us before we die?"</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>This is the crux of the matter. This is the Gospel According to Tim & Jerry. But it is not the gospel of Christianity.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>Christians, in the words of the Nicene Creed, "look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come." We believe, in the words of the Apostle’s Creed, in "the resurrection of the body."</p>
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</blockquote>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>Can you imagine? A novel — a <em>novel</em> — that does not conform to the Creeds! But I understand Clark’s concerns. It is important to always emphasize the orthodox position that we die <em>first</em> and then Jesus brings us back to life <em>later</em>. Otherwise Christianity just seems silly.</p>
</div>My review of Fred Clark's review of the Left Behind book series. (No, I have not read the entirety of either.)tag:americancynic.net,2014-04-26:/log/2014/4/26/informant_the_brandon_darby_documentary/Informant: The Brandon Darby Documentary2014-04-26T16:44:15Z2018-08-03T20:35:42Z<div class="paragraph">
<p>Yesterday the ‘NATO 3’ — the three loudmouthed activists who were charged as terrorists after being encouraged by undercover police officers to pour gasoline into empty bottles during the 2012 NATO summit in Chicago — <a href="http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-04-25/news/chi-sentencing-today-for-nato-3-prosecutors-seeking-14year-terms-20140425_1_nato-3-prison-terms-judge-thaddeus-wilson">were sentenced to several [more] years of prison</a>.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>The NATO 3 case is very similar to a case during the 2008 Republican National Convention when a couple of young activists were arrested and sent to prison after creating some Molotov cocktails which they intended to use to damage empty police cars. In that case, the suspects were betrayed by an FBI informant who was a member of their activist group and acted as their mentor.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>That informant, the infamous <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Darby">Brandon Darby</a>, is the subject of an excellent documentary by Jamie Meltzer called <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2294679/"><em>Informant</em></a> (2013). In <a href="https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/nzz8ng/informant-gives-brandon-darby-an-unnecessary-propaganda-magaphone">his review of the film</a>, DJ Pangburn calls it an “unnecessary film” and a “failure of a documentary” charging that it merely provides Darby with a platform from which to spout his narratives. As Panburn puts it, “it’s Brandon Darby’s world, and we all are just living in it.”</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>Kris Hermes, in <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kris-hermes/new-film-informant-is-vac_b_3877049.html">his review</a>, makes the same complaint, Meltzer allows Darby too much control of the film’s narrative: “it’s almost as if Darby decided one day to call up his friend Jamie Meltzer to let him know about a great movie idea.” Allowing him a voice in yet another documentary, Hermes asserts, merely fortifies Darby’s cult of personality</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>And they’re right, the film is largely a mouthpiece for Darby (although it also provides context and tells the story through entertaining re-enactments and interviews). But that’s also what makes the film so valuable — not to mention just plain interesting. We could all benefit from learning how to avoid the Brandon Darbys of the world, and understanding his motivations can be helpful toward that end. There are also important lessons all activists should learn from the entire Darby saga. The insights in both Pangburn and Hermes reviews are examples in themselves of how useful the documentary is.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>The story of <em>Informant</em> begins with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina when Darby sets out from Austin to rescue his friend in New Orleans. Darby becomes an early member of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Ground_Relief">Common Ground Collective</a> (CGC), an anarchist relief organization. Despite the efforts of law enforcement, the CGC was successful at providing basic aid, emergency clinics, and all sorts of other help to distressed residents of the Lower Ninth Ward and other parts of New Orleans.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>After a trip to Venezuela, disillusioned with his plans of becoming a revolutionary (including dreams of overthrowing the U.S. government and elaborate prison breaks), Darby had apparently become bored with helping people and thought he would feel more important if he became a crusader against terrorism. He told the FBI that his friend and anti-Israel activist, Riad Hamad, was planning on using the charity he ran to fund Palestinian suicide bombers. This lead the FBI and IRS to raid Hamad’s home in search for evidence of tax fraud. A few days later, Hamad’s body was found floating in a lake, dead of an apparent suicide.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>Darby had found a new purpose for his life. At the request of the FBI he then set himself up as a mentor to several young activists, including David McKay and Bradley Crowder, and worked to get them imprisoned. After the 2008 RNC incident, Darby made a career going around speaking to Tea Party conventions about how he had managed to stop a militant plot to blow up delegates and Republicans.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>The best way to describe Darby’s underlying psychology is the phrase used by Pangburn in his review: “an opportunist with a hero complex.”</p>
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<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="_lessons">Lessons</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="paragraph">
<p>Other than being on guard against charismatic, borderline-sociopathic opportunists with hero complexes, I think there are two important lessons pointed out by <em>Informant</em>.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>The first is the danger of machismo to young male activists. One reason Darby was able to exert so much influence over McKay and Crowder is that they looked up to him as an experienced and macho activists, and he chided them for not being manly enough. Would-be revolutionaries talking about the importance of manliness should be a major red flag to anarchists. As Thomas Hintze noted in <a href="http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/the-real-untold-story-of-brandon-darby/">his review of <em>Informant</em> for Waging Nonviolence</a>, “The macho culture created by activists in different spheres made it impossible to hold Darby accountable for his actions. It may have even given him impunity.”</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>Second, during all of his verbal thrashing around to find rationalizations for his own actions, Darby actually hits on some good points. One is that there is only a thin line between being a revolutionary and being a gangster, between being a freedom fighter and being a terrorist. Anybody with romantic ideas of revolution would be wise to spend some effort working through those distinctions and tensions.</p>
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<div class="sect1">
<h2 id="_watch">Watch</h2>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p><em>Informant</em> is available to stream on both <a href="http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/Informant/70286343">Netflix</a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Informant-Brandon-Darby/dp/B00F9WYK7I">Amazon</a>, as well as your favorite <a href="magnet:?xt=urn:btih:ad73552b407f2053c79fc641fddb88b1880cd5db&dn=Informant.2012.WEBRip%20XViD%20juggs&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.publicbt.com">BitTorrent index</a>.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>There is a more balanced documentary about Bradley Crowder and David McKay, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1460739/">'Better this World'</a> (2011), which is also worth watching. It is available for streaming on <a href="http://www.netflix.com/WiMovie/Better_This_World/70177440">Netflix</a> and <a href="magnet:?xt=urn:btih:69b9c7aebf15f337850777d20daa5f7b511aa07d&dn=Better.This.World.2011.DVDRip.XviD-RedBlade&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A80&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.publicbt.com%3A80&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.istole.it%3A6969&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.ccc.de%3A80&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fopen.demonii.com%3A1337">BitTorrent</a>.</p>
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<div class="paragraph">
<p>As an antidote to Darby’s reality distortion field, I also recommend reading Lisa Fithian’s (often first-hand) account of events: <a href="http://www.theragblog.com/lisa-fithian-fbi-informant-brandon-darby-sexism-egos-and-lies/">“FBI Informant Brandon Darby: Sexism, Egos, and Lies”</a></p>
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</div>
</div>Yesterday the NATO 3 were sentenced, and I watched a documentary about Brandon Darby -- an FBI informant who got some kids arrested for making Molotov cocktails at the 2008 Republican National Convention.