Recently I was asked (by Kait Dugan, check out her blog) about how John Piper (check out this video for some context), about whose perverse theology I’ve written about previously, manages to come to understand God’s glory as a sort of self-directed hegemonic tyranny. What are the theological moves that lead one to come to think “the glory of God” in terms of chauvinistic self-aggrandisement? Why would one come to conceive God as a self-directed center of power whose “glory” consisted of simply asserting and impose his own supremacy and domination?

My first instinct in responding to this question is to point out that it really isn’t as much of a formally (and that word is the key qualifier here) theological issue as it is fundamentally an issue of gender and power. Piper interprets God as a self-directed man, concerned ultimately which the maximization of his own power (which is of course “good” because this one particular male really is supreme and thus deserves and warrants this rigorous self-fixation). I think it really is just the upshot of thinking God according to the logic of patriarchy.

If there is a theological reason for it, I’d have to say that it is the functional (though not acknowledged or admitted) rejection of the doctrine of the Trinity. The doctrine of the Trinity speaks of a God that does not seek the maximization of any singular self or, but rather of a united yet multidirectional and primordially other-directed love. The God who is Triune never is concerned with “himself.” Rather “the Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand” and the Son has come “not to my will but the will of him who sent me” and the Spirit “will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears.”

The Triune God is never concerned with the maximization of a “self” since God is not a self, but rather a singular reality of three identities (to borrow some language from Robert Jenson). No identity of the Trinity seeks their own, but always and only seeks the maximization of the other(s). Thus the Son offers up the kingdom to the Father and the Father places everything in subjection to the Son and so on. The glory of the Triune God is thus the glory of an othering that seeks only to empower, never to claim power for one’s own. Piper’s nontrinitarian theology of self-directed glory is the denial and opposite of this. Indeed the “glory” that he proclaims is nothing less than the projection onto God (at the expense of the witness of the Cross) of patriarchal, homicidal power, the power of sin and death. This is the “glory of God” that he so adores.

It’s good that a recent NY Times article has drawn attention to the unending evangelical idolatry of marriage and family and their correspondingly shameful treatment of single pastors, and especially of single women pastors.

Well known theological hack and neocon ideologue, Al Mohler gives us a rather striking display of his own idolatrous and anti-biblical views on the matter saying that “if [students seeking to enter the ministry] remain single, they need to understand that there’s going to be a significant limitation on their ability to serve as a pastor.”

It seems to me that the Apostle Paul believed the exact opposite of the shit that Mohler’s spouting here (1 Cor 7:28-38). Funny how explicit rejection of the clear teaching of the NT can be made to go hand in hand with blustering proclamations about inerrancy. Add it to  the laundry list of evangelical self-contradictions I guess.

It’s always struck me as quite odd how the throat-clearing that goes on at the front of so many quasi-intellectual essays talking about recent celebrity drama/gossip/insane meltdowns inevitably takes the form of the author establishing with absolute clarity their own complete and utter disinterest in celebrities. Apparently the only way you can establish yourself as a compelling voice about this particular facet of pop culture is to claim that you yourself, unlike that huddled masses crowding around the tabloid displays in the checkout lines, are above even giving a shit about our nation’s economic and entertainment elite.

Why is this? I can only surmise that its a kind of ressentiment or at best a sort of tactical self-deception that the author knows they’re going to need to engage in in order to stomach talking about people much richer and famous than they. In order for me to sound both current and interesting, I have to feign complete disinterest in the matter I’m about to spend a whole bunch of time having a metadiscussion about. If I were to admit being interested in the banal topic I’m writing about, all fictive authority and supercool pop cultural street cred would melt away and I’d be just another talking head passing on celebrity gossip on EW.

Allow me to venture an unprovable, but I think quite probably true hypothesis about what’s actually going in most celebrity commentators. If anyone really and truly doesn’t care that much about Brad and Angelina’s most recent adoptions and affairs, I’ll wager its the talking head who is forced to sit across from them and act interested as they interview them. By contrast it is online magazine writer, whose book likely sits somewhere around #1,079,836 on Amazon, who actually does care, feverishly, about what’s going on in celebrity culture and how they can write about it in a way that establishes themselves as decidedly above the fray of the cultural trend of celebrity fascination. Indeed, I’d contend that there’s a good case to be made that it is denial of interest in celebrity culture that is the most developed and potent instance of celebrity fascination itself. People that really don’t care about celebrities don’t care enough to prattle on about it.

Its been a while since I’ve indulged in something linking to a movie review, but this is just too damn good to pass up. Drew McWeeny’s review of the latest Twilight schlock is just utterly fantastic:

Here’s where I have a problem.  I don’t care if they get married or not, because in this film, “get married” is just code for “now we can do it.”  Their marriage isn’t about building something together or creating a family.  Their marriage isn’t about time they’ve spent together and time they want to spend together.  It’s all hormonal.  It’s all impulse.  Bella Swan is defined as a character purely by who she wants to sleep with, and I don’t care if she actually consummates the act or not.  This movie is driven from start to finish by the real estate between her legs, and if that sounds blunt or harsh, good.  I want it to sound ugly, because I think it is ugly.  Deeply ugly.  She’s the weakest, most dependent lead in a film that I can imagine.  There is nothing interesting about Bella aside from her desire for these two boys.  It is a narcissistic teenage fantasy taken to a disturbing depth.  Nothing in the world of these movies matters beyond the resolution of whether or not Bella is going to bone Edward.  And when.  And how.  And whether she’s going to bone Jacob as well.

There is talk of love, but there is nothing like love in these movies.  These are not stories about love.  They are stories about infatuation, temporary teenage madness.  And, hey, man… I may be ancient at this point, but I remember what it’s like when you’re a teenager and everything feels so important, and I’ve seen films that get that frenzy just right and they still manage to feature real character work and stories that are interesting and actual events.  You can make a great movie about the rush of teenage love.  You can use it as a backdrop for all sorts of stories.  But for that to be the thing that holds us as an audience, we have to believe that there’s something behind it.  I have yet to see anything in any of these movies that would connect these characters beyond narrative convenience.

Bella doesn’t love these men because of things they have done together.  Instead, everything they do together is because they “love” Bella.  It’s a pissing contest.  And both of the guys are just as poorly defined and as grotesque as Bella in what they represent.  Edward is her “dream man,” and as depicted in the films, he’s basically a control freak who treats her like an object to possess.  He lies to her.  He manipulates her.  He is unable to tolerate her interacting with anyone else.  Ladies… if you have a chance to marry a man who acts like Edward while you’re dating, do it.  And then you can look forward to broken bones and mysterious bruises and a slow and methodical separation from friends and family until you exist only for him.  Which is obviously what you’re looking for, right?  Ooooh, romantic.

Or if Edward’s love isn’t the right kind for you, then maybe you can get lucky and earn yourself a Jacob.  A guy who is hot enough that he knows you will love him, and if you don’t, then it’s just a matter of time.  After all, look at his abs.  He doesn’t offer anything more substantial than Edward in terms of emotion or support, but he does have those abs.  He’s also got body heat, so obviously he is a better choice for Bella.  He has one scene where he actually tells her that he has not imprinted on her as a mate, as is the way with his kind, but that doesn’t matter.  We’re still supposed to believe that this is important, that this struggle over this pathetic, empty dishrag means something.

I love women.  I love all sorts of women.  And because I love real women, actual flesh and blood human being that happen to have a slightly different arrangement of chromosomes than I do, I despise these movies.  I hate them for what they offer up as a value system.  I hate them because there are girls who mistake their own chemical response to the male leads in the movie as an actual affection for the story that’s being told.  They invest on the surface level, and in the meantime, there is this poisonous cancer, this vile insidious message that’s being sold to them underneath.  I hate these movies because they tell girls that this is their value in the world.  Who you bang defines you.  You are worth your vagina and nothing more.  You are who your man is.  That is all.

I just want to point out that this is the first time that the categories of “awesomeness” and “Things that make you want to gouge your eyes out with your pinky, shove scalding hot pokers in your ears, and repeatedly slam the door of a 1950s-vintage, American-made sedan on your head” have become unified in one post.

H/T: Brad E.

Daniel Larison rightly gives Novak a skewering over his recent tirade of stupidity on the ever-further nauseating First Things blog:

One of my commenters pointed me to this bizarre item* by Michael Novak at one of the blogs at First Things. Novak writes:

We again need such Christian realism. Such tough-mindedness. The most dreadful war of all time is just ahead of us, is already well begun. Many of us want to save the Christian Holy Places, and Israel, too–our best ally in the world, the creator of the most economically creative and democratic society in its region.

Fulfilling this desire will not be easy in the next twelve months, fateful months, clock-ticking months. If the nuclear capacity of Iran is not destroyed before functioning nuclear weapons are in their silos or other weapons platforms, the whole world will experience blackmail.

To make an object lesson, one nation in particular is on notice that it is listed as first for destruction.

How will we live with ourselves if Israel is annihilated with nuclear bombs? How will we survive? How will our understanding of the Word of God survive, if the fleshly, tangible heart of Jewish and Christian faith is obliterated?

He goes on to urge a war of aggression against Iran to “prevent” the absurd fantasy of the Iranian destruction of the Holy Places. It is bad enough that Novak invokes Niebuhr (!) in support of this mad call for unprovoked, unnecessary war, but when he says that the “most dreadful war of all time is just ahead of us, is already well begun” we can safely say that he has lost all touch with reality. WWII remains the most dreadful war of all time, and nothing on the horizon even remotely compares to the loss of life and destruction that occurred in that war. So there is nothing realistic at all about Novak’s “Christian realism,” and neither is there anything Christian about it if that word is to have any connection to the teachings of Our Lord.

Even under very broad interpretations of just war theory, there cannot be a just war when the other party has inflicted no grave, lasting injury on us. By definition, preventive war cannot be just, and yet it is most certainly preventive war that Novak and other advocates of attacking Iran demand. War is sometimes necessary and permitted for the restoration of peace. There is no justification for destroying what peace exists to satisfy our irrational fears of a deterrable and containable threat. There is no conceivable justification for initiating hostilities to attempt to stop the potential future acquisition of a weapon that the other state is very unlikely to use against us or our allies. To start a war for such a reason would be a crime against God and man.

What would make such a war even more unjustifiable is the improbability of success: a war against Iran might delay an Iranian bomb, but it would not eliminate Iran’s nuclear program and it would almost certainly make the acquisition of such weapons an even higher priority to deter future attacks. Meanwhile, the consequences of such a war could be very bad for U.S. forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Gulf states, as well as for Israel and our Gulf state allies, to say nothing of the potential damage it would do to the global economy and the hardship and suffering it would inflict on the Iranian people. Thousands and perhaps tens of thousands of people would die, many more would be injured and displaced, and our government and the governments of any states that helped us would obviously be implicated in yet another illegal war. Beyond the loss of life and resources, the damage to our national reputation would be staggering.

Novak warns against the “blackmail” that will follow if Iran acquires a nuclear weapon, but the only one engaged in a sort of blackmail here is Novak. He would exploit the emotional and religious attachment Christians naturally have for the Holy Places to inspire support for massive, unnecessary bloodshed. The message is quite clear: if you treasure the sacred places where God revealed Himself, you will endorse my monstrous proposal, and otherwise you probably don’t really care about these places or the revelation itself. The proposal is horrible, and the manipulation being employed to advance the proposal is simply despicable.

As for the Iranian threat, Novak is simply wrong. The “whole world” will not experence blackmail from Iran. Most likely, no other state will experience anything of the kind. It is possible that Iranian nuclear weapons could push other states towards nuclearization, in which case the danger would be an arms race and not Iranian “blackmail.” That would be undesirable, but it would not be worse than the regional conflagration that an attack on Iran would cause. Israel’s nuclear arsenal will ensure that Iran would never attempt a nuclear first-strike against Israel.

For that matter, Jerusalem is also considered holy in the eyes of Muslims. I have no idea how Westerners can claim to “know” that the Iranian government would be so moved by religious apocalyptic fervor that it would engage in suicidal nuclear warfare, but they also seem remarkably certain that the holy status of Jerusalem in the eyes of Muslims somehow doesn’t really “count” and will be tossed aside at a moment’s notice. We often see this selective reliance on the beliefs and statements of people in other states. When Ahmadinejad or some other figure of authority in Iran makes demagogic, bellicose statements against Israel, these statements are regarded as essential for understanding the thinking of the Iranian government. On the other hand, when their politico-religious authorities say repeatedly that they regard the use of nuclear weapons as abhorrent, we are supposed to dismiss these statements automatically.

* That is, it is genuinely bizarre, but it’s actually sadly predictable and normal for many of the people at First Things.

If you read Novak’s whole post it’s simply too extraordinary for words in terms of its gargantuan absurdity. He evokes all these emotions about how precious and amazing it is to be able to pray and meditate on the same hill where Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount . . . precisely for the purpose of urging Christians to utterly and completely violate the content of the Sermon itself. What matters to Novak is us being able to posses the geographic space where the Sermon allegedly happened, but he doesn’t give a fuck about the Sermon itself. After all if some country might potentially pose a threat to a piece of land where Jesus maybe preached “Love your enemies” our true and righteous response should be to launch a war of aggression against such types, right?

This guy is a sub-Christian joke who recommends immoral, illegal, and inhumane actions for the sake of a crude and insipid ideological platform. Fortunately if exponents of this political program are as stupid, clumsy, moronic, and dottering as Novak, I imagine people will be able to more easily just laugh and ignore them.

Apparently among fringe right-wing Christian groups Rowan Williams is catching some heat, yet again, this time for his comments in his Easter Sermon. Referencing some recent British political happenings about wearing crosses in public, Williams boldly called Christians away from facile claims to being persecuted victims in the big bad secular world, opting instead to inject a little knowledge and reality into the the theatrics that are all too common amongst the power-starved Christian right:

It is not the case that Christians are at risk of their lives or liberties in this country simply for being Christians. Whenever you hear overheated language about this, remember those many, many places where persecution is real and Christians are being killed regularly and mercilessly or imprisoned and harassed for their resistance to injustice. Remember our brothers and sisters in Nigeria and in Iraq, the Christian communities of southern Sudan fearing the outbreak of another civil war, the Christian minorities in the Holy Land facing the extinction of their two-thousand year old presence there; or our own Anglican friends in Zimbabwe, still – as I reminded this Cathedral congregation at Christmas – subject to routine attack from the security forces and locked out of their churches. That’s not our situation, thank God, and we need to keep a sense of perspective, and to redouble our prayers and concrete support.

See what he did here? How he talked about actual persecution? How he called us to stop frenetically chattering about how we are no longer in control of Western civilization and instead simply pray and help those who are actually suffering?

Its truly amazing how conservative Christians are, as whole, more concerned about petty bureaucratic inconveniences to them than about the actual suffering and death of (non-white) Christians throughout the world.

I’m sure we’ve all heard plenty about the recent round of abuse scandals among the Roman Catholic clergy. Of course this isn’t exactly new, but this time around it looks like they’re letting the Vatican’s resident exorcist come up with explanations for the phenomenon:

When you’re one of the most powerful institutions in the world and you’ve got an escalating series of sex abuse scandals erupting in such far-flung locales as Ireland,  Germany, Brazil and beyond on a near daily basis, how do you even begin to do damage control? If you’re the Catholic Church, maybe you say you’re going to investigate. You issue a few letters. And then just to cover all your bases, you do a little Satan blaming. In a bold and arguably wack move, the Vatican’s normally press-shy exorcist Don Gabriele Amorth has been granting interviews left and right lately, and they are a treasure trove of WTF moments.

You say you hadn’t been aware the Vatican even had an official exorcist? Thought that stuff was just for Linda Blair movies? That’s likely because, prior to last week, the Vatican had permitted its exorcist to grant one interview in the entire last century. Now, suddenly he’s doing the rounds like he’s got a new rom-com with Gerard Butler opening Friday.

Speaking to La Republica last week, Amorth, who in fact does have a new book, “Memoirs of an Exorcist,” to shill, said, “When one speaks of ‘the smoke of Satan’ in the holy rooms, it is all true – including these latest stories of violence and pedophilia.” A few days later, he told the UK Times, “All evil is due to the intervention of the Devil, including pedophilia.” He also added that contemporary culture has “given in to the Evil One. You see it in the lack of faith, the empty churches, the collapse of the family. Compare the world of today to when I was a boy in Modena: families and parish communities were strong, women did not go out to work.”

I don’t know. If I were part of the Vatican superstructure working to get this matter settled, I don’t think I’d want this guy on my side.

Just follow Jim West’s Nadab’s advice.

Have you people been checking out this new 9 Marks thing? Wow. That’s really all I can say. I mean, I know that regular displays of fundamentalist-evangelical craziness are constant in the United States. But this little self-styled bunch of prophets really seem to take the cake. Its like they’re fighting the battles of nineteenth-century liberalism in the twenty-first century on purpose.

Now of course the essays reflect a complete lack of scholarly acumen or even biblical literacy in most cases, but what’s amazing is the kind of smarminess that oozes off of every page. I mean, what do you make of quotes like this:

For most of my adult life, I have been a pastor among the highly educated, the materially successful, and the politically powerful. It’s not that I sought these people out as more strategic than others. It’s simply where God’s providence placed me.

Wow, that sure is great for you, isn’t it? Gee wasn’t it nice of God’s providence drop you miraculously among the super rich and the politically powerful? Thanks God!

Yeah, its no accident that the majority of this little movement’s contributors are ruling elites of Capitol Hill Baptist Church, which sits but a couple blocks from the U.S. Capitol building.

And then there’s the “9 marks” themselves which consist of expository preaching and then, well, 8 things that start with the word “biblical” (well I guess one of them is actually “promotion of Christian discipleship and growth”).

Couldn’t they just narrow down the list by just having one mark called “biblicalness in all things” or something? Why try to make up a movement just to display your church’s sense of superiority?

Anyways, if you’re looking for some woefully bad reasoning, odd martyr complexes, and general theological dyslexia, check out the 9 Marks. Its a treasure trove of fundamentalist dumbshittery.

Edited to add: I deeply apologize if my language in the last paragraph offended any people with dyslexia. I by no means meant to compare you to orangutans that run the 9 Marks. Please accept my apologies.

Looks like Satan has given us a helpful response to his loose-lipped sock puppets. Good thing.

Dear Pat Robertson,

I know that you know that all press is good press, so I appreciate the shout-out. And you make God look like a big mean bully who kicks people when they are down, so I’m all over that action.

But when you say that Haiti has made a pact with me, it is totally humiliating. I may be evil incarnate, but I’m no welcher. The way you put it, making a deal with me leaves folks desperate and impoverished.

Sure, in the afterlife, but when I strike bargains with people, they first get something here on earth — glamour, beauty, talent, wealth, fame, glory, a golden fiddle. Those Haitians have nothing, and I mean nothing. And that was before the earthquake. Haven’t you seen “Crossroads”? Or “Damn Yankees”?

If I had a thing going with Haiti, there’d be lots of banks, skyscrapers, SUVs, exclusive night clubs, Botox — that kind of thing. An 80 percent poverty rate is so not my style. Nothing against it — I’m just saying: Not how I roll.

You’re doing great work, Pat, and I don’t want to clip your wings — just, come on, you’re making me look bad. And not the good kind of bad. Keep blaming God. That’s working. But leave me out of it, please. Or we may need to renegotiate your own contract.

Best, Satan.

From the Minneapolis Star-Tribune

So, yet again one of Satan’s favorite sock puppets (thanks, Gene!) has turned an incident of natural disaster into yet another instance of God “judging” nations for their sins. I find this curious and horrifying as I’m sure most people do. However, I think sometimes Christians who cringe at these comments don’t really have a response to them because, deep down they think that they don’t really have a biblical argument against this sort of stuff. After all, in the Bible doesn’t God send all kinds of natural disasters as judgments?

The problem here is  quite complex and I don’t intend to offer a master solution it, tout court. However, pretty early in the canon we’re given some pretty good evidence about how God approaches destroying pockets of human civilization as a form of judgment against sin. Witness Abraham’s discussion with God about Sodom and Gomorroah:

Then Abraham came near and said, “Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; will you then sweep away the place and not forgive it for the fifty righteous who are in it?  Far be it from you to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?” And the Lord said, “If I find at Sodom fifty righteous in the city, I will forgive the whole place for their sake.” Abraham answered, “Let me take it upon myself to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes. Suppose five of the fifty righteous are lacking? Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five?” And he said, “I will not destroy it if I find forty-five there.” Again he spoke to him, “Suppose forty are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of forty I will not do it.” Then he said, “Oh do not let the Lord be angry if I speak. Suppose thirty are found there.” He answered, “I will not do it, if I find thirty there.” He said, “Let me take it upon myself to speak to the Lord. Suppose twenty are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of twenty I will not destroy it.” Then he said, “Oh do not let the Lord be angry if I speak just once more. Suppose ten are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of ten I will not destroy it.” (Gen 18:23-32)

Does anyone really think that there weren’t ten honest to goodness Bible-believing Christians (and thus=”righteous” according to evangelical theology) in the whole country of Haiti? Well, according to first friggin book in the Bible God refuses to sweep away the righteous with the wicked, right?

So, just to be clear. No Christian who hold the Bible to be “the inspired Word of God” can believe that this event was a divine judgment unless they are prepared to argue that there were less than ten true Christians in all of Haiti.

These are facts.

Robert Wilken has a post arguing that the Swiss ban on minarets is not a curtailment of religious freedom since its really just about preserving culture and tradition:

For the Swiss, erection of minarets taller than church steeples would alter the skyline of cities and towns, visibly severing links to the past. The construction of minarets was seen as an assault on memory and memory is attached to things. Without memory a people have no sense of who they are. In Italy the assault on memory had to do with the central Christian symbol in the west. In a historic Christian culture wrote Barbieri, “the symbol of a naked, suffering, unjustly condemned man in whom all that is good and worthy of worship and respect . . . is centered, is buried deep in their souls.” In Italy even atheists and Communists respect the Crucifix “because it means so much about the condition and value of a man.”

The issue is not human rights or religious freedom, but respect for cultural traditions and fealty to those who have gone before. There is no reason to think that prohibiting the erection of minarets in Swiss cities will jeopardize the rights of Muslims to practice their religion. But if a society loses all memory of its Christian traditions, there is a real question whether those things that make western civilization unique, e.g. human rights, freedom of religion, will endure.

So presumably this would mean that if a historically Muslim country voted to band the construction of cathedrals that would also not be a matter of religious freedom and rights, but merely the preservation of a culture? Anyone else smell the bullshit?

This post strikes me as yet another display of a common presupposition among many of the First Thingers: that Christianity is inalienably tied to “Western culture” which should thus be propagated, maintained, and extended throughout the world without regard for other cultures or forms of peoplehood.

This is shocking, at least from the standpoint of the gospel. Apparently there is some legislation in DC that would require employers to not discriminate against same-sex couples (i.e. they’d have to give them medical benefits). In response to this the Catholic archdiocese has threatened to shut down their public social services to the homeless unless the legislation is changed.

The fear is that they would be forced to “extend employee benefits to same-sex married couples” which they feel is an unacceptable encroachment of the state into their religious freedom. Note however that they aren’t concerned that they’d be forced to employ homosexuals, only that they’d be forced to give medical benefits to current employees who are in same-sex relationships. So, apparently its ok to employ the gays as long as they don’t have to recognize them as such in some official sense.

Now, lets just bracket the issue of whether or not Christians should accept same-sex marriage or not on the basis of Scripture. What should be outrageous to all Christians, regardless of their perspective on that issue is the way in which the poor and the marginalized are simply a bargaining chip in an ideological game over homosexuality. Is it really more important to the church that it be able to not give medical benefits to those in gay relationships than that it care for the poor as Jesus commanded us? Because that’s what’s really be being said here. This is no heroic moral resoluteness that refuses compromise. Apparently, at least for this archdiocese, being able to keep their hands clean of “endorsing homosexuality” is more important than caring for those whom the powers are making nothing. All Christians should be horrified by this callous casting aside of the poor for the sake of ideological posturing. Truly disgraceful.

Well, contrary to all the hubbub about an alleged uprising of the conservative masses (proletariat?) against the totalitarian rule of Barack Obama, it seems that things have gone differently in the over-discussed special election for one of New York’s congress members. It turns out that a district that has been held by Republicans since 1872 has now been won by a Democrat.

Yeah. The days of Barack Obama are clearly numbered. Thats obviously what this indicates.

Now, obviously all of this fascination with this obscure special election is massively insignificant. However, the one thing it has wound up showing is how utterly nonsensical, ideologically driven, and stupid the whole Beck-Palin cloud of noise is. And maybe it also seems to show that at least some of the electorate isn’t completely captive to these sorts of inane voices.

Larison is very perceptive in cutting through the fog of triumphal pronouncements about the alleged resurgence of conservatism that the current NY special election for congress is supposed to indicate:

The GOP seems to be making what ought to be an easy win into a national Phyrrhic victory in which the relative strength of conservative activists inside the party becomes vastly exaggerated and identifies the flailing, failing party even more closely with its conservative members. This will make it very difficult for conservative activists to disassociate themselves from the outcome of the midterms next year. What I find strange in the fixation on NY-23 is that the off-year gubernatorial elections probably serve as a much better indicator of large-scale movements in public opinion. Larger, more diverse electorates in large states are involved in Virginia and New Jersey. If things go as I expect them to with a Republican pick-up in Virginia and a Democratic hold in New Jersey, the message will be rather muddled. It will mean that Virginia will have chosen a Northern Virginia moderate who successfully ran away from his earlier social conservatism while New Jersey re-elected an incumbent who was thought to be highly vulnerable and discredited by corruption. Those results could be explained by pointing to the nature of the electorates in both states, but this does not lend itself to a triumphant narrative of Republican resurgence fueled by true believers. The point here is not to write off conservative insurgents or reject protest candidacies provoked by the failures and mistakes of state and local party leaders. These are appropriate and sometimes necessary responses to elected and party officials’ blunders. What also matters is being willing to acknowledge that the political landscape is not necessary what we wish it is or think it ought to be. Hoffmania and its attendant privileging of ideology over actual local interests suggest that a great many conservatives cannot and will not acknowledge this.

This nice dose of sanity speaks volumes against some of the ridiculous claims that have been made — often by evangelicals — about how “real America” is somehow revolting against Obama. One pundit even claimed that this obscure special election somehow proved that “the Obama brand” will be dead in 2010 (2 months to go, folks!).

Doses of sanity such as Larison provides here are quite welcome these days.