Writing from what you know

I mean, is there anything more toxic within the culture these days than all those people who speak from what they don't know? Watch Sean Hannity for a great example. Of course, a lot of TV news and punditry is just personalities reading scripts on a teleprompter written for them.

They are saying things they do not know.

Or listen to those Sunday morning political shows (I don't anymore, can't, my soul finally rebelled). My Ayn Rand Sen. Ron Johnson is a great example, too. I can still be stunned by someone who apparently has no real understanding of economics trying to yell down a Pulitzer Prize winning economist like Paul Krugman. You don't have to agree with Krugman all the time in order to appreciate how smart he is, but if you are going to engage him in debate, at least know your stuff, right?

Yup, few things more toxic than listening to people speak like confident, strident, experts on things about which they know so little. Wayne LaPierre of the NRA is another great example. Sometimes I gasp at the factually errant things he declares with such practiced righteous anger. What's worse: that he does this, or that the political culture takes his point of view seriously, as part of the "balance" in the debate?

Climate change - don't even get me started on that one.

With that in mind, I was intrigued by this article in the NY Times yesterday: Outside the Citadel, Social Practice Art Is Intended to Nurture. It's about a rising expression in the art world in which art is deeply engaged in the world - not just art for the sake of art, but art embedded in the struggles of humans for dignity, expression, social change, and social transformation, often at a fiercely local level (though with potential repercussions far beyond).

"Known primarily as social practice, its practitioners freely blur the lines among object making, performance, political activism, community organizing, environmentalism and investigative journalism, creating a deeply participatory art that often flourishes outside the gallery and museum system. And in so doing, they push an old question — 'Why is it art?' — as close to the breaking point as contemporary art ever has."

Part of the answer to that question, why is it art, is simple - it is art because it is art: that's the answer. It emerges from the human experience like food from organic gardening, like dreams in the night that simply appear, like air in our lungs or blood in our veins. It is something we need to do to live.

Walker may have violated laws and ethics rules

Before retiring for the evening, just wanted to point out that the Gov may well have violated labor laws and ethics rules in the way he attempted to ram through a budget repair bill full of radical policy changes that have little to do with the budget and a lot to do with destroying state government and handing the state over to corporate interests.

Here's the story on the legal and ethical issues sent to me by one of my alert brothers:

http://www.thenation.com/blog/158824/wisconsin-governor-may-have-violated-labor-law-koch-call

Then there's Nobel laureate Paul Krugman who compares what Walker is trying to do here to Iraq in 2003. I found the comparison far more apt than I thought it would be.

"...Baghdad in 2003, when the Bush administration put Iraq under the rule of officials chosen for loyalty and political reliability rather than experience and competence."

Right.  Here's the link: Shock Doctrine, USA

Heading to Madison on Saturday with a group of faith-based folks. They are answering the call from the Wisconsin Conference of Churches. Meanwhile, the US Catholic Bishops Conference sent a letter to Archbishop Jerome Listecki supporting his defense of worker rights in the state of Wisconsin.

“You and our brother bishops in Wisconsin are offering a timely reminder of what the Church teaches on the rights and duties of workers, including the right to form and belong to unions and other associations, and the obligation to address difficult problems with respect for the rights and needs of all. As you insist, ‘hard times do not nullify the moral obligation each of us has to respect the legitimate rights of workers.’”

You can find the entire statement here: http://www.usccb.org/comm/archives/2011/11-038.shtml

Walker and state Repub legislators are not only losing the political battle, but they have lost the moral and ethical battle as well. They may get their legislative way in the end, but, oh, the sleeping giant that has awakened!