What The American "Church Of The Far Left" Does Not Want U*Us To Read. . .
This blog post began as a response to Rev. James Ishmael Ford's blog post entitled 'What the American Right Wing Does Not Want You to Read' in his ever readworthy MonkeyMind blog. Since it evolved into what would some U*Us would call a "hijacking" of his blog post, albeit a quite justifiable one AFAIAC, I have decided to post it here and will submit an edited version of it to the aforementioned blog post. This is a "work in progress" and will evolve a bit over the next day or two -
I hate to have to ever so predictably say so James but the left-wing, including the so-called "Church of the Far Left"*, is guilty of very similar if not identical behavior, and I say that as a left-wing *moderate* myself. Perhaps not so much in terms of advocating "violent insurrection", but the rest of the "dynamic" is all too familiar. . .
Not so long ago you could have said -
"Hints of revolution have peppered the left wing for years, and with the election of George W. Bush has upped amazingly."
It's not like the left wing, including U*Us, don't quickly close ranks, deny the facts on the ground, and try to refocus people's attention back to their issues when confronted by legitimate criticism of various failings. . . Be assured that I can provide plenty of examples of that within the context of U*Uism.
Almost as scary is how representatives of the UUA administration at 25 Beacon Street in Boston appear NOT to be buckling when confronted by legitimate criticism and serious grievances of various kinds. . .
I hope people actually read this recent Emerson Avenger blog post. It is closely reasoned, as is most of what I write about the problems of the U*Us, and it lays the deal out all too clearly...
"Not liking the facts is one thing. Pretending they aren't facts is quite another..."
U*Us, including top level UUA administrators do this all the time James. . . Forget Bill Sinkford's sinking ship I have seen examples of both UUA Presidential candidates, i.e. Rev. Peter Morales and Rev. Laurel Hallman, engaging in this kind of denial of readily verifiable reality. It is one thing to make lemonade out of lemons, it is quite another to pretend that a lemon is actually quite drinkable lemonade. . . That's Rev. Laurel Hallman's bad. Rev. Peter Morales' bad, one of them anyway. . . is pretending that Unitarian*Universalism can be "The Religion Of Our Time" without providing a credible and viable "road map" for how he is going to transform Unitarian*Universalism from the "tiny, declining, fringe religion" he acknowledges it is today into "the religion of our time" within *our* time which I figure to be within 30 years at the outside. . . In fact, during yesterday's telephone forum, he suggested that he could accomplish most of this "miracle" (AFAIAC) within four to ten years. This just doesn't seem very realistic at all. For the record I think they both spoke very well yesterday and if they actually walk their talk, which too many UUA leaders abjectly fail and even obstinately refuse to do. . . they will both make good UUA Presidents. Personally I would like to see the "runner up" replace Kathleen Montgomery as UUA Executive Vice President> I get the sense that Rev. Peter Morales is well suited for that job and may actually be running for it. . .
:Almost everyone has heard how the Chinese curse is "may you live in interesting times..." Damn, these are interesting times...
Indeed they are. . . ;-)
* U*Us can thank The Oregonian newspaper for that particular description of what UUA Presidential candidate Rev. Peter Morales bills as the "Tiny Declining Fringe Religion" and other U*Us seem to like to call "The U*U Movement".
I hate to have to ever so predictably say so James but the left-wing, including the so-called "Church of the Far Left"*, is guilty of very similar if not identical behavior, and I say that as a left-wing *moderate* myself. Perhaps not so much in terms of advocating "violent insurrection", but the rest of the "dynamic" is all too familiar. . .
Not so long ago you could have said -
"Hints of revolution have peppered the left wing for years, and with the election of George W. Bush has upped amazingly."
It's not like the left wing, including U*Us, don't quickly close ranks, deny the facts on the ground, and try to refocus people's attention back to their issues when confronted by legitimate criticism of various failings. . . Be assured that I can provide plenty of examples of that within the context of U*Uism.
Almost as scary is how representatives of the UUA administration at 25 Beacon Street in Boston appear NOT to be buckling when confronted by legitimate criticism and serious grievances of various kinds. . .
I hope people actually read this recent Emerson Avenger blog post. It is closely reasoned, as is most of what I write about the problems of the U*Us, and it lays the deal out all too clearly...
"Not liking the facts is one thing. Pretending they aren't facts is quite another..."
U*Us, including top level UUA administrators do this all the time James. . . Forget Bill Sinkford's sinking ship I have seen examples of both UUA Presidential candidates, i.e. Rev. Peter Morales and Rev. Laurel Hallman, engaging in this kind of denial of readily verifiable reality. It is one thing to make lemonade out of lemons, it is quite another to pretend that a lemon is actually quite drinkable lemonade. . . That's Rev. Laurel Hallman's bad. Rev. Peter Morales' bad, one of them anyway. . . is pretending that Unitarian*Universalism can be "The Religion Of Our Time" without providing a credible and viable "road map" for how he is going to transform Unitarian*Universalism from the "tiny, declining, fringe religion" he acknowledges it is today into "the religion of our time" within *our* time which I figure to be within 30 years at the outside. . . In fact, during yesterday's telephone forum, he suggested that he could accomplish most of this "miracle" (AFAIAC) within four to ten years. This just doesn't seem very realistic at all. For the record I think they both spoke very well yesterday and if they actually walk their talk, which too many UUA leaders abjectly fail and even obstinately refuse to do. . . they will both make good UUA Presidents. Personally I would like to see the "runner up" replace Kathleen Montgomery as UUA Executive Vice President> I get the sense that Rev. Peter Morales is well suited for that job and may actually be running for it. . .
:Almost everyone has heard how the Chinese curse is "may you live in interesting times..." Damn, these are interesting times...
Indeed they are. . . ;-)
* U*Us can thank The Oregonian newspaper for that particular description of what UUA Presidential candidate Rev. Peter Morales bills as the "Tiny Declining Fringe Religion" and other U*Us seem to like to call "The U*U Movement".
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