Motley Moose – Archive

I wasn’t going to jump into this conversation, but I want to add another dimension to the discussion of the benefits vs. dangers of vaccinating. I feel qualified by the fact that my first-born child had a severe reaction to her first DPT vaccination many years ago.

We got her first vaccination on time when she was two months old. Within ten minutes, she was screeching non-stop, like a threatened animal. We got sent home anyway, where she continued to screech for many hours until she had a seizure and went into a coma for three days. Happily, she woke up and seemed perfectly fine. She didn’t have any long term neurological damage.  

So, it’s almost Chinese Food Day again (also known as December 25).  While most Americans will be celebrating with their families, many of us will be going to the movies and eating Chinese food.  Yes, it’s cliché, but it is what it is.  I don’t know what movie I’m going to see tomorrow, so I am open to any suggestions people might have (I just saw The Hobbit on Sunday night, though).  I do know, however, that I’ll be eating Chinese food, although somewhat complicated by the fact that the Chinese place I usually eat out in has apparently closed.

This, ironically, is also a time for me to be thankful to be an American.  This is a country where I can openly practice my religion and embrace my culture.  I am free to be a Jew and do not have to worry about whether the government will decide it’s a good time to stir up some violence against me.  I don’t have to worry about being consigned to the ghetto or the shtetl.  I’m free to go to see the movie I want to see and eat the Chinese food I want.  Those actions might seem irrelevant, but they mean that I am free to embrace my Jewishness.

And I will never completely get it because I am a white, Conservative Jew.  Yes, I am a minority, but I am lucky enough that I can pretty much blend in whenever I want to.  Unless someone is particularly fanatical, lucky and has phenomenal Jewdar, they are not generally going to detect that I am Jewish.  I generally do not cover my head with a kippah in public except when I am going to, and coming home from, synagogue.  I eat vegetarian in non-kosher restaurants.  I am out and about on Saturdays.  I am proud of my Jewishness – it is part of the very core of my personal identity – but it is not something that is always readily discernible from purely visual observation.

Yes, I can see what happens and I can know what happens; I can learn about it, both from the history of our country and from the many different years and places of discrimination that Jews have been subjected to throughout our history.  Still, because I can easily blend in – because I possess white privilege – I will not really know it firsthand.  Because of this I will never have to worry about what President Obama spoke about this afternoon and what every African American goes through merely from living their everyday lives.

Eighteenth-century Dresden was one of the loveliest cities in Europe. The capital of Saxony since the Middle Ages, under the rule of Prince-Elector Augustus the Strong (who ruled 1694-1733) Dresden was a leading center of art, culture and technology. All of these came together in some surpassingly lovely architecture, including a large Lutheran church in central Dresden’s Neumarktplatz (New Market Square).

The Dresdner Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady) was begun in 1726 and completed in 1743; it represents in stone something akin to what the music of J.S. Bach does in notes and staves: the apotheosis of the German Late Baroque style. (It is poetically appropriate that Bach, on a visit to Dresden in 1736, gave a recital on the Frauenkirche’s superb Silbermann organ.)

The church’s most distinctive feature was its unconventional 96 m-high dome, called die Steinerne Glocke or “Stone Bell”. An engineering feat comparable to Michelangelo’s dome for St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, the Frauenkirche’s 12,000-ton sandstone dome stood high resting on eight slender supports. Despite initial doubts, the dome proved to be extremely stable. Witnesses in 1760 said that the dome had been hit by more than 100 cannonballs fired by the Prussian army led by Friedrich II during the Seven Years’ War. The projectiles bounced off and the church survived.

This post will attempt to explain why Mississippi is a Republican stronghold today.

But before doing that, let’s describe another state – call it State X. Looking at State X is very useful for analyzing why Mississippi votes Republican. I invite you to guess what state it is.

Here is a description of State X.

Demographically, State X is very rural and very white. There are no major cities in the state; one has to cross state lines and drive more than a hundred miles to find the nearest metropolitan area. Racially, the state is homogeneously white; indeed, it is the second whitest state in the entire nation.

State X has almost always been a one-party stronghold, and that party has generally been the Republican Party. The Republican Party has almost always taken this state’s electoral votes; indeed, it voted for a Republican president for more than a century. State X has only elected one Democratic senator in its entire history.

More below.

To start with, let me be clear: The oppression and general subjugation of women is not an exclusively Republican issue. Measures proposed, adopted, or supported by some Democrats, such as the Stupak-Pitts amendment and the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, make that clear. Nor is the oppression and subjugation of women even an exclusively male issue. The fact is, a lot of conservative women adhere and/or contribute to the doctrine of male domination, perhaps because it is politically useful (see Palin, who is no feminist), or perhaps because they have simply been indoctrinated to do so. Despite all the calls for equality and the efforts of feminists throughout the country and around the world, everyone who has grown up in the United States has been influenced, in one way or another, by the pervasive and prevailing mindset of masculine domination. Some of us are more resistant to indoctrination than others, but few are entirely immune. We are all subject to the influences of gender stereotyping, no matter how careful our parents may have been to prevent it. Every day, we are inundated with indoctrinating images and ideas, through television, literature, music, and innumerable other mediums.

What is most important isn’t that we are completely free of assumptions about the opposite sex, or even our own, but that we strive to understand the causes and effects of sexism and rail against it when we perceive it.

Note: This is an update to a diary I did a loooooooong time ago. It’s got plenty of new articles, new stats, new pics, etc, so hopefully the updates will be of interest to some. Cross-posted at GOS.