The Curies

Hold on, just a darn tootin’ minute.

Everybody’s always going on about how Marie Curie martyred herself with her research into nuclear radiation, opining with a bowed head and a somber nod how her work led to her tragic death due to aplastic anemia contracted as a result of her long-term exposure to radioactivity.

She died in 1934, at the age of sixty seven. Life expectancy for women born the same year as she, 1867, was around forty five years! She had a good run, people!

Now, her husband Pierre died at only age forty seven, trying to run across the street when he was run over by a horse-drawn cart.  A clear demonstration that nuclear power is FAR safer than horsepower.

The School Shooting in Ohio

Every schmuck on every news show is trying to inform us about the warning signs to look out for that could have prevented the Ohio school shooting on Monday. They keep coaching us to keep an eye out for expressions of dark, violent or depressed feelings on our children’s Twitter and FB accounts – “KNOW YOUR KIDS’ PASSWORDS” they tell us. That if you see a kid posting something dark, it’s better to err on the side of caution by reporting it, blah, blah, blah…  I haven’t seen a single major news outlet explain that the BIGGEST warning sign that there was going to be a school shooting in Ohio on Monday was when T.J. Lane picked up a GUN which he had ready access to. Teens tweeting death poetry tells you jack shit. All it warns is that a teen is just a teen. The tragedy in Ohio could NOT have happened if T.J. Lane had not been able to have a gun. I am no gun control freak. Guns serve a purpose, in my opinion. But if you aren’t willing to talk about the real reason why there was yet another school GUN shooting on American soil, you have just signed a petition asking that we have another just like it the next time the mood strikes another disaffected youth. Doom on you.

TEST

Hello. Marooned astronaut here. Been offline for a while -- numerous reasons (ennui and inconstancy chief among them).

But I am plotting a resumption of semi-regular activity. This post is just to make sure all sysemts are "go" and the bloggy-thingy is still up and running (thank you, blogspot).

Stalin's Roswell, My Ass

Alright.  Stop the f-ing presses. My head is going to explode.

This week, Annie Jacobsen published her impressive looking tome, Area 51, which purports to detail the goings-on at the largest, most secretive military installation in the United States, the famously officially non-existent Groom Lake range in Nevada, known in popular parlance as Area 51.

The most explosive “revelation” in the volume is a new, alternative explanation for the origin of the Roswell crash mythos. It contends the actual event upon which that cornerstone of UFOlogy is based was a deliberate hoax by Soviet Russia. According to Ms. Jacobsen, in 1947 Joseph Stalin, inspired by America’s panicked response in 1938 to Orson Welles’s radio vérité broadcast of War of the Worlds, issued orders to send a special, secret spy plane into the skies over the US ostensibly to test, spoof and terrify American national defense forces and its public. This “flying disk”(her words in interview) was developed by captured Nazi aeronautical engineers (in the same vein as the genesis of America’s rocket program) and was piloted by similarly Nazi-engineered aircrew. Nazi eugenics monster Joseph Mengele is supposed to have provided Stalin with these genetically modified freaks: "unusually petite for pilots, they appeared to be children. Each was under five feet tall...They were grotesquely deformed, but each in the same manner as the others. They had unusually large heads and abnormally shaped, oversize eyes." The craft was intentionally crashed in New Mexico in early July 1947 and spawned the whole Roswell craze, which, it should be remembered, did not become a craze until three decades later with the publication of the wildly speculative – and successful – The Roswell Incident. 

Let’s take a moment and parse this… um… account.  DISCLAIMER: I have not read Ms. Jacobsen’s book yet – though I shall. I am responding specifically to the book’s reception in the media and Jacobsen’s own televised statements  here, here, and here. I do this because I am a slow reader and I want to nip this in the bud in my own small way, inoculating anyone I can against this patent fraud (or negligence) by a crass self-promoter (or fatuous incompetent). I mean to offer SOME balance to the execrably one-sided media acceptance and credulous reiteration of the account.

First, the rationale. Jacobsen claims that according to her SINGLE, UNNAMED source, Stalin engaged in this bizarre psy op because, at the time, America had all the nuclear weapons in the world and the USSR had none. This hoax was somehow meant to demoralize the United States and test its mood and readiness. A chancy gambit, seeing as discovery of the real facts behind such a hoax would anger the target nation who, as has been stated, had real nuclear weapons with which to retaliate. I think this is too stupid even for Stalin on his drunkest New Years Eve.

Second, the story stands on the self-conflicting premise that in 1947 Russia possessed a practical, deployable, high performance saucer-shaped aircraft, BUT that this aircraft was a captured German Horton Ho 229. The Ho 229 was a jet-powered flying wing and very advanced for its time. But is decidedly NOT a flying disk. The United States had a number of their own captured Ho 229s, and the Soviets knew this. So which was it? The well-understood and identifiable (at least among the people Stalin would have been trying to intimidate) Ho 229? Or a mystery machine with no surrounding development program that has come to light in the years since? No surviving sister ships. No legacy ship developed upon improvements on the same sensitive technology. Yet they intentionally sacrificed this irreplaceable airframe on a propaganda stunt. It is important to note that when a government acquires an advanced, secret technology, they go to great lengths to preserve its secrecy. Examples: the allies’ Norden bombsight, Germany’s Enigma machine, America’s F-117 stealth bomber and (drum roll please) the reason for creating the huge secret testing range AREA 51.

Third, no hint of such an inherently complex, involved operation has come to light in media from Russia in the more than TWO DECADES since the fall of the Soviet Union, this despite huge declassification of Soviet secret policy and projects including things as loony as attempted psychic remote viewing and targeted psychic assassination.

Fourth, the “pilots.” Joseph Mengele did not begin his worthless, abominable “genetic research” until 1943. Even assuming (generously) that his megacephalic-dwarf-alien pilots were born nine months after his first day on the job at Auschwitz-Birkenau, they could only have been about 4 years old at the time of the alleged Roswell Incident. The story claims the occupants were unwilling victims between the ages of 12 and 13, hence born in 1935 when the German eugenics program consisted of nothing more advanced than brutish propaganda and forced sterilization of “undesirables.” At that time Josef Mengele was a 24 year-old punk finishing his PHD in Anthropology. And why go to any great lengths to select mutants matching a description of the “Gray” aliens of modern UFO lore? This social archetype did not exist in 1947.  An American citizen seeing one walking down the street would not have stopped and said, “Hey. That looks like an alien.” And mutant Soviet crash victims at Roswell could not have created the archetype: no one knew about Roswell until 1980.

Fifth, the story further claims the drone saucer, or flying wing, whichever it was, was piloted remotely by radio control from a second, separate Soviet plane. Now, aircraft remote guidance is highly sensitive technology. If Soviet technology to remotely pilot aircraft had fallen into American hands, no matter how advanced or primitive, it would have exposed the Russian state of the art, and the US would have gleaned volumes about their secret weapons programs - a catastrophic breach of security.

The history of remote guidance for aircraft has a well-documented, verifiable history. As does the development of airframes, including disk aircraft (which so far have always been abandoned by developers over inherent instability issues) and flying wings. As does the Nazi eugenics program. The yarn put forth in Area 51 asks us to jettison our evidence-based understanding of all these, and of history in general, without a single shred of corroborating evidence of its own.

Which brings me to…

Fatal problem, the sixth: No corroborating evidence. For this most-outlandish claim, Jacobsen keeps her one-person source anonymous, but in promoting her book presents it as credible as any other part of her research. Yet, in all the years since Roswell didn’t happen, no other investigator or eyewitness (despite YEARS of diligent, if-misguided, efforts on the part of the UFO community) has come forward with a tale that even hints at this utterly novel, completely unfounded take on events.

Annie Jacobsen offers no supporting, circumstantial testimony, no substantiating documentation. But is happy to showcase this farce as one of the most compelling features of her book. If she is a journalist of even middling competency, then she knows damn well a story with claims as extraordinary as this demands some corroboration before it is disseminated as even “plausible,” let alone “likely.” If she knows this, but has chosen instead to publish and promote it anyway, then she does so with but one motive: book sales and the enhancement of her own branding in the marketplace, at the expense of public discourse and pandering to public paranoia, which is something we don’t need.  Hence, Annie Jacobsen is either a bad journalist or a bad person. There are no reasonable alternatives. And Stalin did not hoax Roswell. On a technical, historical, doctrinal and evidentiary basis, this story is preposterous. Balderdash. Not merely implausible, but an absolutely verifiable fabrication. Spread the word.

Hi. Missed me?

Longtime friend ML has brought it to my attention the Marooned Astronaut has been inexcusably mute in the blogosphere for quite some time. I began writing him a sincere reply when it occurred to me that you, too, constant reader, might also appreciate and deserve some explanation for the long interim since my last post. Has the Marooned Astronaut perished? Has he finally been picked up by the Men in Black, sequestered in an Abu Ghraib-style government chamber of horrors for captured aliens and there subjected to Bush-level enhanced technique “interrogation?” Has he finally been rescued by brethren from his home world in a climactic, multimillion dollar set piece sequence wherein a mother ship lands in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington; and, just before returning to the stars, did he strike a bittersweet pose on the gangplank to offer a sage, cautionary soliloquy to a breathless mob about how a concerned Higher Power has always been watching from Above and if mankind can only learn to curb its baser instincts it may one day be permitted to join the great Galactic Brotherhood of Peace?

No, the true reasons behind my long bloggish-quietude are nothing so picturesque. That pasty alien-looking porcine befouling the feet of Lincoln’s statue with rhetorical dung some weeks back (I forget the date, really) was some kind of schmuck called a “Glenn Beck,” whatever that is.

In truth, I can identify only two things that arose after 9/11 this year to explain why the Marooned Astronaut has been as remiss with his blog as he once was with his homework back in high school. And, as with the high school homework, my only defense is the age-old, tried-and-true, “I meant ta’ do it, honest!”

First, I really meant to comment ALL OVER THE PLACE about the election. Honest! I mean, that was all teed up for some major Marooned Astronaut screeds. But the campaign rhetoric was so fast, furious and asinine, every time I thought I had a cogent comment to make, some wild lunatic faction would render it quaint in a single sound bite. Seriously.

Also, I went on a badly needed diet. I noticed that watches and clocks were beginning to slow in my presence and light took on the embarrassing habit of bending when passing me close at hand. The last straw came when I ran into this adorable blue R2 unit who was carrying technical readouts of ME showing how I could be destroyed with a single, well-placed proton torpedo.  (Wait for it… wait for it… There, the true Jedi in the room are now pissing their pants laughing.)

One of the galling things about being an Earthbound Marooned Astronaut is the abject paucity of good spacesuit retailers you have around here.  Oh, sure, if you have an annual operating budget of $3.5 trillion and your name is Uncle Sam, David Clark Inc. turns out a fairly decent product. If looking cool, while not actually staying alive in outer space, is your chief concern, I highly recommend a shop called Global Effects. And, lastly, for the truly budget minded, you can always pick up used Russian gear (and, often as not, a slightly used Russian cosmonaut or two) on Ebay.  But that’s it.  So, if you ARE a Marooned Astronaut and you have to make do with the one spacesuit you own till rescue arrives, it is important to keep your girth to a circumference requiring little else than some judiciously applied Astrolglide lubricant in order to squeeze into the garment. (Odd that you Earth people offer Astroglide over the counter when the rest of your astronaut gear requires a government contract. Hmm.)

So, the day when getting into my trusty old suit felt not so much like a star-faring knight donning the armor of the cosmos but more like stuffing 246 pounds of shit into a… well… much smaller bag, I decided something had to be done.

Enter: [Widely-advertised-consumer-weight-reduction-program]. In keeping with this blog’s strict policy of assiduously offering no endorsement for any brand or product without handsome compensation, I here withhold the program’s full name, though it does begin, appropriately enough, with, “Nut-.” I like this weight loss program because (A) it works and (B) once a month they send you a big box of reasonably palatable astronaut food. Before any would-be dieters out there take this as a recommendation regarding the quality of that food, keep in mind I LOVE airplane food, too. Yes, I do.

But this diet is not ALL fun. Among other mortifications and indignities associated with it, the program stipulates that the dieter refrain from strong drink. By which I mean, you are not supposed to drink alcohol, but instead some other substance. I seem to recall mention of something called “water” in the diet’s literature, as if H2O were a material that had some safe, practical application within the human body. I assume it must have been a typo but, as every astronaut knows, in any mission, a procedure is as procedure, so I follow even this (obviously spurious) instruction to the letter. Hence, during my customary blogging hours (i.e., waking hours) I have been entirely (or at least largely) sober. Now, the Marooned Astronaut is a big “believer” in coincidence. It takes a lot for me to read a causal relationship between any two phenomena and interpret one as the effect of  the other – for me, overwhelming (and reproducible) evidence is required. Ambrose Bierce’s excellent Devil’s Dictionary puts anything published under the name of Webster or Oxford to shame.  One of his peerlessly illuminating definitions reads:

EFFECT, n. The second of two phenomena which always occur together in the same order. The first, called a Cause, is said to generate the other -- which is no more sensible than it would be for one who has never seen a dog except in the pursuit of a rabbit to declare the rabbit the cause of a dog.

That being said, I do have an eerie suspicion my late neglect of this blog may in part be due to a certain chemical deficiency in my constitution, an alcohol starvation that has affected, obviously, the bile, the spleen, the choleric glands, hot-bloodedness and bad humours, not to mention a suppression of the natural and healthy impulse to throttle bigots, gun nuts, chauvinists, frauds and charlatans. But this is a poor alibi. No, no. Sobriety is NO EXCUSE for bad behavior. So I reaffirm to you now, my devoted and rapt Earthling companions and jurors, I will forthwith redouble my efforts to record here my unworthy take on the various issues which leave me roiling with anger or, more rarely, tearful with hope. If I remain silent for any period, well, it will be because I have nothing useful to say at the moment – just one handy way in which you can distinguish me from a Glenn Beck, or whatever they’re called.

The Planet of the Apes is in New Jersey

So, yesterday was September eleventh, the ninth anniversary of Al Qaeda’s attack on the United States if America in 2001.

For me, one of the sadder, more poignant aspects of yesterday was all the earnest reminders, in every medium, from friends and strangers, never to forget. On it’s face, this is absurd, almost inane. 3,286 days ago I had been in the habit of programming my TV to wake me each morning to MTV2 (do they still actually play music videos on MTV2?) and this would get me out on the right side of bed to start the day. Ever since, every SINGLE day, 3,285 in a row, I wake up and check the news headlines, sometimes on TV, sometimes over internet, and ask: Have they done it? Did they finally catch bin Laden? Is his head at last on a spike on public display where it belongs?

This ugly, dysfunctional obsession is just one of the keepsakes I have from that day. The Marooned Astronaut won’t bore you with all the details of the other souvenirs he has (remember, “souvenir” means literally “to remember”): the emergency rations, gas masks, baseball bat, machete, Geiger counter – yes, Geiger counter – that take up so much space in my closet ever since.

So, for me – for most of the world – a reminder to “Never forget” is quite superfluous.  But, of course, I understand what inspires it. When most people say, “Never forget” 9/11, they are actually asking you to commiserate with them, to grieve a little, and for you to support them a little in their grief over something which, after nine years, still has no satisfactory means of being made rational through words. The event was insane, an undoing of 10,000 years of civilization, perpetrated using two of the most potent symbols of that civilization’s success, the jet liner, the skyscraper, transformed into a hideous and all-too-real nightmare. We do not look at jet liners, or skyscrapers, or each other the same way since. And we don’t know what to say, so instead we say, “Never forget,” and we know what each other means, which is something inexpressibly other than “Never forget.”

After a solemn, but exhausting morning of brooding on the sorrow that contemplation of 9/11 germinates in me, I decided to try and take my mind off it.  I decided to review some of the basic literature concerning Marooned Astronauts as part of an ongoing proficiency program we are all, as a trade, obliged to study. I watched, for the umpteenth time, Planet of the Apes.  The real 1968 one with Charlton Heston. Not the 2001 cock-up by Tim Burton – an otherwise inspired filmmaker. In retrospect, this very willful attempt “to forget” was flawed. Doomed from the outset.

The planet of the apes is in New Jersey. 

Did you know that? There is a scene in the first film of the series, 50 minutes in, where Marooned Astronaut Taylor (Heston), muted by a gunshot wound, tries to explain in pantomime to his scientist chimpanzee benefactors (Roddy McDowall and Kim Hunter) where he came from. We all know the surprise ending (SPOLIER ALERT) that Taylor eventually finds out he has been on Earth all along. In the film’s final scene, he and girlfriend Nova (smokin’ hot Linda Harrison) blunder upon the melted, mostly-buried Statue of Liberty. So, we know he’s in New York. During the scene I mention at 50 minutes, Cornelius (McDowall), who is a chimp archaeologist by trade, offers a map of the local region as a visual aid to help vocally-challenged Taylor tell his story.

It is clearly (and appropriately) a map of the New York Tri-State area.

According to Taylor, his ship, the Icarus, splashed down in Long Island Sound and he and surviving companions Dodge and Landon came ashore in the mortifying desert of the Forbidden Zone, AKA: Westchester County.  They then hiked to the Garden State where they ran afoul of a civilization of speaking, misanthropic apes.

Yes. I know. Has happened to me, too. In Georgia.

Planet of the Apes is really a superb film and if you haven’t ever seen it, you should treat yourself. Much of the dialog is dated and stilted. No surprise, as the script, the good parts, anyway, flowed from the pen of master sci fi melodramatist Rod Serling. Indeed, it is easy and fun to view Apes as a Twilight Zone episode writ large. To enjoy POA, you have to accept the clunky dialog as style, as non-rhyming verse. But, if you can accomplish that and watch, it is sublime. It offers deep social commentary on issues that are no less vibrant or urgent today than they were 42 years ago.

On a more selfish, more practical note, it is also chock full of helpful dos-and-don’ts for the average Marooned Astronaut. Take notes when you watch.

So, I watched. Taylor crash lands in the water, goes through his ordeal among the apes and finally escapes the clutches of his bloodthirsty simian captors, only to find out: the planet of the apes is actually planet Earth. (For the purposes of this discussion, we’ll include New Jersey as part of planet Earth.)

Taylor is understandably dismayed. When he first left Earth on his mission, he understood the world was already populated by brutes. In an opening monologue, he laments how Man treats his fellow human and admits, coyly, a wish that his kin back home might outgrow this barbarism while he is away in space. Instead, his worst fears are realized. The humanity he left behind only went on to grow even more barbaric, to the point of self-annihilation. And in place of that homo sapiens civilization has risen another just as brutish, just as barbaric. So one of the many morals of the film is: Planet Earth is always in danger of becoming, and intractably remaining, a planet of the apes.

It is important to remember, though, that the only point of a cautionary tale is to dissuade the audience from a course that will lead ultimately to the undesireable fate invoked within the story.  The Ghost of Christmas Future shows Scrooge his premature, mournerless grave so that he may choose to avoid it.  Planet of the Apes shows us an Earth that is forever doomed to be a planet of apes – naked apes or furry, but all brutes, all murderous. Yet, this does not mean such a fate is inevitable for this Earth. Planet of the Apes warns us to make sure this Earth does not become Taylor’s.

Planet of the Apes was made, as I mentioned, 42 years ago. So, how are we doing, team? Is this a world at peace with itself? Is there even a country (let’s take – oh, I dunno, the United States of America, for example) which is at peace with itself? When there’s an Earthquake in Haiti, do we actually send in the rescue monies we’ve promised for recovery? Do we decline from painting all members of one religion with the same brush we use to characterize the homicidal fanatic minuscule minority of that faith? Do we let folks who fall in love marry each other, no matter who they are or how many penises or vaginas they have among them? Are we able to engage in political discourse (to figure out the best direction in which to drive this blue planet) without referring to, and treating, our fellows across the aisle as sub-humans? When attacked, do we resist the urge to lash out at the easiest, most accessible target, even if that target had NOTHING to do with our wounds? Do we withhold our political support from candidates and parties who espouse or permit the promulgation of baseless fear and hate? Erstwhile politicians who would rule by anger?

Planet of the Apes closes with a prayer. An angry prayer. Angry prayers are not healthy ones. And no good comes of angry prayers. You can bet your bottom dollar that there were some angry prayers being muttered in the cockpits of Flights 11, 175, 77 and 93 nine years ago.

Marooned Astronaut Taylor’s angry prayer at the end of Planet of the Apes is:

            You maniacs.

            You blew it up.

            Damn you.

            God, damn you all to Hell.

I have said that prayer. I said it nine years-plus-one-day ago. I found myself saying it again yesterday, and, despite best intentions otherwise, I have repeated it all too often in the countless months between. Despite all these prayers, I find I am, as you are too, still stuck on a planet of apes. I can’t promise that I won’t ever say that angry prayer anymore, but I tell you, I know (from nine years of hard experience) it doesn’t accomplish much. I’ve never seen anything to suggest that any prayers, angry or not, ever do.

We can avoid Taylor’s Earth. We don’t have to pray. We just have to stop being apes. 

"Ground Zero Mosque" - What ‘s Wrong With What’s Going On

Here’s what ‘s wrong with what’s going on about the “Ground Zero Mosque.” 

The State, so far – and the Marooned Astronaut hates having to keep adding that caveat – has done nothing to bar the Park 51 project, so that’s not the problem. Only someone who was one taco short of a combination platter would think the bigots who have always been vocally distrustful of Muslim’s wouldn’t weigh in on the dark side of this groundless (not even Ground Zero) controversy. So, as ugly as those hate mongers are upon the ear, it’s not that either.

It’s the people and organizations who usually act as protectors of and advocates for tolerance, civil liberties and basic human rights, but who now have come down on the wrong side of this thing that make me shiver, and should make us all tread lightly. I’m speaking about a number of individuals I know personally and some public figures and institutions I have observed in the media.  I will use one (to me the most chilling example) to illustrate my point of concern.

The Anti Defamation League.  The ADL is an outspoken watchdog organization, who has for decades vigilantly fought anti-Semitism and stood unflaggingly at the side of any group who is victimized by, or is prone to fall prey to, social injustice based upon race, religion, creed, etc.

Until now.

Back on July 28 of this year, they weighed in ( http://www.adl.org/PresRele/CvlRt_32/5820_32.htm ), firmly and clearly, with their take on the wisdom and propriety of the Park 51 project.  They said, “… ultimately this is not a question of rights, but a question of what is right. In our judgment, building an Islamic Center in the shadow of the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain - unnecessarily - and that is not right,” and that, "… the controversy which has emerged regarding the building of an Islamic Center at this location is counterproductive to the healing process."

Even as they decried how, “…the bigotry some have expressed in attacking [the folks behind Park 51] is unfair, and wrong,” they parroted the propaganda of those very bigots, saying, “we are mindful that some legitimate questions have been raised about who is providing the funding to build it...”  No.  This is demonstrably not the case, and (so) not the point.  It is a bigot’s talking point.

There are lots of clever ways to punch holes in their statement. One could argue, yes, it is true: “It is not right that Park 51 cause victims more pain,” meaning that victims don’t have a right to feel pain at seeing Park 51. But I never would do that. An old friend once told me, (Maxim #18) “You can’t help what you like.”  And you can’t help what causes you emotional pain (generally speaking). So I can’t say that victims MUST NOT feel pain when they see an Islamic Center in the vicinity of Ground Zero, or anywhere. I might suggest that pain at seeing such an establishment is misplaced. But I would never deny their pain, its inherent validity, nor their right to feel it.

But I could never condone it preventing a community of peaceful fellow Americans from legally installing a facility wherein they intend to engage in their culture and observe their religion freely. 

I’m just one guy. People who argue against Park 51 on these grounds of avoiding pain for victims of 9/11 are wrong, and it is my choice to tell them so.  The ADL is an organization.  Unlike me, it doesn’t have a choice where to come down on such issues. It has a charter and a steering body of individuals, all bound to adhere to the ADL’s stated principles.  While I have a personal policy on religious intolerance, the ADL is a policy, focused entirely on this very matter.  Here is their 1913 mission statement (direct from their website, http://www.adl.org/about.asp?s=topmenu ):

“The immediate object of the League is to stop, by appeals to reason and conscience and, if necessary, by appeals to law, the defamation of the Jewish people. Its ultimate purpose is to secure justice and fair treatment to all citizens alike and to put an end forever to unjust and unfair discrimination against and ridicule of any sect or body of citizens.”

Since 1913, they EXIST to end unjust discrimination and ridicule of ANY SECT or BODY OF CITIZENS. Their words.  Not mine.

Sara Palin and Newt Gingrich can say whatever they want about Park 51. Their job descriptions are not specific on how they should view the issue. But the ADL is different. The ADL exists to come down on the right side of issues like this, particularly and especially when everyone else is on the wrong side.

And they blew it.  Big time.  Their transgression is not simply one of craven negligence, not one of merely failing to rise to the occasion in their self-appointed role as guardian of tolerance and diversity.  Their July 28 statement starts out admirably enough: “We regard freedom of religion as a cornerstone of the American democracy, and that freedom must include the right of all Americans – Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and other faiths – to build community centers and houses of worship.  We categorically reject appeals to bigotry on the basis of religion, and condemn those whose opposition to this proposed Islamic Center is a manifestation of such bigotry.”  They should have left it at that. Period. Or said nothing. 

Saying nothing would have constituted a mere a dereliction of their bound duty.  But the full statement, which comes down squarely (albeit in milquetoast fashion) on the side of fear and bigotry, is a willful betrayal of it.

Hence the reason I am more concerned, even frightened, about this stupid, issueless issue than I ever expected I would be.  The ADL was one of those “go to” places for minorities – usually Jewish, but their mission statement clearly once promised succor and protection to all peoples – when they felt ridiculed, when they felt discriminated against, when they felt in danger.  Sure, there are other places, other institutions whose stated commitment to social justice are of the same ilk. But there is no saying that this breathtaking erosion of integrity and core principles is limited just to ADL.

We now find ourselves in world where, perhaps, any organization such as ADL can be expected to carelessly jettison its commitment to protect those most threatened by the bigots against diversity. And I am left wondering, where am I to go? What if that day comes when my legally-proposed cultural building inspires actual public debate over whether I should be allowed to express my convictions of faith legally, as and where I choose? Where is this Marooned Astronaut to go now when public discourse waxes venal and rails against me and my breed; when bigots start feeling comfortable publicly proposing my expulsion from the land, or at least from my rights, even though I am a US Citizen, just because of the strange-looking place in which I socialize, or the weird extraterrestrial complexion of my skin, or the alien language I speak among my kin, or my Jewish heritage.  Who should I count on, now that I know it cannot be the ADL?