August 2022 – About Things That Matter

What the Unclothed Female Form Reveals about the Great Cosmic Mother – And Ourselves

“Mother of the World” by my colleague, Meryl Ann Butler, Managing Editor of OpEdNews

I’m taking a chance here. At 82 years of age, I’m going to risk embarrassing myself by reconsidering the message and significance of what some consider to be “pornography,” i.e., the images of ordinary mature women found on the internet.

I’m going to propose that like their prehistoric, sculptured counterparts found throughout the ancient world, the images in question can lead us to more fully understand life and its purposes. Moreover, they can help liberate men especially from the toxic patriarchy that is responsible for our wars and the environmental omnicide produced by our economic systems.

I write as a man more deeply embedded in patriarchy than most. I was once a Roman Catholic priest who entered the seminary to embrace a life of celibacy at the age of 14. As such, I became profoundly integrated into perhaps the world’s most patriarchal system characterized by a largely unconscious misogyny and fear of women.

It was an exaggerated embodiment of the metasystem that afflicts the world in general. Like that overarching social arrangement, it told me that viewing the unclothed female form was somehow dangerous and sinful. Post-priesthood married life and reading feminist scholars has shown me it is not.

Here I’m not talking about Playboy or Penthouse, much less about degrading portrayals of young women and girls forced into the pornography trade, perhaps for the profit of others and/or for their own career advancement.

Still less am I referring to snuff films or misogynist portrayals of women in bondage, degrading situations or pain. All of those represent hideous abuses and exploitation of women for purposes of pleasing leering men devoid of appreciation or affection for women outside the pleasure the latter’s objectifications afford.

No, what I’m presenting as culturally and even theologically liberating are the willing displays of the female form by mothers and grandmothers of mature ages from middle age through the 90s. (Perhaps surprisingly to some, these can be accessed by the hundreds on the world-wide web.)

I’m going to suggest that these depictions may be seen as representing modern day equivalents of the oldest goddess images found virtually everywhere in the world’s most ancient archeological digs. Those representations with their prominent breasts, vulvas, and ochre paint (along with occasional inscriptions and accompanying mythology) call attention to what since prehistoric times have been recognized as mostly wordless texts revealing humankind’s fundamental relationship to the feminine aspect of the Divine.

Venus of Willendorf, Austria
(Tinted in red ochre, ca. 30,000 BCE)

What I present here is inspired by the work of Monica Sjöö and Barbara Mor and their classic 1987 work, The Great Cosmic Mother: rediscovering the religion of the earth. Granted, the two authors often rail against pornography in the negative senses noted above (196, 328, 411, 383, 391-92). However, their treatment of the deep meanings revealed in specifically female processes associated with their unique physical characteristics suggest what I’m about to share.

The Central Significance of the Clitoris

Undoubtedly, the most unique of the characteristics in question is the clitoris. As such, it is a fitting starting point for any reverent search for divine revelations contained in the wondrous feminine form. Beginning with the clitoris also obviates criticisms by some who might find here no more than transparent rationalization of the sexual pleasure that willingly unclothed female bodies inevitably provide.

Such suspicions, Sjöö and Mor suggest, reflect the traditional vilification of sexual pleasure fostered by the patriarchy which sees erotic sensations and the women who elicit them as dangerous threats to the “surplus repression” necessitated by the reigning economic system’s need to control an otherwise delightfully distracted workforce (as indicated by Marcuse in Eros and Civilization).

So, traditionally patriarchal repression has found it necessary to reject as unnatural any sexual pleasure outside the marriage context. Moreover, even within marital relations, sexual pleasure not open to conception of new life has been deemed sinful. Judgments like those require women to hide from all but their husbands their defining physical characteristics from their hair to their entire bodies in some extreme cases.

All of that is contradicted by the clitoris. As Sjöö and Mor emphasize, the clitoris is the only organ in the human anatomy whose exclusive function is the provision of sexual pleasure (4-5). This strongly suggests that sexual pleasure is built into the foundations of life itself.

Sjöö and Mor explain: “. . . there is profound psychological and institutional reluctance to face the repercussions of the fact that the female clitoris is the only organ in the human body whose purpose is exclusively that of erotic stimulation and release. What does this mean? It means that for the human female, alone among all earth’s life-forms, sexuality and reproduction are not inseparable” (4-5).

Yes, the clitoris reveals that sexual pleasure is not only natural and part of the cosmic order; it is to be welcomed and treasured. Despite what we’ve been taught by mainline churches and Puritan culture, sexual pleasure is a fundamental human right. It need not relate to reproduction of the species. This means, for example, that contraception makes perfect sense.

Other Female Revelations

Now consider further the rich text of the sacred female form as revealed in ancient statuary – and in what might be seen as their contemporary counterparts. Both media convey central disclosures by the Great Cosmic Mother about aspects of human life that patriarchy tragically ignores.

· Abundant Hair: For the ancients, hair was a symbol of cosmic power and clairvoyance (183). Famously in Greek mythology, Medusa‘s locks took the form of snakes, the ancient world’s symbol of surpassing female wisdom and divinity (57-62). Female tresses, much fuller than men’s, remind us of women’s correspondingly deeper wisdom and insights.

· Soft Flesh: The softer physical character of women’s bodies, usually less obviously muscular than those of men, directs attention away from externals to the true source of human strength – away from bulging muscles to something interior and unseen, which is perceived in all spiritual traditions as more sacred than externals. Put otherwise, while the tendency of patriarchal religion is to separate spirit and matter, matricentric worship of the Cosmic Mother does not (172). Feminine softness reveals women’s surpassing inner strength.

· Breasts: In virtually all cultures, female breasts have been a symbol of beauty, motherhood, and vitality. They were somehow considered the source of female identity. An inscription on an ancient goddess statue of dynastic Egypt even proclaims, “I have breasts, therefore I am” (161). As for displaying them, Sjöö and Mor observe, “In Crete, the uncovering of the breasts was a sacred gesture, symbolizing the nourishing lifestream of the mother” (213).

· Milk and Food: Astoundingly, female bodies are sources of food for the most vulnerable of the species. Sources of food! Milk, sacred cows, and bovine horns were always associated with women whose sharing of food symbolized the primordial act that makes all of us human (408). (The image below shows why.) It is no wonder then that for millennia women were regarded as incarnating the nourishment provided by Mother Earth herself.

Diagram public domain via wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perimetrium#/media/File:llu_cervix.svg

Vulva: This female organ is especially hallowed because of its connection with first experiences of all five senses. As everyone’s gateway to the external world, it represents our first tactile experiences, the drawing of first breath, the initial experience of fragrance, and the birthed organism’s first taste (of blood). The vulva is also intimately associated with primal experiences of one’s own voice and that of one’s godlike mother. Additionally, the vulva’s appearance reminds every one of the paradisal pre-birth state of unity with Source where all needs were satisfied without effort or pain. No wonder the vulva’s attraction!

· Menses: In all ancient goddess cultures women’s monthly periods were honored as sacrosanct. They were times of withdrawal in the company of other women to menstrual huts where, relieved of their duties and the demands of husbands and children, women could meditate, pray together, sing, dance, and simply converse (186). More specifically, such periods provided time to celebrate the great mystery that women’s blood is liquid flesh (189). It is the very substance from which all human bodies are made. This makes women co-creators with the Great Cosmic Mother in ways that men can never be. Nothing in human creation could be more basic, holy, feminine, or divine than female menses.

· Connection with Lunar Cycles: Menstruation connects women with Mother Nature and her most basic processes in conscious and unconscious ways that are simply closed to men (189). Like the ocean and its tides, women’s bodies are governed by the moon and its phases. This means that women possess innate mostly intuitive wisdom inaccessible to men (183). For those paying attention, such knowledge of natural processes makes women especially sensitive to violations of the Divine Mother, because those transgressions deeply affect all women and mothers. When the Cosmic Mother is raped and despoiled, when the ocean is polluted, all women suffer the same fates whether or not they can articulately identify the transgressions involved. This suggests that women’s voices about environmental destruction should be given priority over men’s.

· Womb and Ovaries: These miraculous unseen organs speak volumes in special need of reading in an American culture that refuses to acknowledge what the female body expresses so clearly about questions of abortion. Wombs and ovaries tell us that life does not begin when sperm fertilizes egg. Instead, it is part of a 3.7-billion-year process that erupts continuously and prolifically in countless and infinite forms (including human varieties) most of which never reach full development recognizable as flowers, plants, specific animals, or human beings. The fact that worldwide billions of eggs go down the drain unfertilized each month, and that up to 50% of fertilized ova end up in miscarriages during the first 20 weeks of pregnancy reveals that creations of the Great Cosmic Mother are far more generous, abundant, plentiful, profligate and lavish than non-females can imagine. Women intuitively attuned to these facts, recognize the significance of this tremendous profligacy in ways inconceivable to men who can never experience ovulation, menstruation, conception, miscarriage – or abortion. It exposes the absurdity of the patriarchal approach to the beginning of personal life that, if taken seriously, turns the God of patriarchy into the abortionist par excellence!

Conclusion

The prehistoric images of the unclothed Great Cosmic Mother surely represent humanity’s first volumes of theology “written” for our preliterate ancestors. Wordlessly, the statues proclaim: “In this image you’ll find all you need to know about the divine. She is beautiful, wise (her hair), strong with inner strength beyond belief (soft flesh), the liquid source of our very bodies (menses), the producer of our first meals (her breasts), our way into the world and back to paradise (her vulva), the one who shows how to live harmoniously with nature (connection to the lunar cycles), and a cosmic co-creator.

Beyond that, men’s quasi-magic reaction to the very sight of the unclothed goddesses and the sexual interaction that sometimes follows provides evidence of the Cosmic Mother’s idea of human fulfillment and purpose – not consumption and accumulation, but ecstatic pleasure and joy simply from what the earth and human relationships provide.”

What could be more beautiful, simple — and salvific in a world obsessed with materialism and consumerism that is driving the species to omnicide? We need to return to the Great Cosmic Mother.

But what about the images of mature cyberspace women? Aren’t they pornographic?

It depends on how they’re viewed. If seen appreciatively as the acts of proud subjects rather than as demeaned objects, they can edify as representing sexually independent mothers and grandmothers acting for themselves and not primarily for men, profit, or in the service of cultural misogyny, and sexism. They communicate the same message as the statues found in Çatal Huyuk (in Turkey), in ancient Egypt and throughout the African continent.

They can be seen as proudly “bodying forth” the overlooked teachings of the Great Cosmic Mother viz., that:

“Pornography” is a construct of the twisted perspectives of toxic patriarchy. It does not even occur in more sane societal configurations.
Ordinary women owning and claiming their sexual power and independence are indeed goddesses, beautiful and inspiring.
Sexual pleasure is good. It is one of Life’s greatest gifts. It is everyone’s right to enjoy it in all its forms – including that provided and elicited by mature women subjects.
As incorporating spirit and flesh, the guidance of female wisdom is more grounded in Life and Nature than men’s. Female wisdom represents the leading edge of human consciousness.
Since the Great Cosmic Mother’s nourishment embodied in life’s original food producer (i.e., our mother) feeds us without charge or need to earn that gift, human economies would be more harmonious with the cosmic Design if they were similarly gift-based.
Nature’s cycles are mirrored in our sisters who remind us each month of the unity shared by all with the moon, ocean, tides, and seasons.
Life is so abundant, prolific, and lavish, that all of us (and women especially) are truly co-creators with our Great Source. Like the Cosmic Mother herself, women can choose which fertilized eggs to bring to term and which to terminate.
None of us (especially men) is ultimately in charge of Life’s super-generous processes which thankfully are beyond everyone’s understanding and control but are more fully understood by women.
Women deserve special honor as the gateway to life that points us back home to paradise lost.
Our world would be a better place if women as embodiments of the Great Cosmic Mother were in charge.

With all this in mind, it is possible to approach proudly unrobed mothers and grandmothers in the following spirit of appreciation and gratitude quite foreign to the unconscious misogyny which indoctrinated me so many years ago. I express that liberation in the verses I offer here with the hope that others might share the freedom they attempt to express:

Divine Images Lost and Found

Goddesses all
They are
Unfailing springs of rapt delight
Virgins, Mothers, wizened Crones
With tresses
Surpassing even
Samson’s might,
Sweet gentle eyes
Playful, smoldering, and mischievous,
Sensuous lips
Smiling wordlessly
While wondrously expressing
Our Mother’s cosmic purpose
Through soft flesh
Fulsome breasts,
And the Great Divide
Enticing
Between extended thighs
Calling
Vagrant children’s return
To origins lost
While inviting contemplation
Of her
And our (!)
Unfathomable mysteries within.

(Special thanks to Meryl Ann Butler, OpEdNews managing editor, for her marvelous editorial guidance in helping me formulate these thoughts whose shortcomings, of course, are mine, not hers.)

Abortion: Its Theological Problem (and Goddess solution)

Thank God for the recent SCOTUS decision to effectively repeal Roe.

I say that not because I think the decision was correct. It wasn’t. I say it because Dobbs vs. Jackson has pinpointed the fundamental source of national polarization not only on the issue of abortion, but on climate change and war as well.

And that source was not correctly identified by Bill Clinton’s phrase (borrowed from James Carville) “it’s the economy, stupid.” Rather, the source of national polarization is not economics, politics, or constitutional law. It’s theology. Yes, theology! And until what passes for the “left” in this country takes that bull by the horns, it is doomed to impotence in the face of the religiously driven right-wing juggernaut that triumphed with Dobbs.

What that decision made clear is that the victorious “pro-life” position is based fundamentally on theological grounds that can only be described as patriarchal. Its foundations are abstract, divorced from life, and ignorant of the experience of those centrally involved in the question, viz., women.

Meanwhile, left-wing “pro-choicers” seem too “sophisticated” to respond in kind within an American context where people are basically religious and have been tricked into accepting mansplained theological reasoning about abortion. I mean, the left has proven strangely reluctant to engage its opponents on that powerful contested spiritual terrain.

What I’m arguing here is that the means for doing so is readily available in a highly developed feminist theology that is much more persuasive, older, comprehensive, and venerable than its more recently developed patriarchal counterpart. It’s the theology of the earth consistently embraced by our ancient ancestors and by indigenous people across the planet. (The latter btw, are not reluctant to address issues in theological terms.)

The theology in question has perhaps been best described by Monica Sjöö’s and Barbara Mor ‘s splendid 500-page volume, The Great Cosmic Mother. It’s the religion of the earth explained there that can save the day for humanity and our planet.

To show what I mean, let me begin by sharing The Great Cosmic Mother’s contrast between matricentric and patriarchal religions in general. Secondly, I’ll compare matricentric insights about abortion with their patriarchal counterparts. Thirdly, I’ll show how those insights are essentially theological. My conclusion will suggest profound changes in the ways we speak about or ignore the spiritual dimensions of our lives.

The Religion of the Earth

By “The Religion of the Earth” Sjöö, Mor, and other feminist historians refer to the first religions of the human species which for 30,000 years centered on Goddess worship.

That’s right. Widespread archeological discoveries of detailed goddess statues indicate conclusively that the supreme gods who reigned for most of human history’s concern with religion have been female. Under such dispensation, wise women functioned as community leaders, priestesses, counsellors, midwives, and healers. For millennia, they were humankind’s principal decision-makers.

Accordingly, worship for those 30,000 years celebrated “Mother Earth” with her abundant life-giving powers, as well as natural processes influenced by the moon, ocean tides, and seasonal changes.

Such emphasis also centralized life mysteries unique to women and completely foreign to male experience – the menstrual cycle, conception, gestation, birthing, nursing, contraception, and abortion. Obviously, men have only second-hand knowledge of such processes that largely shape female experience so central to propagation of the species.

So, Goddess religions emphasized female autonomy, male discipleship, the unity of all creation and the knowledge and insight available through the uniquely feminine avenues just listed. Wisdom came to women as well through peer interaction, prayer, contemplation, meditation, ecstatic dance, music, chants, spells, rituals, and female intuition.

Patriarchal Religion

Then about 12,000 years ago (coincident with the development of agriculture) worship of the Great Cosmic Mother was gradually replaced by patriarchal religion. Particularly in the west, the reigning Father God came to replace Mother Earth and women’s “religion of the earth.” Patriarchal religion centered on law, animal and human sacrifice, logic, competition, war, and commercial exchange.

In its Judeo-Christian incarnation, the single Deity (Yahweh) was emphatically male. He replaced Mother Earth with her loving maternal instincts and mysterious natural cycles characterized by predictability, lavish abundance, prodigality, plenty, generosity, sharing, mercy, and forgiveness. Her place was taken by a patriarchal lawgiver and judge who condemned, punished, blamed, and tortured.

Even beyond that, women and their cosmic faith came to be vilified by the new religion as irrational, and as superstitious. Women spiritual leaders — those wise community leaders, priestesses, counsellors, midwives, and healers – fell from grace and were viciously persecuted by vindictive priests as witches and agents of evil spirits.

The religion of the earth with those wise priestesses was forced to go underground. But the patriarchal Inquisition and its Puritan counterparts hunted them down relentlessly – eventually killing as many as 9 million accused witches over a period of 300 years (1450-1750). Obviously, this “women’s holocaust” represented the most extreme attempts to control women and their bodies and to deny their traditional roles as expressions of the divine.

Under this new dispensation, celibate male priests within the Catholic Church (presumably without any experience of women’s sexuality) assumed the role of dictating a predominantly sex-based morality. In this context, the celibate clergy saw women as temptresses. Female bodies and wiles sinfully incited otherwise holy men reluctantly suppressing their own sexual urges and those of others both male and female.

In line with such blatant sexism, priests outlawed extra marital sexual pleasure. They declared that the only valid reason for sexual intercourse was the begetting of children. Consequently, women’s attempts to control their bodies, destinies, and family sizes through their traditional practices of contraception and abortion were classified as evil and warranting eternal punishment with everlasting torture. In particular, the traditional abortion practices of women’s earth religion came to be seen as criminal and even homicidal.

Goddess Religion & Abortion

And what were those practices? How were they justified? Though by no means the focus of their book, here is what Sjöö and Mor have to say about abortion:

Matricentric cultures considered life as a continuous divinely spiraled (vs. straight line) process with both repetitions and ascendent progress. It is a mystery from which human beings emerge.
For women-led societies, human life did not begin when sperm fertilized egg. In fact, in no way was life considered to emerge from humans. Instead, humans were thought to emerge from Life’s incredibly abundant, prodigal, and even wasteful profusion. [For instance, each month of their existence women who do not become pregnant send down the drain an egg with incredible life potential. Similarly, each male ejaculation “wastes” about 2 million sperm. Moreover, 10-20% of known pregnancies end in miscarriage – not to mention unknown pregnancies. Put otherwise, prodigality, abundance, and spontaneous abortion somehow constitute nature’s way (387).]
Amid such prodigality, the first law of matricentric cultures was that women must control their own bodies (200).
Consequently, questions of abortion were traditionally considered outside the realm of masculine competence. They were none of men’s business. This was because questions of pregnancy or nonpregnancy found no analogy within the experience of men who could never become pregnant, gestate fetuses, give birth, or have abortions (385).
Clearly, women in ancient times didn’t (as they still don’t) always want children.
So, under matricentric arrangements, female intuition decided the time to be pregnant or not as well as whether to bring pregnancies to term (385).
With women in charge of their bodies, they developed herbal contraceptives and abortifacients (200). [The earliest discovered recipes for abortion date from around 2700 BCE (203).]
During the time of Spanish colonization of the Americas, indigenous women even practiced abortion to rob the imperialists of “Indian” slave labor (206).
Tribes that practiced abortion and even infanticide (far from considering such practices homicidal) were instead convinced that the spirit of the dead child returned to the earth womb to await a new birth – when the time was right for its mother (201). As expressed by Sjöö and Mor, “What has come once – when the time is wrong – can come once again when the time is right” (388).

Patriarchy & Abortion

Now, contrast this matricentric approach to life and abortion with that of the rather newly arrived patriarchy. As described by the authors of The Great Cosmic Mother, celibate priests, and theologians, along with the male-dominated fields of philosophy and logic made the following highly theoretical and unproveable assumptions:

Morality is determined not by human experience or nature, but by sacred scripture, abstract logic, law and by mostly pre-scientific theology interpreted by those (often celibate and gynophobic) men particularly obsessed with questions related to sex (165).
Ultimately, decisions about pregnancy lie in the hands of an off-planet divine patriarch rather than in those of a female co-creator. A divine Chess Master above the earth decides when to “ensoul” or not a human zygote. (According to Thomas Aquinas, males received souls 40 days after conception; females, 40 days later than that.) The Great Patriarch’s decision is final in all cases.
On this understanding, women are seen as quasi machines or nests– receptive objects rather than actively contributing to the process as autonomous decision-making subjects (365).
History moves in a straight line. Far from being spiral in nature with repetitions along with ascendent progress, it has a beginning and an end.
Individual lives are similarly linear and unrepeatable.
Consequently, each fertilized egg represents from the moment of conception a unique individual, which if aborted is forever lost to the world, humanity, and history. Her or his God-determined destiny remains eternally frustrated.
Therefore, human interference in processes of pregnancy is immoral and (depending on the time of intervention) can even be considered murderous.

Theological Differences

As evident from the above side-by-side comparisons of matricentric and patriarchal approaches to abortion, resolution of the question at hand comes down to theologies describing the nature of God, the direction of history, and autonomous human individuality. None of these considerations is subject to definitive demonstration or proof. They are matters of faith.

Or as Sjöö and Mor put it: “The fundamentalist Protestant and Catholic anti-abortionists are following the ways and dictates of their God. The rudimentary question remains: Is their God the God?”

And where in a pluralistic society do atheists fit in – or citizens whose religious faith locates the beginning of personal life at the stage of viability outside the life support system provided by its mother’s body, or at a baby’s exit from the womb, or (as in some tribal cultures) after the child is painted to distinguish it from the animals?

Again, in a pluralistic culture, why privilege one unproveable faith- based interpretation over all those other ways of understanding the beginnings of personal life?

Sjöö and Mor argue that such questions of faith disappear if matters of pregnancy and abortion are understood within the context of the Great Cosmic Mother’s “religion of the earth.”

There, women whose very monthly processes mirror those of the seasons, moon phases, and tides, are granted overriding insights, intuitions, and understandings about their unique processes inaccessible to the men whose patriarchal pronouncements would explain, invalidate and govern them.

In specifically theological perspective, proponents of the reemergent goddess religion add: “If God is seen as female, the problem of abortion does not exist. The entire question of sex, pregnancy, birth control – and even abortion – undergoes an ontological somersault, a revolution of basic terms”

Conclusion

This article has been about abortion. It has argued that solving its dilemmas begins with recognizing their roots in patriarchy and patriarchy’s God.

The same argument could be made about climate change and the threat of nuclear war. In all three cases, the problem is the relatively recent arrival of a world governed by men (patriarchy).

Theologically speaking, man’s world has been grounded in the worship of a God divorced from life’s most basic processes. Fundamentally, patriarchy’s God is a war deity. He legislates, judges, condemns, and punishes. He is a God of fear. He has been used as a tool to persuade the politically, economically, and historically illiterate to endorse patriarchy’s omnicidal agenda.

[Think about it. It is men who run a world economy that is irreversibly destroying the planet. It is male politicians, generals, and CEOs (aided by the relatively few women admitted to their clubs) who have developed and currently threaten the world with nuclear destruction. It is men, not women who are the planet’s principal rapists, child abusers, mass shooters – and clergy. And the latter’s misogynist theology is unconsciously rooted in a 12,000-year-long battle against The Great Cosmic Mother.]

By contrast The Great Cosmic Mother herself embodies life’s rich abundance, generosity, extravagance, and prodigality. She welcomes humans as co-creators with Life’s Source. She is the Ground of life’s cycles and rhythms. Those rhythms assure that what has come once – when the time is wrong – can come once again when the time is right. The Great Cosmic Mother could never endorse her own matricide whether by climate change or war of any kind, nuclear or not.

And it is women spiritual leaders who are most in touch with her. These are the guides who must replace the male priests, pastors, imams, rabbis – and presidents. And (in American culture) they have names such as Louise Hay, Liz Theoharis, Caroline Myss, Monica Sjöö, Barbara Mor – and Marianne Williamson. Their theology is earthy, experiential, eminently practical, and expresses the insights of those whose lives are deeply connected with earth’s rhythms in ways the patriarchal order has proven incapable of understanding.

What I’m suggesting is that it is high time to overcome “sophisticated” reluctance to recognize such truths and leaders. It is far past time for churches to debunk the modern patriarchal God in favor of the ancient Great Cosmic Mother who frees from patriarchal laws, empowers humans as co-creators, forgives, appreciates, and rewards.

Fundamentally, our problems are not economic, political, or ideological. The left needs the courage to recognize and profess that faith. Only The Great Cosmic Mother can save us now.

Sorry, Mr. Clinton, it’s not the economy. It’s the theology.

The Taiwan “Crisis”: Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden Belong in Jail

Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden belong in jail. In fact, any world leader who creates situations that make nuclear war possible, belongs in prison. Who gave them or anyone the right to threaten the future of our planet for any reason at all –but especially for no reason whatsoever?

Let me put that another way: Our elected officials have invented out of whole cloth an entirely avoidable crisis with China, a nuclear power. Out of the blue and for no compelling reason at all, they’ve decided to turn Tuesday August 2nd into what Australia’s Sky News described as possibly “the most dangerous day of this century.”

And why? Simply because they can – or they think they can!

They want to demonstrate their conviction that no one can tell U.S. officials what to do.

[What? Are these high school adolescents? No, they’re octogenarians! (Maybe that explains it.) In any case, their “reasoning” is worse than juvenile.]

Get this: they’re convinced that it’s worth risking your life, mine, and those of our grandchildren to make some inane schoolyard point: “No one’s gonna tell me what to do! I’ll show you, even if it kills us all!”

Let me repeat: because they’ve demonstrated such unmistakable immaturity – for nothing more than a public relations stunt – the instigators of this event (the Biden administration and Pelosi) have clearly displayed their stupidity, incompetence and unfitness to hold public office. As a Great Man once said, “Lock them up!”

Why Villainize China?

In fact, this whole villainization of China is puzzling beyond measure.

Why consider it an enemy at all? Think of what the Chinese have accomplished for humankind in an extraordinarily short time. Their system:

Has for the last 40 years experienced the fastest economic growth rate of any country in the world.
Is on track to displace the United States as the world’s premiere economy by the year 2030 if not before.
Has raised more than 800,000,000 people out extreme poverty – and in record time.
Has enabled Chinese families (almost 20%of the world’s population) to work decent jobs, feed their families, secure a good education, and enjoy health care, with ever rising expectations.
By prioritizing health care during a pandemic, has been far more successful in saving the lives of its citizens than the pitiful response of the United States, which prioritized profits over human life.
Over a period of merely 70 years, has reversed a situation where perhaps a million people each year were dying of starvation to one where life expectancy in China is now longer than that of U.S. citizens.
Through their Belt and Road Initiative has constructively engaged the developing world in coordinated efforts to eliminate international problems like hunger, climate change, and decrepit or non-existent infrastructure after centuries of debilitating colonialism and looting at the hands of Europe and the United States.

And yet, the United States treats China as though such accomplishments were somehow bad – as though joblessness, hunger, ignorance, sickness, short life expectancy, and narrow nationalism were preferable to decent jobs, ability to feed one’s family, access to higher education and health care, along with longevity, and foreign aid.

Democracy in China

Obviously, the Chinese people prefer life and prosperity over their opposites. In fact, according to the Pew Research Center, 85 percent of Chinese people in 2013 were satisfied with their government, while only 35 percent of Americans felt the same about their government.

But what about democracy? Am I somehow claiming that China is more democratic than the United States?

Yes, I am.

In fact, according to the report of longtime China resident Cyrus Janssen, that’s the way citizens in China (and Vietnam by the way) perceive their country. Janssen based his report on Denmark’s 2022 “Democracy Perception Index” (see video above). It’s the world’s largest annual study on how people in general perceive democracy.

According to that study, fewer than 50% of Americans feel that the U.S. is truly democratic. By contrast 81% of Chinese feel their country is democratic – and this even though China is a one-party state.

How can that be?

It’s simple. The Chinese people are evidently convinced that a government that meets the needs of its people is more democratic than one who holds periodic elections but ignores the popular will.

Moreover, according the “Democracy Perception Index,” only 5% of Chinese believe their country does not have free and open elections for offices below the country’s presidency.

China’s Problems

None of this is to say that China is somehow without its problems. Like any country – especially one with such a huge and culturally diverse population – China has problems. But lack of democracy, it seems, is not one of them.

Instead, China’s problems include:

Threats by the United States, a country with merely 4.6% of the world’s population whose policies indicate that it should be able to control the entire world including China which lies 7000 miles away from the U.S. mainland.
A Muslim problem which (unlike the United States) it addresses not by wars and bombing, but by efforts at development and re-education. (Say what you will about the latter, but it’s arguably more enlightened than the U.S. way of dealing with Muslims at home and abroad by waging its forever wars for the last two decades and more.)
Taiwan. There is no denying that Taipei and the secessionist tendencies of the ideological descendants of Chiang Kai-shek remain a problem. But in all of this, there are three simple facts to keep in mind: (1) according to three bilateral agreements solemnly signed by the United States and China (1972, 1979, and another in the 1980s) TAIWAN IS PART OF CHINA; (2) apart from the one created by Pelosi, THERE IS NO CRISIS IN TAIWAN, and (3) Without external interference CHINA AND TAIWAN SHOULD BE LEFT TO WORK OUT THEIR DIFFERENCES deliberately and diplomatically at their own pace.

Conclusion

So, how should (even self-serving) diplomats truly concerned with avoiding World War III have dealt with China’s objections to Pelosi’s visit – even if they wanted to portray China as somehow run by a dictatorial madman (which Xi Jinping is not)?

They should have said:

Pelosi’s intention in visiting Taiwan was completely innocuous meant only to strengthen economic and political ties with the island that the U.S. has always recognized not only as part of China, but as an important trading partner.
Moreover, the United States is committed not to opposing China, but to cooperating with its marvelous and unprecedented economic and social achievements.
Yet, China’s president irrationally has decided to turn this peaceful visit into an international incident that (again, irrationally) threatens the entire planet.
To prevent the prevalence of such unfounded irrationality and in the interests of world peace, the House Speaker has decided to postpone her visit until such time as cooler heads prevail.

With such explanation, maturity would have been demonstrated on the U.S. side. China’s president would experience no humiliation. And no face would be lost either side.

And finally, at least by any credible moral standard, Biden and Pelosi would have avoided condemnation as the schoolyard bullies and international criminals they are instead proving themselves to be.

As anyone can see, international diplomacy (at least for those concerned about your future, mine and that of our children and grandchildren) is not that hard.

Pelosi and Biden don’t get it. Lock them up!