I had a colleague at the University of Michigan who telephoned me one evening after the executive committee of the English Department had determined salary raises for the next year for the faculty. Though I was the most published member of my department, taught four classes instead of two, was the only member of the department to have received two university teaching awards, had also received two awards for outstanding service to students as an academic adviser, etc., as usual I was to receive the minimum salary raise. My friend told me, "Bert, if you would just learn to keep your mouth shut about things, we could pay you more." Thanks, E.J.

Now I am told I should quit complaining about things going wrong, not at the University, but in the United States and in the world. I'm not going to do it. To accept this world as it is is immoral. To accept President Obama's governance of the United States would be, to my mind, to join in the perpetration of war crimes. And I won't keep quiet--even if many of my American friends object to what I say.

The United States is running a concentration camp in Cuba. If we didn't have so many nuclear weapons and a nasty record of having used them, the rest of the world would object. The United States has suspended the constitutional guarantee of Habeas Corpus--which is of course unconstitutional. We are currently engaged in two illegal and immoral wars, and are regularly now bombing people in yet another country.

Why should I shut up about this? Why should I not complain? Why should I not be angry--at what my country is doing?

Those who say I should shut up want to pretend that everything is rosy: and they want to pretend such because everything is indeed rosy for them. They are wealthy, they live in safe communities, their kids are either finished school or in good schools, they don't even know anybody who is in the military, and they never even think about Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Pakistanis, poor Americans, people without health insurance, kids in bad schools, street crime, poverty.

I don't do all I should to try to stop our national crimes. I don't do all I should
to try to remedy the evils that infest our society, or to relieve the poor. But I do more than those who tell me to shut up--and I challenge them to show me otherwise.

News from the Academics

An exciting new "critical" approach to literature has been announced. Well, not an approach to literature, really. It's part of the game of tag that the academic folks play with books. This one is called "Do you know that I know what you know."

Do you know that I know what you know?
I know that you know what I know is useless.
Do I know that you know what I know is useless?
You know that I know that you know what I know is useless.
But I am the professor, and I am writing a book about what I know.

It needs a better name than "Do you know that I know what you know," of course. How about Semiarsics? Typslomusics? Opisthics?

The Catholic Church . . .

Authortity always asks for acceptance of its errors. The Catholic Church never, ever, invokes "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone." But caught--quite literally--with its all-male pants down--it suddenly remembers.

The woman caught in adultery is no great sinner. Consenting adults? There is nothing abusive about that, though there is perhaps a breach of trust, of faith.

But the clerical sex crimes are another matter. These are rapes: statutory rapes for the most part, the victims under the age of consent. For the victims beyond that age, it's a matter of "moral" authority used to commit crimes. And the Catholic Church lives on the "moral" authority of its clergy.

To look more largely at what the Catholic clergy's sex sacandal means is to ask, why does the Catholic Church exist? What does it have to do with Jesus of Nazareth? Anything?

He taught against greed, against the rich. What is the richest--and the greediest--organisation on the face of the earth? The Catholic Church. It not only has the biggest bank accounts, the greatest stock holdings, the most real estate; it glories in its wealth. Its churches proclaim wealth. Its Pope wears a triple gold crown, and parades around dressed in gold-embroidered vestments. Everything about it mocks Jesus of Nazareth.

So why does it exist?

The historical Jesus was a very good and noble man. He taught the same simple but profound goodness that Socrates taught. Because many people listened to him, and accepted with enthusiasm what he taught, he was deemed dangerous by the powerful people of his time, and brutally murdered.

Since then, the powerful people have been more shrewd. They have taken him over, pretended to admire and love him, have made a god of him--and have ignored everything that he said.

If the people who call themselves "Christians" thought--for one short moment--of what their Christianity amounts to, they would rise up and with one great decent voice begin to change the world. The wealth of the Catholic Church would be used to feed millions and millions of people, gaudy churches and cathedrals would house millions of homeless people, and freed from the Church's hypocrisy we might even begin to take care of each other.

Christians could indeed change the world. The first step toward than end would be the abolition of the Catholic Church. It has a long, long history of abuse: and the thousands of cases of sexual abuse of boys that have been exposed in recent years are just the perverse tip of nearly two thousand years of moral perversity--and the perversion of the teachings of one of the truly great men in human history.

The Catholic Church has responded to the crimes of sexual abuse by condemning the sin, but not the sinner. How clever! The pope apologises for the sins, but doesn't mention the sinners. One might think, from what the pope has said, that what has been exposed is a massive, world-wide ring of young masturbators, not a world-wide ring of vicious hypocritical child-molesters disguised as Catholic priests.

WIN-WIN SITUATIONS

The United States has found another another win-win situation. We will sell more arms to India and also more arms to Pakistan. The more arms they have, the bigger war they can have some day--without having to use their nuclear weapons. And the more money U.S. arms manufacturers will make.

A few years ago the good people who make their money selling weapons all over the world happily sold arms to Ronald Reagan so he could give them to the Taliban--so they could fight the U.S.S.R. Did the arms manufacturers already know that the Taliban would use them to fight the U.S.--and that George Bush and Barack Obama would then buy more arms from the weapons manufacturers so the U.S. could fight the Taliban?

The coffin manufacturers must be next in line for getting really rich. The way things are going, it will soon be time to bury the whole of the U.S.

MONEY TALKS

This year, in the United States, the football bowl games all had new names. The AT&T Cotton Bowl, the FedEx Orange Bowl, the Allstate Sugar Bowl, the CitiBank Rose Bowl.

Now that Congress is part of the economy, and senators and representatives can be purchased legally, their owners will start identifying themselves. We will have the MetLife Senator from Massachusetts, the Exxon Senator from Illinois, the DuPont Senator from Delaware, the Pfizer Senator from Florida. Or maybe we will just do away with the state designations, and identify Senators by their corporate owners.

I wonder who will own--or already owns--the Supreme Court Justices? They will no doubt have the biggest price tags.

What a wonderful thing democracy is! The best thing about it, as the United States demonstrates with such remarkable regularity, is that democracy is so easily corrupted.

Bert Hornback

TEACHING OBSCENITY

American universities teach lots of different things: math, medicine, law, the humanities, the natural sciences, the social sciences. But they teach most effectively the anti-social science that their recent presidents practice, which is GREED.

American university presidents teach by example. They are paid hugely obscene salaries, and in demanding and accepting such teach their students GREED. No matter what students are taught in their other classes, they are all taught GREED by their presidents.

Michigan is a state in desperate economic trouble. Unemployment, poverty, homelessness are everywhere, not just in Detroit. There are even unemployed, poor, and homeless people in Ann Arbor, where the University of Michigan is situated. The president of the University of Michigan has an annual salary of $600,000, plus a $100,000 a year bonus, plus an expense account, plus a huge mansion and servants to take care of her and her husband. In addition to being the university president, of course, she is the university´s senior professor of GREED, and one of the nation´s best.

(If Michigan´s president is not such an effective professor of GREED, then why is she being paid so extravagantly?)

HAITI

Of course we need to help the people of Haiti. But we don´t need three presidents urging us to donate a few dollars each to the cause.

Mr. Obama can suspend his wars for a week, and send $7,000,000,000 to Haiti. That´s $20 for every American. And then he can suspend his wars for another week, and send $7,000,000,000 more.

By then maybe we will have realised that we do much more good by helping others than we do by bombing them.

I would rather be afraid of possible terrorists than guilty of mass murder. And I think there is much better likelihood that the United States can be safe from attack if it helps others--the poor, the needy--than if it murders them.

America´s wars kill other people, and they endanger Americans.