Frankenstein's Pledge Puppets

Former Virginia governor (and current U.S. senator) Mark Warner describes a failure to halt a debt default as "the single most irresponsible act, almost unprecedented, in American politics." New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has stated that "The biggest threat to the United States this summer probably doesn't come from Iran or Libya but from the home-grown risk that the nation will default on its debts."

Once again Speaker Boehner has walked away from a deal with the president because of the fact that 95 percent of Republicans have previously signed a pledge put forth by the Republican strategist, Grover Norquist, to oppose any legislation that involves tax increases, including the elimination of tax loopholes. Despite Obama's having offered Republicans a deal that gives away the store from the Democrats' point of view, at the last minute Boehner defected yet again and walked away.

"I've been left at the altar a couple of times now," the president responded, rueful but distinctly peeved. And who wouldn't be?The truth is, Boehner couldn't get his Frankenstein Freshman clones, the pledge puppets, to go along with the deal, and so, rather than lose face by admitting to the real problem (which would likely cost him his job), he did what Republicans always do in the Age of Obama: raise the gun smoothly, look over to his right, and then in full view, shoot down the president.

I have to agree with Andrew Sullivan who states "The GOP believe they can destroy the U.S. and global economy and from the wreckage ensure Obama is not reelected. That is their sole guiding principle. They terrify me....What Cantor and Boehner are doing is essentially letting the world know they have an economic WMD in their possession. And it will go off if you do not give them everything they want, with no negotiation possible."

While I was writing this, NPR did a quick interview with Norquist, who stated that it had not been necessary to twist anybody's arm to get them to sign his Taxpayer Protection Pledge before the 2010 election. "They are all true believers," he said. Whenever you increase taxes, he further explained, politicians spend more--and that is not the way to shrink government. For the record, Congress first agreed to raise the debt limit in 1917 to fund World War I. Since then it has done so 102 times without ever being a partisan or a contentious issue, or being used as a tool to blackmail the president.

Norquist's influence in all of this cannot be overstated. However, when asked if he was worried that perhaps he might get the blame if the government defaults or loses its triple A credit rating, he responded, without missing a beat, "No. Obama will." Defending himself earlier in a New York Times op ed this week, Norquist wrote: "Contrary to the hopes of some that I am somehow softening the pledge, it is stronger and more important than ever: it has made it easier for members of Congress to credibly commit to voters that they will refuse to increase taxes and instead focus on reducing the cost of government."

I've asked myself several times already in these pages the question of when intractable obstructionism from Republicans that damages American interests morphs into treason. The answer, I see now, is never--or only when it will be too late, which at this point in time, could be as soon as next week. Mark Halperin of Time magazine writes: "It will probably take a market crash to get enough House Republicans willing to compromise." In Washington's current GOP, compromise is the new dirty word. "When Grover Norquist, the de facto head of the Republican Congress, has defined bipartisanship as 'date rape,' and any tax increase as heresy." a regular commenter to the New York Times' columns wrote recently online, "you can see why the GOP has boxed itself right into a corner."

Finally, allow me to indulge in the poignant words of yet another reader's comment: "If I hear Boehner or that creep Cantor moan one more time about not putting a 'tax burden' on the wealthy who create all these wonderful jobs, I'll vomit." To which I would add that maybe, when all is said and done, THIS is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but with a vomit.

Infusing Hope Into the Dark Night of Our Species (2): The Annunciation

Following up on my previous blog referencing Andrew Harvey's book "The Hope," I want to recount the particular mystical experience that jolted Andrew's life-long journey as a spiritual seeker into a new realm of what he calls "sacred activism," and caused him to dedicate his life from then on to relieving the world's suffering. I believe it was an Annunciation of sorts that led him to his future role as a "sacred activist."

By his own account, a Divine intervention occurred in Andrew's life at the time when his father was dying in Coimbatore, India. In conversations they had at his deathbed, his father told him how he had come to see that the future of the world was in danger and that only a revolution of the heart, expressed in action, could transform the situation. "I hope to God we still have time," his father kept on saying.

While his father was dying, Andrew went to a local Catholic church nearby, on the feast day of Christ the King, where he heard the priest sermonizing about the power of the resurrected Jesus, whose fiery love no cruelty could deter or defeat. The priest informed the congregation that this was the model for what would resurrect the world from its suffering, poverty, despair, and apathy.

"After the priest finished talking and sat down," Andrew writes, "I looked up at the statue of the resurrected Christ at the end of the church. The only thing i can say about what happened next is that the statue became alive. For almost 15 minutes I saw the Christ in majestic, radiant golden light...It was both an ecstasy and an agony beyond anything I had ever known or even imagined." He goes on to describe how the fire streaming between his heart and the heart of the resurrected Christ felt like a knife plunging again and again into his heart--and that what was being revealed to him was the cosmic force of Divine Love and the potential divinity of all human beings who would allow themselves to be possessed and transformed by Divine Passion. This fire was what it will take for us to survive the coming ordeals and cataclysms, according to Andrew. "This was the fire in which a new world would be created out of the smoldering ashes of the old."

As he emerged from the church, Andrew saw an emaciated man with no arms or legs, "planted in a filthy puddle." Thinking he saw the re-embodied Christ in this figure crucified by suffering and poverty, he ran towards him to offer help. It was then that he heard a voice, which seemed to come from inside him, speak. It began by upbraiding him for his selfish spiritual ways-- exploiting mystical teachings for his own personal pleasure and career, when what he needed to be doing instead was devoting all of his actions and resources to ending the horror everywhere around him.

"The world," the voice said, "is burning to death in the fires of greed and ignorance. All of animal and human life is now threatened. This being you see before you is one of billions in anguish. See behind him and around him the burning forests, the polluted seas, the vanishing tigers and polar bears. The Divine is being crucified again and again by a humanity obsessed with its own needs and driven increasingly...to dominate and control and exploit everything."

At that point, I couldn't help thinking of the Republican blowhards sitting in the West Wing, even as I wrote this, and playing Russian roulette with the debt ceiling, their pretzel brains working overtime to corner and defeat the President politically under the camouflage of claiming to want to reduce the budget deficit. (Despite their current posturing, Republicans voted seven times to raise the debt ceiling during George W. Bush's administration, even while Bush was busy doubling the national debt.) Then, quite unexpectedly, I had my own epiphany. Teleported straight into the White House, I crashed one of these meetings, ongoing exercises in Republican futility. I looked hard at Eric Cantor, John Boehner, and Mtich McConnell--who, whenever a bipartisan agreement is within reach, turn on their heels and leave the president holding the bag--and I read out loud to them the final comments spoken to Andrew by his mystical voice:

"Everything you are and everything you do from this moment on must help human beings awaken to their inner divinity and to its responsibilities of urgent sacred action. The only questions you will be asked when you cross over the waters of death are 'What did you do while the world was burning? How did you work to heal the horror of a world on fire? What did you love enough to risk and give your life for?' Nothing else will matter. Understand this now."

The voice then advised Andrew to turn away from everything he had been and done and believed, and to dive into the furnace of a Divine Love that embraces all beings. It demanded that he give his whole life to spread and embody the message of its passion to the world. The only hope, both for him and for humanity, is to take up the challenge of the Divine and put the fire of Divine Compassion into radical action in every arena of the world."

Would it have any effect, make any difference? Probably not with these guys. By his own account, the call to action dramatized by the "voice" terrified even Andrew. "It left me nowhere to turn and no self-justification to cling to. I felt vulnerable, naked, broken, and exposed, a fraud and fool, absolutely inadequate to what was being asked of me, afraid of what the voice was revealing about the world," he writes.

I found myself wondering if anything--or anyone--could ever make men like Cantor, Boehner, or McConnell feel vulnerable, naked, broken or exposed--much less a fraud or a fool.

"If I," Andrew continues, "who had pursued spiritual truth for 20 years, could be so resistant to a vision I knew came directly from the Divine, how would others...even begin to receive the message, let alone act upon it?" The question cannot be improved upon, and it begs answering. Annunciations, it must be said, are all-encompassing. Once they strike, you cannot really avoid their imperative. You can recoil, but you cannot really refuse them.

Infusing Hope Into the Dark Night of Our Species

When he was 41, Andrew Harvey met Father Bede Griffith, a renowned mystic and teacher living in India, who was 85 years old at the time. Harvey, a serious seeker, mystic, and teacher himself [check out his particulars on Amazon or at www.andrewharvey,org] spent 10 days at Griffith's ashram, taping interviews with the Master for a friend's documentary film. One of the first things Father Bede said to him was "You know, Andrew, don't you, that we are now living in the 'Hour of God'?" Andrew asked him to explain what he meant by the 'Hour of God'."

"I mean that humanity has come to the moment when it will have to choose between trying to play God, with the catastrophic results we see all around us, and trying to become what all the true mystical traditions know we can become--one with God through grace in life. This is a dangerous yet wonderful and hopeful moment because if enough of us can choose the latter, the birth of a wholly new kind of human being, and so of a new world, is possible."

This is where I always have my fatal stumble with spirituality today: its presumption of a new kind of human being and a new world that will miraculously unfold after humanity has traversed a near-deathlike dark night of the soul. Standing lonesome watch as I do when I often feel like I am live-blogging the end of the world, what I see is one unforgiving catastrophe unfolding after another. It seems relentless. (Check out the new oil spill currently polluting the Yellowstone River.) From these circumstances, the leap into envisioning "a new kind of human being and a new world" frankly eludes me. I feel only dread at what awaits the human race.

Reading Andrew's book "The Hope: A Guide to Sacred Activism" this summer, however, is helping me to pass, like a fitful camel, through the eye of that needle. The words he writes and the stories he tells have made me feel less alone in my heartbreak. This is because Andrew minces no words when he describes the depths of his own dread and despair, and how difficult it has been to confront them. "How could any half-conscious human being NOT feel dread at the enormous suffering that is erupting all over the world?" The extremity of it is overwhelming.

"Dread," Andrew writes, "is the most paralyzing of all human of all human emotions and the one I, and everyone else I know, will do almost anything to avoid. Facing the depth of my dread has threatened me, at times, with hopelessness. What I have found, however, is that acknowledging my dread and treating it not as a weakness to be repressed at all costs, but as an inevitable response to real circumstances, has helped me start to heal it."

Personal disclosure: I haven't read too many people willing to be that unflinchingly frank, and so I clutch onto this book as I would to a life raft. I relish the company of someone who writes the way I would like to write, who thinks the way I would like to think, and when I read him, I know myself a little better. Harvey asks questions the way no one else would: "How exactly do we acquire a 'lover's heart" [he is paraphrasing Rumi here] that stays 'a rose garden' however 'choked with thorns' our circumstances become?" I feel a little less lost in emotional Siberia when I read him.

It was Harvey's own "radical descent" into a fierce and angry disillusionment with humanity, he claims, that ultimately saved him. To experience this disillusionment, he now believes, is to face without denial the reality of the evil that we as a race have done to ourselves, to the animals, and to Nature. He catalogues the list of evils we have perpetrated thusly: brutal wars, genocides, the systematic rape of Nature, the creation of a free-for-all financial system that makes an elite few obscenely rich while billions of people live in terrible degradation--with the result that humanity is now in danger of losing its conscience and soul just when it needs them most. In the end, Harvey is convinced that only by "weathering the storms of grief and heartbreak and the hopelessness of a long, hard look at our crisis, the state of humanity, and the state of my own character" was he able to alchemically transmute the hopelessness and the heartbreak into an infusion of more illuminating energy.

For me, the lesson learned here--and there will be more of them to recount as I make my way through this remarkable book--is that hope is not some giddy, feel-good, Oprah Winfrey thing meant to spackle over your despair and keep you comfy while you go on about your daily business. Given where the planet is at this point, hope must be earned, by walking on the hot coals of a crisis-ridden world and running the gauntlet of a sickening chagrin and dismay. Only then can an authentic and embodied hope bloom into place and become a realistic possibility. Any hope, according to Andrew, that "glosses over the reality of evil or does not respect its power will not be of any use." And so, when the student is ready, the teacher appears. [To be continued.]

The illustration above was sent to me by my friend Jane Vance, who says it is the torso of a poor village Indian who saves and befriends animals, a detail from a painting-in-progress called "What Light Does to Fish."

Butterflies on Steroids

I recently finished reading "A Question of Values" by Morris Berman and was stopped dead in my tracks by his statement:
"Wouldn't it make sense, at this point, for America to "resign' with dignity? To come to terms with its collapse, and just accept it?" I think about this all the time. It's been my personal Zen koan, even before reading Berman's book.

So you open your safe and find ashes. But exactly who--what publisher, what network--would even entertain such a story? Of America "resigning" and coming to terms with its collapse? Acceptance of this damning truth may be our only exit from the culture of lies and denial--from the "psychic free radicals" poisoning everyone's energy field and filling the collective atmosphere with a sense of dread--but ultimately (once you seriously think about it), would facing up to this truth help or harm? Were we fully to acknowledge our civilizational and environmental collapse, wouldn't that signal a hopeless defeatism from which there could be no possibility of recovery? But what if recovery really is not possible? Would that mean a loss of faith in life, of still having confidence in something which is broken? Can we even grasp what it would be like to live without confidence in the future?

Anyway, it won't happen. Nobody, not Obama and certainly not the Republicans, not Charlie Rose or Jon Stewart or anyone else, is going to stand up tall and officially inform the American people that it's "over" for our country. Nobody wants to tell their out-of-town friends that the houseplants have died and gone black, sitting in their pots in the bay window. Who among us is likely to admit that we really have no idea what we should do? Life seems as if it just goes on, irregardless; it goes on as before, at least for those whose houses are still standing and are not under water--whose chess pieces can still be found in their rightful positions on an end table in some well-furnished room. For those who are still that lucky, there is no shortage of good days.

In his book, Berman cites a Feb.2, 2009 essay by Benjamin Barber, published in The Nation: "It is hard to discern any movement toward a wholesale rethinking of the dominant role of the market in our society. No one is questioning the impulse to rehabilitate the consumer market as the driver of American commerce." Many weights have fallen on the heads of the American people since then, with notable frequency, but thus far, nothing has broken the powerful pattern. "Rather than being on the verge of some possible cultural renaissance," Berman comments, "or a reversal of our entire history, what we are now witnessing is the slow-motion suicide of the nation, with Mr. Obama guiding us, in a genteel and semi-conscious way, into the grave. Indeed, what more can he or anybody do at this point?" I still vividly recall Berman's comment, even before Obama became president, that whoever got elected would end up being a funeral director, rather than a president.

One of my favorite writers (whom I've also been reading of late), Caroline Myss, in her Forward to Andrew Harvey's "The Hope: A Guide to Sacred Activism," claims that aside from the obvious social, political, economic, and environmental challenges facing us, there are even more treacherous subtle forces at play, such as the ever-accelerating rapidity of these changes--to the point where we can't really keep up with them. Change now happens at light speed and is global in magnitude. There is hardly such a thing anymore as a "local" change, says Myss.

"The Internet and the television have brought changes of all nations into view within seconds and not only into view, but into your bank account, into your stock holdings, into your insurance policies, and into your job security. A shift in the market in Japan or China could result in the loss of your job in the morning." It sounds like the "butterfly effect," only on steroids. (The "butterfly effect" refers to the proposition that whatever happens in the world has a ripple effect that eventually affects every other thing in the world. Thus, a butterfly flapping its wings in Rio can cause an earthquake in Beijing.) The information overload of news and information, warns Myss, affects not only our exterior lives but also our emotional, psychological, and mental well-being:

"I frequently have people tell me," she writes, "that they avoid the news because it's all negative, but is avoidance really a mature response?" (To me, avoidance seems like a nickel magic trick.) If you decide to avoid the news because it's all negative, "then who should respond to those assaulting the environment?" asks Myss. "And to those committing war crimes? And to those violating our constitution? These crimes happened and will continue to happen precisely because people do not want to look at the shadow of the society we live in, much less the shadow of the global community." Don't imagine for a moment, she adds, that by not following the news you can avoid the psychic free radicals generated by the collective unconscious. They are penetrating willy-nilly into your individual psychic field whether you are paying attention or not.

Item. From my local newspaper today: "For the first time in a year, Americans have stopped spending more. Consumer spending failed to budge from April to May, evidence that high gasoline prices and unemployment are squeezing household budgets....Consumer spending is important because it accounts for 70 percent of economic activity."

Item. A friend from Roanoke, who has been driving across the country to California with her dog, sends this bulletin (along with many others): "Arkansas seems to have missed the fact that the World did not end on May 21st. I counted 12 billboards still proudly displaying the 'message.' "

Enough for now. I am ending this post with opening lines from a poem by Ray Bradbury:

"Not smash and grab, but rather find and keep;
Go panther-pawwed [sic] where all the mined truths sleep
To detonate the hidden seeds with stealth
So in your wake a weltering of wealth
Springs up unseen, ignored, and left behind
As you sneak on, pretending to be blind."

And that, folks, is my collage offering for the week. I hope to leave behind a weltering of wealth that will spring up unseen in my wake, as I myself sneak on, pretending to be blind, which of course, I'm not.

Into the Yucky Pack of Varmints, a Huntsman Comes!

Here's how the New York Times characterized the GOP's first presidential debate held earlier this week: "Monday’s Republican presidential debate in New Hampshire — full of historical error, economic obfuscation, avoidance of hard truths and even outright bigotry — was a feast for connoisseurs of political dysfunction. Desperate to avoid being outflanked on the right, the seven candidates tried so hard to outdo each other in finding fault with President Obama that they seemed to forget that they are competing for the same party nomination. By evening’s end, they had melted into an indistinguishable mass of privatizing, tax-cutting opponents of Shariah law."

The following exchange is a day-glo example of what the Times editorial was referring to. It took place that night between CNN's moderator, John King, and Governor Tim Pawlenty, who predictably recommends more tax-cutting to "get the economy moving again": “If you win the nomination, you’ll have to make the choice that a nominee makes, and that is picking a running mate. Governor Pawlenty to you, look back on 2008 and the process. President Obama made a pick. Senator McCain made a pick. Who made the best choice?” Pawlenty hesitates, and then recovers. He says Vice President Joe Biden makes horrible decisions and that Palin is wonderful.

The truth is, there is one plausible Republican candidate out there--one who still bears a resemblance to the species once formerly known as "homo sapiens." But he wasn't at the debate. He has since announced, however, that he will officially declare his candidacy next Tuesday. I've been eyeballing Utah's former governor, Jon Huntsman, ever since late May when I came across an online version of a commencement address he gave at the University of South Carolina on May 27th. I've mentioned him since to several friends, who all shook their heads in foggy nonrecognition. "Never heard of him,. Don't know who he is," they all said. Except for my friend Jane's son, Emerson, a politically savvy young man whom I love to talk politics with. When I said to Emer that I thought the Republicans had one decent candidate, he immediately shook his head in agreement. I wondered if, by some miracle, we were referring to the same person. "What are his initials?" I diffidently asked, almost afraid to ask. "J.H." he replied. "Yow! I said, that's him!"

The first time I noticed Jon Huntsman was when President Obama appointed him as U.S. Ambassador to China. A few pundits whispered at the time it was partly to get Huntsman out of the country as a political rival in the 2012 election. But Huntsman resigned the post several months ago and came back to America. He's been on the GOP's list of possible candidates all along, but Republican officials have ignored him. Huntsman polls at only 1% and in a straw poll in Iowa, he got a total of one vote. The GOP would like to keep it that way, not only because he is unacceptably moderate, but because he also did the unthinkable--accepting a job in the Obama administration. Which is, after all, the equivalent of digging your own grave. Not only that, but he expressed support for Obama's 2009 stimulus package, endorsed an individual mandate for health insurance, and has been a moderate on gay marriage, supporting civil unions for same-sex couples. "This would make him an accomplished pragmatic conservative in any other Western country," writes political blogger, Nate Silver. "In America, in the GOP today, he's a commie."

But what really got my attention, as I said, was his commencement speech. It sounded just like something Obama would give. These are some excerpts:

"Your generation will have your own unique set of circumstances that make you feel like your future has somehow been derailed. Wars, economic recessions, social upheaval, revolutions around the globe...and yet, in each case, we recover, learn lessons and become ever more resilient.
I know there are many in China who think their time has come, that America's best days are over. And, there are probably some in this country who have lost confidence and think that China is the next big thing. But these people aren't seeing things from my earlier vantage point of 10,000 miles away. The way I saw it from overseas, America's passion remains as strong today as ever. Hold on to that sense of optimism. Hold on to that belief in your future. Our free and open society that can respectfully embrace debate, coupled with a free market system that rewards risk and innovation, is still the envy of the world. We are still as full of potential as ever. Just remember... When the oppressed are fighting autocratic regimes, they look to America for inspiration. When overseas entrepreneurs build companies, they still look to U.S. practices as the gold standard. When young people around the world want to attend the best colleges and universities they travel here. When playwrights, filmmakers and the creative classes abroad dream, their imaginations are fueled by America’s example.Our system needs new thinking. We need a fresh generation of innovators, leaders, risk takers, entrepreneurs, scientists, and activists -- That's you! Give back. As much as you’re able. Work to keep America great. Serve her, if asked. I was, by a president of a different political party. But in the end, while we might not all be of one party, we are all part of one nation, a nation that needs your generational gift of energy and confidence."

The other notable thing about Huntsman is he doesn't spend his time bashing Obama, or even take pokes at his Republican counterparts. He is, like Obama, unfailingly polite. "I think the answers are in the middle," he told a small crowd in Hancock, N.H. "There are enough wars in the world that Republicans don't have to be at war with Democrats." It's enough to stop the heart. Right now Huntsman's trailing like a vine, so we'll just have to see how it all plays out--starting next week when Huntsman's candidacy becomes official.

Walking in Water

Far be it from me to deny the Prez his moment of glory over the 2009 auto bailouts, but he needs to let up on the optimism narrative re the economy and face reality. I know Time magazine's recent cover story, "The Optimism Bias," claims our brains are hardwired to see the bright side, and that this is good for human health and evolution, but there's a hideous truth stalking the rear window and tapping on the panes. The U.S. economy is no longer treading water; it is going under. And this time. bailouts won't save us.

As of a year or two ago, bailouts were an important part of humanity's rescue plan--but that was before before floods and earthquakes and tornadoes became the new normal. Now, every week, another piece of the planet sinks under water, or is completely wiped off the face of the earth by an earthquake or a tornado. It's pretty grim stuff that, so far, President Obama has been reluctant to parse into his strained equations for the "recovering" economy.

Only a couple of weeks ago, flood disasters along the Mississippi delta grabbed the headlines, and now, another wave of flooding threatens multiple cities along the Missouri River--meaning that, once again, businesses, jobs, and homes will be pummeled and thrashed out of existence. Lives and economies upended. Levees and dams are unable to hold back the deluge. In the case of the Missouri, the floods are a consequence of excessive winter snow deluging down from the Rockies as it melts. The flows at some of the dam gates are expected to be more than double any previous records. Emergency rescue operations have demanded round-the-clock help from all government agencies--the National Guard, FEMA, and the Army Corps of Engineers--even while the national debt is rising at the rate of $46,0000 PER SECOND. But these nightmare scenarios are not just happening here. They are happening everywhere.

In 2010 alone, about 92 million people were forced to flee their homes because of natural "mega-disasters" around the world, more than double the number than during the previous year, according to reports by experts at an international conference about climate change and population displacement held in Oslo, Norway, recently. The March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan left more than 10,000 people dead, some 17,500 missing, and about a half-million homeless. In China, more than 15 million people were forced to flee their homes following floods, while 11 million were displaced in Paklstan. Similar mega-flooding has also occurred in Australia, India, and most recently, the U.S. "The intensity and frequency of extreme weather events is increasing, and this trend is only set to continue...as human-induced climate change comes into full force," said Elisabeth Rasmusson, the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council.

Polls show that Americans are increasingly unhappy with Obama's handling of the economy, and growing ever more pessimistic about the slow pace of recovery. Disapproval of his economic record is at a new high--boosting Mitt Romney's chances in the 2012 election. The American electorate is just so god-damned predictable, like the stars keeping their courses. The last thing Republicans want to see is a robust economic recovery taking place just before the election. It looks now as if they may get their wish.

Discussing climate change is bad news for any politician in office, so I expect we'll just go on with the president's optimistic bluster about auto bailouts, more rejiggering of the relationship between economic growth and jobs, and more Congressional rants about the debt ceiling. As the fire balloon bringing collapse burns in the night sky, no one will ever connect the dots. The sleeping elephant in the room will shamble forth, scattering bricks and bones, and our lost and ruined world will overflow its banks until it drowns. Whoever made that haunting film "Waterworld" was clearly a visionary and ahead of his time.

Vessels of Optimism

Everything about our lives is now changing so fast, many people wake up only to find that the world they went to sleep in the night before is significantly different the next day. It happened in Japan after the earthquake/tsunami and it happened again last week in Joplin, Missouri when the 200-mph tornado struck. You go to bed with your life seemingly normal and intact, and minutes later, you find yourself homeless, stripped of everything you once owned.

But this kind of extreme change can also happen in reverse. Last week, a 17-year-old high school student--who was only recently bagging groceries in Garner, N.C.--woke up on May 25th, just four days after Pastor Harold Walker had declared that the world was going to end, to find his fortunes, too, were radically changed; and that, after that night, his world would never be the same again either.

Scotty McCreery was voted (by 120 million viewers) the up-front, winner on American Idol, and so for him, life couldn't be better. See how radiant he looks, together with his equally lustrous runner-up, Lauren Alaina, age 16. They both appeared on stage at the beginning of the two-hour grand finale dressed in white, appearing for all the world like two angels writing in a book of gold. Vessels of optimism so pure as to liberate anyone's embittered self. Just the mere sight of them makes you glad to be alive, and that's before they even sing. At this point, no one knew yet who the winner was, and if, like me, you have no penchant for country music, listen to these kids perform on You-tube and become an instant convert.

The extravaganza on Fox that night, live from the Nokia Theater in L.A., was so unbelievably exhilarating, it made all the global crimes against humanity scrambling for our attention and the collective catastrophes of environmental destruction everywhere disappear, at least briefly, the way the moon will disappear for a while on a cloudy night. For a couple of hours, the world seemed whole again, and millions of viewers were lost in intense jubilation, saturated in so much talent and sweetness. It was human creativity at its zenith, enough to last for a lifetime, enclosing everyone in its wild power.

They took it all in stride, these kids, whirling happily on the globe of life without being hamstrung by their own success or ruined by self-conscious posturings. There were notable high points in the evening, such as when Lauren sang a duet with her idol, Carrie Underwood, and Jacob Lusk, a lumbering black crooner with rhythm that leaked from his very DNA, sang gospel with his idol, Gladys Knight. Most beguiling of all, however, was the 19-year-old runner-up, Haley Reinhart, paired with 84-year-old Tony Bennett, the two of them singing "Steppin' Out with My Baby" from the 1948 musical "Easter Parade" like there was no tomorrow. Check it out on Google if you want to give yourself a special treat.

The other stunner was my new passion, Jennifer Lopez, who was one of the judges, performing "Aquanile" with her sexy musician husband, Mark Anthony. The sizzle between the two of them was enough to take out the most hardened criminal on Death Row. Lopez's smoldering sexuality just knocks Lady Gaga's contrived seductions right off the board. it's no wonder she has become America's sweetheart. Lopez is heart-stopping beautiful and drop-dead talented. You might just think it is hopelessly tacky, even shameful, of me to be so in thrall to a popular reality-TV show. If you do happen to think that, it is only because you are asleep in the waves.