Pie Palace

All throughout the US election, Canadian news outlets kept running stories that featured Americans saying things like “I just can’t bring myself to vote for someone with a name like Obama, it sounds too Muslim,” or “I don’t think Obama was raised with Christian values,” or “Should we really elect someone with the middle name Hussein?”

Don Miller has written a brief blessay that may explain this mind-numbing xenophobia. It gybes nicely with Jesus Camp and The Assault on Reason: essentially stating that the unicorn chasersreligious right is born out of a horribly segmented and alienating society.

The same election that made Obama president also denied marriage to millions of Americans. California, Arizona and Florida voted to ban gay marriage. Arkansas banned same sex couples from adopting children. I can’t fathom how the same people who would elect a black man as president would deny consenting adults from making long term commitments to each other. I guess that shows what kind of community I grew up in.

Link to Don Miller via Matthew Helmke.

I was considering heading out to Nevada this year for Burning Man. Then I looked at their theme for this year: the American Dream. I have nothing against our neighbours to the south, but the blurb makes the whole idea sound awful:

What has America achieved that you admire? What has it done or failed to do that fills you with dismay? What is laudatory? What is ludicrous? Put blame aside, let humor thrive, and dare to contemplate a larger question: What can America, this stumbling, roused, half-conscious giant, still contribute to the world?

I really don’t care about the national identity of the most self-obsessed country on the planet. I don’t go to Burning Man to worshop american self-adulation, I go their to spend time with some phenominally creative people, and see what people can do when they do what they love. In my mind, that transcends national identity.

2008 was going to be my last pilgramage to the Playa for a few years. I wanted another visit before embarking on the more adult (and cash-hungry) part of my life. But the theme really puts me off. Bastards.

Other years have had fun themes: the Floating World, Psyche, the Seven Ages. Why do they have to pick 2008 to say “Forget creativity for creativity’s sake, we’re hopping onto election year hype and making Burning Man more mainstream”?