Saturday's N.Y. Times had an article on a Russian cellist and conductor named Mstislav Rostropovich who recently died. I read the obituary and was fascinated by the man and the Russian character in general. (The article made me realize it's been far too long since I've read a Russian novel.) One passage struck me as a great testament to the man's character and bravery:

Open Letter, Closed Society

Mr. Rostropovich’s own troubles began in 1970 when, out of frustration with the suppression of writers, artists and musicians, he sent an open letter to Pravda, the state-run newspaper, which did not publish it. Western newspapers did.

"Explain to me, please, why in our literature and art so often people absolutely incompetent in this field have the final word," he asked in the letter. "Every man must have the right fearlessly to think independently and express his opinion about what he knows, what he has personally thought about and experienced, and not merely to express with slightly different variations the opinion which has been inculcated in him."

After the letter was published, Mr. Rostropovich and Ms. Vishnevskaya were unable to travel abroad and faced dwindling engagements at home.

[I saw a promo for a new drama on FX starring Eddie Izzard. My first reaction was, "Hey, he's dressed normally." I then remembered how Eddie, in his transvestite days, would have admonished me for such an ignorant comment.]

If you are transvestite you get lumped into that weirdo grouping. You know there was a guy in the Bronx- when I was in New York- the was a guy in the Bronx who was living in a cave, like you do. And he was coming out and he was shooting at geese and... a lot of weird things going on with this guy. And they found in his cave- the police picked him up- they found a collection of women's shoes and they thought "Well maybe he's a transvestite." And if he is he's a fucking weirdo transvestite. I'm much more in the executive transvestite area. Travel the world, yes. It's much more executive.

Like, J. Edgar Hoover. What a fuckhead he was. They found out when he died he was a transvestite and they go "Well, that explains his weird behavior..."

Yeah, fucking weirdo transvestite. (Points to self) Executive transvestite. It's a lot wider community- more wide than you'd think.

The story of man who had his coming as only Jim Croce could sing it. I grew up listening to his music. My parents loved his storytelling and wry sense of humor. What a shame we lost him so early.

I came across some incredible footage of a young Rolling Stones band in the studio working on a new song, Sympathy for the Devil. The footage is buried in a totally opaque and dull Godard film. I have spliced together scenes that show the evolution of the song from Mick Jagger teaching Brian Jones and Keith Richards the chords- Charlie Watts improvising brilliantly on the drums, to Keith grinding out a bad ass buzzsaw riff, cigarette dangling from his lips, to the band working Nicky Hopkins' keyboards into the arrangement.

Is Keith Richards not the coolest bloke on the planet?

The Catholic Church is reviewing the evidence that Pope John Paul II performed miracles. This is an act of Kabuki theater the church performs while pondering whether to annoint one of it's own with sainthood. Of course he will be canonized. Why this sudden interest in "convincing evidence"? Which interestingly enough, the church defines as "a medical cure with no scientific explanation." I'm sorry, this is just freakin' ridiculous. Why can't we be content with saying Karol Józef Wojtyla was a nice man who lived a good life?

The best send up I've ever seen of this peculiar Catholic institution was by Don Novello on Saturday Night Live. Appearing as Father Guido Sarducci, gossip columnist for the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, he complained about the church's lax standards for qualifying Americans as saints:

When reading the first few paragraphs of an article about John McCain’s recent visit to Iraq a thought struck me: How can conservatives, and McCain especially as a Vietnam veteran, be so wrong about the war in Iraq when they were, on the whole, right about the Cold War against the Soviet Union?

Do you think it may be due to a blindness to the destructive pathology of organized religion?

That, because conservatives believe so strongly in the goodness of Christianity they could frame every move the West made to oppose the Soviets as a salvo in a battle of believers versus non-believers. They could view the Western armies as knights of God’s will fighting for the benefit of mankind against a tyrannical, godless regime that valued reason, science, and industry above God’s love. They likely view the Cold War as a religious war rather than simply a battle over liberty.

The neoconservatives must have thought that Saddam Hussein, a non-believer, a Stalinist tyrant, was the primary obstacle to progress in Iraq. That he and other tyrants in the Middle East, be they non-believers or mere fakers of belief, through their abolition or suppression of religion obstruct the revelation of God’s will to the people of the world. Is it possible that the neocon's plan, conceived in private, never publicly expressed, followed these contours: Remove the tyrant and establish liberty. With liberty belief will flourish. It has in the formerly atheist Soviet Union, why not in the fertile crescent of civilization, Iraq, home of Eden? One day it will be safe for Christians to enter Iraq and the greater Middle East to preach the Gospel and spread the good Word. Or is it more likely that this is merely how the Machiavellian neocons packaged the plan for our evangelical, born-again Christian President in order to achieve baser aims?

The neoconservatives did not- have not- recognized that organized religion is the problem. That the dogmatic faith required by religion tends to limit people's imagination and ingenuity for solving the problems of a large population. That by toppling Saddam from power the U.S. Army put in his place an organized religion, Islam, that is woefully unprepared to govern its people.

Conservatives were right about the Cold War for the wrong reasons. They saw the enemy as atheism and the Western triumph as messianic. By my reckoning atheism was not the problem. The problem was suppression of liberty, without which one cannot exercise reason, practice science, and develop industry. In my opinion the West succeeded because the suppressed religion- Christianity- had long ago come to terms with how the practice of religion relates to the governing of a civil society and the explorations of science. This particular organized religion could be safely resuscitated because it had learned to coexist with free speech and scientific inquiry. When restored to power its practitioners were not bloodthirsty for vengeance against infidels. They were prepared to govern by law rather than religious edict. In other words, the Cold War was won by the Western allies because they succeeded in mitigating the destructive pathology of organized religion and not because they relied on it as a source of strength.

Does this explain how the neocons could so recklessly overlook such a force as Islamic fundamentalism when conceiving their plans to remake the Middle East? In their minds organized religion has served mankind well. It was instrumental in beating back the Red Menace. Allowing Iraqis to practice their religion would act as a safety value, they must have thought, relieving pressure from the exigencies of war. No mind the stark differences between the resurgent role of Islam in Arab culture compared to the waning role of Christianity in Western culture. No mind the mitigating effects of the Protestant Reformation and the Enlightenment on Christianity with no comparable movements within Islam.

Was the President, because of his evangelical faith, predisposed not to recognize the destabilizing effects of organized religion in the power vacuum that would follow a military victory in Iraq? Sadly, I think so.

Why is it, if not for these reasons, that the President and his conservative colleagues talk endlessly about spreading freedom and democracy in Iraq yet dislike Europe- a continent almost entirely democratic- so intensely? I think it’s because the people of Europe are losing their faith in the value of organized religion, which is an offensive thought to conservatives. I think Europeans view secularism as a satisfactory arrangement between Church and State, one that allows people to coexist peacefully. Conservatives, in contrast, see a move away from organized religion toward secularism as an abandonment of the very ideals that won the Cold War and established the peace. Their perspectives are not easily reconciled.

This is my best attempt to make sense of this war and the bitter division of feeling it has caused.