Confounding and compelling as politicians can be, though, we’ve spent most of our Internet-time this week reading commentary on the shooting in Garland, Texas last Sunday. Here’s some of the best work we’ve read on the topic.

Looking for a quick background summary on Pamela Geller, Margaret Hartmann at New York Magazine has you covered.

If your introduction to Pamela Geller was the CNN interview following Sunday’s shooting in Garland, Texas, you might be wondering why journalists were so combative with the well-spoken, patriotic lady from Long Island.

Then, not to boast, but we really do think that Patrick Blanchfield‘s take on the events in Garland and how we continue to frame and interpret them,”Shooting in the Name Of,” is one of the most insightful responses out there.

We also especially appreciated Ryan T. Woods‘ reading of Blanchfield’s piece over at Marginalia, “Free Speech in Garland, Texas.”

Aaron Bady also has an important and thoughtful perspective on the events. These two recent pieces in The New Inquiry are must-reads: “Islamophobia as Narrative Device, in the Second Person“

I don’t know the whole story, of course. But an “Art Exhibit” or “contest” was not the thing that was attacked, not if the word “art” means anything. If it was a story about violent extremists attempting to commit murder, then we can be glad they failed. But this is also a story about escalation and reaction, and that story gets lost if its flattened into LIBERAL FREE SPEECH vs. VIOLENT ISLAMISTS by the many commentators who not only love simple binaries, but particularly enjoy that one.

and “On the Variety of Ways to Not Praise Charlie Hebdo.“

The trouble with radical secularists is that they so often jump past this contradiction, forgetting that they, too, are believers. They have such confidence in their own clarity of thought, and such contempt for mere believers. For the passionately intense disbeliever, getting rid of “religion” means that whatever is left behind turns out to be Science and Truth. But there is no outside to cultural belief, as ethnographers like Geertz started to understand: there simply is no opting out of ideology, and to think that you have done so is often to become the worst kind of fundamentalist. If you think you’ve found the Archimedean point from which to understand the world’s illusions as such, then those who believe in them become fools whose beliefs can be safely dismissed, whose words can be ignored, and whose humanity can be bracketed off. If you congratulate yourself on having found Reality, then you are in danger of becoming its tool. Because what makes your belief different than anyone else’s is the fact that you believe in it, and real belief – if it means anything – means the inability to acknowledge that you might be wrong. 

Published before the shooting in Garland, but very relevant nonetheless, is David Nirenberg‘s “Power and Piety,” a review of Karen Armstrong‘s books, Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence, in The Nation. 

Perhaps we should not judge religions by the company they keep. Still, even (or especially) if we share Armstrong’s sympathies—that is, her view that religion is generally innocent as charged—we should want to ask why religion so often finds itself in arms with the wicked. It seems question-begging or dogmatic to base a study of the relationship between religion and violence upon the axiom that the workings of religion can have nothing to do with violence. It is also historically unhelpful, because a sharp separation between power and piety can’t account for the very long history of intimate relations between the two. Armstrong jumps from episode to violent episode in that long history, attempting to explain why the violence she is describing has nothing to do with what she takes to be true religion. Divorcing religion from power might ease one’s conscience about faith traditions, but it won’t help us understand why those traditions have so often sought dowries from dominion, which seems to me precisely what we most want and need to know.

Much as there is to be read, written, and said about religion, violence, and free speech, these stories, too, warranted some attention:

Trent Wolbe takes us “Beyond televangelism: inside TED’s new gospel” with The Verge.

TEDActive is the overflow chapel to TED’s Long Beach Cathedral, but the production quality is stunning, there are bean bag chairs instead of pews, and no pesky deities around to cloud anyone’s judgment. Ruminations from philosophers and scientists were the constantly-referenced touchstones, not some poorly-translated cryptolanguage from the boring New Testament. TEDsters not only laughed at the simulcast screens, they gave them full-on standing ovations. Once I wrapped my head around this non-shitty church metaphor everything else at TED was much easier to understand.

Kelly J. Baker gives “The Messengers” an insightful review in Killing the Buddha‘s “Look for The Signs.”

The Messengers is supposed to be an entertaining take on that the often-trod terrain of good versus evil, and I despise the show for its lack of awareness and nuance. It warns us about things that we’ve already learned to fear. We still suffer the ramifications of financial crises. We place metal detectors in schools and ponder whether teachers should pack heat. We (slowly) realize the danger of global warming. These are the low-hanging fruit of signs. We don’t have to look far to find them, and they require no deep reflection about what remains broken.

Joel Hodge at The Washington Post explains, “How ‘Star Wars’ answers our biggest religious questions.”

But the story that unfurls is an inversion of the Christian Gospel: The Chosen One does not save others but falls into the depths of evil, power and anger by following a false model (the Emperor) who in a sense personifies evil (“Satan”). Vader thinks he can restore order to the galaxy – as he says to Luke after revealing his identity – but his evil is ultimately destructive to others and himself.