Category: Politics

Categories
Politics

All Lives Matter, but Some Matter More

It was a grand spectacle. It could have been staged by a Hollywood producer. The helicopter landed on the lawn near the majestic staircase, the COVID patient emerged dressed elegantly in a suit and tie, he ascended the staircase in the fashion of dictators and strong men everywhere, and like dictators and strong men everywhere, he posed on the balcony facing his adoring public. After defiantly removing his mask and stuffing it into his pocket, he stood at attention for several minutes, basking in the light of the cameras. There were no smiles, no warmth, no friendly gestures, just a posture of strength: his COVID victory lap.

Then he turned to enter his temporary home–also a work place to hundreds of people–unmasked though still contagious and having been visibly laboring to breathe during the entire photo op. But that’s not all. According to reporters, he required videographers to re-shoot the scene of his entering the White House, to be sure they captured just the image he sought to project. All of this time, he was unmasked, in close proximity to those required to assist him and carry out his wishes; but apparently those lives don’t matter. Neither do the lives of the Secret Service agents required to take him on a Sunday afternoon joy ride in a hermetically sealed vehicle.

Hours before leaving the hospital, he wrote these reassuring words: “Don’t be afraid of COVID. Don’t let it dominate your life.”

You heard the man.

Child, don’t be afraid of COVID. The parent whom you loved is gone. You will never again feel the warmth of those loving arms or see the smile on the face you cherished. Your parent will not be present for any of the milestones in your life: at graduations, you’ll see an empty spot in the audience; at your wedding, there will be no celebratory dance with that parent; at every holiday gathering, you’ll see an empty chair where your beloved parent would have sat. You may be forced to live with reduced income, maybe even in poverty, because that parent was a family wage earner. You’ll relive the loss for as long as you live, but don’t let this dominate your life.

Parent, don’t be afraid of COVID. You’ve laid your precious child to rest: the one you brought into the world, maybe nursed at your own breast, tenderly cared for and provided for, and watched in wonder and amazement as they grew. At every new stage of life, the love you thought couldn’t possibly be any greater became even more intense. You fiercely protected your child from every harm, cared for them during sickness, bandaged the wounds of childhood accidents; and then one day, your child encountered an adversary  against which you and your doctors were helpless. All you could do is let the disease ravage their body until there was no breath left in it. But you know, hardly any children get COVID; they’re almost immune to it. Your child’s disease was just a fluke, bad luck. So don’t let this dominate your life.

Spouse, don’t be afraid of COVID. The person you loved died alone, with only a FaceTime or Zoom farewell, with no loving touch or comforting presence. But hey, thank goodness for technology, right? Imagine how bad it would have been before we had smart phones and computers. This person to whom you pledged your love and fidelity, with whom you were traveling through life with all of its joys and sorrows, for whom you’d have stepped in front of a bullet, is gone. Never again will you feel the warmth of their body or see the adoration in their eyes as they look deeply into yours; never again will you feel the safety and reassurance you found with them at your side. Your financial circumstances may be reduced without their income, and you may have to raise alone the children you brought into the world together. That gaping hole in the middle of your chest will never completely close over, but don’t let this dominate your life.

Friend, don’t be afraid of COVID. That person you shared life with, laughed with, cried with, danced with, got into mischief with is gone. They died alone, without you or their family members physically present to give comfort and a farewell kiss. The empty chair, the ghostly vision, the heartful of memories, the boxes full of photos are all you have left to remind you of the special love you shared. Your friend may be one of the tens of thousands who didn’t have to die, who would still be alive had there been competent national leadership to get this virus under control as all other nations have done. But it is what it is, so don’t let this dominate your life.

Uninsured and underinsured Americans, don’t be afraid of COVID. If you test positive, no helicopter will land on your lawn and whisk you off to the world’s premier medical facility. You won’t be looked after by a dedicated team of doctors, you won’t be given expensive cutting-edge treatments, you won’t have a private suite of rooms. In fact, you’ll be lucky to get any treatment at all, because the person gloating in front of the cameras about having conquered his own illness, through expensive cutting-edge treatments which you and I paid for, has consistently attempted to strip you of the insurance which might have provided you a basic level of treatment and has lawyers in court now arguing to leave millions of you without any insurance. But don’t worry; he’s fine. He beat it, thanks to you and me. So don’t let this dominate your life.

Business owners, don’t be afraid of COVID. Your business may have gone under because of the shutdowns and the economic downturn caused by the pandemic, or maybe you’re struggling to hold onto the last shreds of what was your livelihood. You’ve had to watch your employees apply for unemployment because you can no longer write the checks by which they have provided for themselves and their families. But you’ll find something else, and so will your employees. Just get out there and live the American dream. If you work hard enough, you will prosper. Times have been tough, and they’re going to be tough awhile longer, but don’t let this dominate your life.

Unemployed workers, don’t be afraid of COVID. You’ve lost your job because of a pandemic and the reckless, irresponsible handling of it, but thank goodness for unemployment checks, eh? And how about that one stimulus check you received? You remember, the one that came months ago, with the “president’s” signature. You can’t pay your rent or mortgage payment, you worry every day about how you’ll feed your family, you struggle to make the car payment and buy insurance and fuel for the vehicle. But be creative, man! Consider this time a gift: learn a new skill, take a trip, write a book. Whatever you do, don’t let this dominate your life.

Essential workers, don’t be afraid of COVID. You’ve been out there every day since the beginning, ringing up sales at grocery stores, home improvement stores, banks, and gas stations. You’ve been verbally and physically assaulted by frustrated, angry customers who don’t want to wear masks or who can’t understand why they are limited to purchasing only one package of toilet paper. You’ve gone home every day with the knowledge that you may have been exposed to the deadly virus and if so are exposing your family to it as well. But be grateful you have a job, and don’t let this dominate your life.

Exhausted health care workers, don’t be afraid of COVID. You’ve been the ones in direct contact with the more than 7 million Americans who have contracted the virus, and you’ve witnessed the deaths of the more than 211,000 Americans who were not so lucky as our “president.” You’ve worked extra shifts, often without proper equipment because our national leadership did not use all of the available resources to produce sufficient PPE for both you and your patients or the extra respirators and other equipment you needed to provide the level of care your patients required. You go home every day bone weary, praying you’ve protected yourself well enough to avoid infection and praying you’re not taking home anything that might endanger your family. You struggle to suppress the scenes of trauma dancing in your brain so that you can go to sleep and be renewed for another day of the same–with no foreseeable end. You push aside dark thoughts of ending your own life, as others in your field have done, because the stress and the pain have become unendurable. But hey, don’t let this dominate your life.

Precious wife, whose husband died of cancer in March, don’t be afraid of COVID. Your husband didn’t have COVID, but the skilled care facility where he was being treated had to be locked down because of the pandemic, so he died alone. In his mental confusion, caused by dementia and the drugs he was receiving, he thought you had abandoned him. You who were married to him for over 50 years, you who walked beside him, you who worked with him during the years you both served marginalized people and anyone else who needed your help, you who loved and cared for him throughout his life and during his illness. In the end, you had to say goodbye on the phone, with him not understanding that you were still there and still loved him.

Dear cousins, who were unable to visit your mother, my aunt, during the last few months of her life, don’t be afraid of COVID. Your mother was one of the most loving and giving people I’ve ever known. Her home was always open to family, and her nieces and nephews knew we could count on her to show us a fun time. She, of the twelve siblings, was the one who stayed close by and cared for our grandmother during her final years. She was a leader in her community, taking the initiative to found a library when she learned that the small town you moved to didn’t have one. She didn’t have COVID, but she too was in a care facility that had to be closed to visitors because of the pandemic. So after almost 90 years of living for others, she died alone.

I wonder how all of you felt when you saw the man on the balcony say, “I’m fine. Maybe I’m immune? So get out there. Don’t be afraid.” Did you feel that this man cared about your loved one? Did you feel that he cares about you? Did you feel that this man deserves to live in the People’s House another four years while you and I pay his bills so that he can go on not giving a damn what happens to any of us?

Francine Prose, in a Guardian article, says what many of us have felt and thought:

“We’d like to believe that suffering instructs and ennobles; that our grief, fear and pain increases our sympathy for the grief, fear and pain of others. But again, Donald Trump seems to be ineducable, impervious to shame, guilt, or any sense of personal responsibility, unaffected by anything except vanity, selfishness and reckless self-regard. Certainly, the experience of having his blood oxygen level drop so low that supplemental oxygen was required must have been alarming, and yet the president continues to believe that bluster is the best medicine.”

Our nation is on code blue. It’s our choice whether we pull the plug on our democracy or wake up and work like hell to resuscitate it. We can’t allow these 211,000 lives to be lost in vain. Starting now, we have to elect responsible leaders, and then we have to be responsible leaders and followers. Our lives and our children’s and grandchildren’s lives depend on what we do in the next 28 days and beyond. Voting is only the beginning. Our new president (please, God!) is going to need our cooperation and support. It’s up to us to put the “United” back in “United States of America.”

Categories
Politics

False Equivalence and Other Fallacies

Have you ever been in a situation when someone was being a real jerk to you, and you tried to  engage calmly and reasonably in a conversation with that person? Then a third person came along and said, “Okay, you two, break it up. You’re both out of line here,” or something to that effect? And you wanted to protest, “NO, not you TWO! That ONE! I didn’t do anything wrong. I’ll admit I might be a jerk sometimes, but today was not my day! “

Did one of your parents ever break up a fight between you and a sibling by pronouncing you equally responsible and sending both of you to your rooms, when you were not at fault (that day)? How about a teacher who came into the room to find pandemonium and then penalized the whole class when a little investigation would have told them the problem was the work of two or three instigators?

How did those experiences make you feel? Each one has happened to me, and I have felt angry and resentful, and I still feel a bit resentful when one or two of the incidents come to mind. When I am at fault, I will accept responsibility for my actions; but when I get called out simply for engaging with someone who’s being unreasonable, it’s frustrating because the accusation creates a false equivalence between the jerk and me, which in that particular instance is unjustified.

Last night, I along with millions of others around the globe endured 90 minutes of the meanest, most childish, most shameful and embarrassing behavior ever witnessed on a presidential debate stage. The spectacle was a new low, even for a “president” who had already broken nearly every norm he possibly could and certainly a new low for the dignity of our republic.

Within a half hour after we were all put out of our misery by the “closing bell,” I began seeing social media posts about how abominably the two candidates conducted themselves, how they were more like two naughty school boys than candidates for our country’s highest office, how the moderator was forced to act like a school principal trying to corral these two hooligans.

Wait a minute! If that is not a false equivalence, there is no such thing. As Frank Bruni so aptly put it in his next-morning NYT column, although Joe Biden flung a little mud, when you’ve been dragged into the pig sty, there’s not much else you can do.

Joe Biden came prepared to debate, as he has many times during his career. Joe has never been known as a stellar debater or public speaker, but he has a firm grasp on the facts and an understanding of the world and of how government works, and he presents that information in a clear and coherent way. You know, complete sentences and stuff like that. He draws on his 47 years of experience, does the debate prep ahead of time, and expects to face a worthy opponent. Of course, he knew in this case what he’d be up against, but I don’t think anyone anticipated the depth to which Trump would stoop (not that anyone thought him incapable) or the utter chaos and havoc he would wreak onstage.

Donald Trump has made no secret of the fact he does little to no preparation for debates. In this case, his only prep seems to have been determining to  consume all of the oxygen in the room, and at that he succeeded. Trump, from the first moments of the “debate,” bullied and abused both his opponent and the moderator, abused the process, abused his office, and abused the public trust we should all be able to have in our elected officials.

Chris Wallace was, in hindsight, not a good fit for moderator. He’s too genteel, soft spoken, and conciliatory to handle the likes of Donald Trump. Trump behaved the only way he is capable of behaving: insecure, angry, hostile, and combative. Chris Wallace behaved the only way he is capable of behaving: a gentleman who expects others to be as genteel as he is and to honor the process and the rules as he does. If there must be another debate, I’d like to recommend Samuel L. Jackson as moderator. Perhaps one or two of these lines would help shape things up: “English, mother*f^%er, do you speak it?” (Pulp Fiction) or “Hold onto your butts” (Jurassic Park) or “Given that it’s a stupid-ass decision [substitute ‘statement’ here], I’ve elected to ignore it” (The Avengers). End of digression.

All three made errors, but to call this an “everybody-was-wrong” situation is irresponsible. There are many reasons for drawing false equivalences, but there is no justification for such lazy thinking.

A teacher or parent might find it more pragmatic to discipline everyone involved than to do the work of investigation or to face the ire or risk the retaliation of the one or two trouble makers who really deserve correction. One might cover for a spouse or child by attempting to spread the blame for the wrongdoing rather than admitting that the loved one was really the sole guilty party. A follower of a political candidate may be unwilling to admit they’ve been fooled by the person they admire, so they’d rather equalize the situation by making everyone wrong.

In a broader sense, however, the tendency to draw false equivalences is symptomatic of lazy thinking and a misguided desire to maintain neutrality, both of which are always dangerous but now more so than ever before. We’re living in a time for which there is no map, no historical precedent; we can’t afford to pretend otherwise.

The lazy thinker who doesn’t want to do the hard work of thinking, reading, listening, and evaluating finds comfort in affixing broad labels to groups: lumping every member into one large category, rather than recognizing a broad range of categories. “The media,” “religion,” and “politics” come to mind.

Media bashing is an Olympic-level sport, and the criticism is often well deserved. But pick up a copy of the New York Times or the Washington Post and lay it beside a copy of the National Enquirer or Star, and it would be impossible to place them all under one heading, except that they are all part of “the media.”

Investigative journalism is essential to democracy. Investigative journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein brought down a corrupt president. From the Pentagon Papers in 1971 to the Panama Papers published in 2016 as well as many other information troves, investigative journalists have done what few others could have achieved, exposing corruption and toppling leaders across the globe. Every day, reputable journalists are at work bringing us the information we need to remain informed citizens and to maintain our democracy–information we would have no other means of accessing. To equate them with writers and publishers of salacious gossip and conspiracy theories or of carelessly researched and sloppily reported purveyors of political biases is both insulting and irresponsible.

How often have you heard generalizations about religion, churches, ministers, and politicians? The reason, I think, is that it’s easier than having to think and make distinctions. But it’s also dangerous, because such generalizations create public distrust in institutions essential to our survival as a nation.

Another outcome of false equivalence is somewhat akin to the “two wrongs make a right” thinking. One person points out a fault in a public figure, such as a presidential candidate, and another immediately responds with “Well, your candidate does that too” or “They all do that” or “That’s true of both sides.” As long as the second speaker feels they have tied the score, they can dismiss the entire issue without the inconvenience of having to do any further thinking about it. One of my favorite quotations from Ralph Waldo Emerson is this:

“A sect or party is an elegant incognito designed to save a man from the vexation of thinking.”

For an example, see the masses who believe and follow Donald Trump’s every word. It’s so much easier and more comfortable to simply carry the party line than have to reason out every issue for oneself. The same is true of anyone who espouses a religion or political affiliation without ever questioning its precepts.

The most dangerous effect of false equivalence is that it enables neutrality, and no one can afford to be neutral in these perilous times. If Donald Trump and Joe Biden, Democrats and Republicans, or liberals and conservatives are equally corrupt, no one has to do the work of promoting truth, because there is no truth. Serious truth seekers must discern between good and evil, between right and wrong, between bad and really bad. And then they have to be willing to stand on the side of good and right, no matter the cost. It’s the truth that sets us free; neutrality keeps us in bondage.

Lumping together Donald Trump and Joe Biden as badly behaved school boys and Chris Wallace as an equally bad performer ignores several crucial facts.

Only one person on the stage did a shout-out to white supremacists, calling one group by name and telling them to “stand back and stand by.” Within an hour or so after the debate ended, the Proud Boys had crafted themselves a new logo out of Trump’s words and published it. They then pledged their allegiance and their eagerness to serve with the statement “Well sir, we’re ready.” How does anyone see this as acceptable? In what world do these words seem fitting for a “law-and-order” president, or for any president or any American citizen? That’s not even a dog whistle inciting violence, it’s a bull horn. Neither Joe Biden nor Chris Wallace said any such thing, so where’s the equivalence?

Only one person on the stage attacked another of the men’s sons, one of whom is deceased. Only one man mocked the dead son and his service to his country and brought up the other son’s struggle with drug addiction. Even the most callous and insensitive among us have some limits; most of us would instinctively hold back from exploiting a father’s grief. Neither Joe Biden nor Chris Wallace did that, so where’s the equivalence?

Only one person on the stage degraded the esteemed office of President of the United States of America. Donald Trump has never respected the office to which he was elected, but never has he disrespected it more appallingly than he did last night. Neither Joe Biden nor Chris Wallace holds the office of President (yet), but nothing they did could equal the disgrace Donald Trump heaped upon our nation, so where’s the equivalence?

Since I began writing this article, I’ve learned a new word: “both-siderism.” Anthony B. Robinson, in a September 29 article, says the temptation is strong to “play ‘both-siderism.’”

“To declare that both former Vice President and President Trump were equally at fault for this depressing spectacle. It is a comfortable move. It allows those who make it to appear to take the high ground. ‘They’re both at fault.’ ‘They both did it.’ But it wasn’t equal. Both men did not behave like ill-mannered brats. Trump did. The President of the United States did.”

There is indeed no virtue in neutrality or both-siderism; such a stance is not moral high ground, it is dangerous quicksand. I’ve cited this quotation by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel many times, but it’s never been more relevant than it is right now:

“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere.”

So do some interfering already. Take a side. There’s no virtue in neutrality, and there’s no virtue in supporting and encouraging the death of our democracy. To quote another more familiar leader:

“Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.”

As Thomas Paine wrote so many years ago, “These are the times that try men’s souls.” What you and I do right now will determine the future of ourselves, our children, our children’s children, and our democracy. We can’t afford to be neutral.

Categories
Justice Politics

We Dissent

This weekend, as I mourned along with the rest of the world Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s passing, I watched the movie “On the Basis of Sex.” Twice. Grieving the loss of this intelligent, passionate, and articulate champion for human rights and shatterer of glass ceilings, I reflected on how best to honor such a person.

And I found this statement by Bruce Lindner in a Facebook post: “Ruth Bader Ginsburg led a life of constantly swimming upstream. Everything from institutionalized sexism, misogyny, ignorance, bigotry, anti-Semitism, and for her final curtain, five bouts with various types of cancer.” Generally, the best way to honor a person’s memory is not to get mired in grief and defeatism but to carry on the work which she or he started. Institutionalized sexism, misogyny, ignorance, bigotry, and anti-Semitism still exist; RBG is gone, so it’s up to you and me to continue the work of abolishing prejudice and removing obstacles to human dignity and progress.

In the movie, Ruth’s first opportunity to argue a case in court came when she and her husband Martin acted as co-counsels in an appeals case for a defendant who was discriminated against because he was a bachelor who was caring for his invalid mother. A lower court had convicted him of cheating on his taxes, and Ruth and Martin represented him in the appeal; according to Smithsonian Magazine, “The scene plays out in the same way the Ginsburgs have recounted it.”

In her final argument to the three-judge panel, Ruth says, “We’re not asking you to change the country. That’s already happened without any court’s permission. We’re asking you to protect the right of the country to change.” Her statement articulates a fact: people change, cultures change, mores and norms change. That change happens without legal approval, but the legal system can muck up the process by forcing citizens to live according to outdated norms and mores, institutionalized in outdated laws.

The United States Constitution has been seen as a model among documents of its kind, because the writers–our country’s founders–were astute thinkers who created a government framework that has remained relevant for well over 200 years. Since it went into effect in 1789, our constitution has been amended 27 times. Not bad for 231 years! Yet even as well crafted as the original document is, it has needed those 27 updates, and the laws for which it provides the framework have also had to be updated. The urgency to fix laws that no longer apply or that have become impediments is what drove RBG throughout her career.

In that same closing rebuttal, the movie Ruth argues, “There are 178 laws that differentiate on the basis of sex. . . . They’re obstacles to our children’s aspirations. . . . We all must take these laws on, one by one, for as long as it takes, for [our children’s] sakes.”

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s words and ideals echo for me the words of two of my other favorite thinkers and writers: Henry David Thoreau and Martin Luther King Jr. Both Thoreau and King acknowledged the divide between law and morality, between just laws and unjust laws. Slavery was immoral but legal; assisting slaves to escape was illegal but moral. Jim Crow laws were legal but immoral; defying those laws was illegal but moral. Imprisoning and murdering Jewish people in Nazi Germany was legal but immoral; helping Jewish people avoid capture and arrest was illegal but moral. Kidnapping children at our border and imprisoning them is legal but immoral; any effort by concerned citizens to rescue those children and attempt to reunite them with their families would be moral but illegal.

In Henry David Thoreau’s 1849 essay “Civil Disobedience” (full title, “Resistance to Civil Government”), Thoreau defends not paying his poll tax for six years in protest against slavery and the U.S. declaration of war against Mexico, asserting that he could not in good conscience support a government that supported the immoral treatment of his fellow humans.

He argues that, although government is necessary, it is the character of individual citizens that makes this country great:

“It [our government] is excellent, we must all allow. Yet this government never of itself furthered any enterprise . . . It does not keep the country free. It  does not settle the West. It does not educate. The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way.”

Like RBG, Thoreau believed in citizens’ right to examine the laws by which they live and to challenge those laws that impede rather than facilitate our progress as a people. He says, “Unlike those who call themselves no-government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government.” Like RBG, he believed that sometimes laws need to be fixed, because legalized injustice should not be allowed to stand.

He begins the central point of his essay with two probing questions:

“Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume, is to do at any time what I think right. . . . Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.”

In other words, what good is a conscience if you can’t use it? Respect for what’s right should supersede respect for what’s legal. Sometimes, following existing laws can make a person a perpetrator of injustice. In our own time, think of border agents who may believe the child-separation policy is morally wrong. They must choose between obeying the law or obeying their consciences. Obeying one’s conscience, of course, can be costly; in this case, it could mean either resigning from their jobs or being fired for non-compliance. Either way, they would lose the means of support for themselves and their families. Sadly, following one’s conscience is a lofty ideal which may seem overwhelmingly impractical for many.

According to Thoreau, “Unjust laws exist.” The only question we must each ask ourselves is how we will respond to those laws: “Shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?” Rosa Parks obeyed the laws until she felt compelled to take a stand and draw the world’s attention to the law which unjustly robbed her of her human dignity by mandating where she could legally sit on a bus.

Thoreau was neither an anarchist nor a rabble rouser. He allows for tolerating certain injustices when the remedy may be worse than the evil. “But if [the law] is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.” In summary, he says, “What I have to do is to see . . . that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.” Hypocrisy and violating the principles of one’s conscience are, in other words, graver wrongs than breaking a law which requires perpetrating an injustice on a fellow human.

Martin Luther King Jr. distinguishes between just laws and unjust laws in his famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” He begins:

“One may well ask: ‘How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?’ The answer is found in the fact that there are two types of laws: There are just and there are unjust laws. I would agree with Saint Augustine that ‘An unjust law is no law at all.’”

Here’s how he distinguishes between the two types of laws:

“A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of Saint Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law.”

He adds:

“Let us turn to a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a majority inflicts on a minority that is not binding on itself. This is difference made legal. On the other hand a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal.”

In his essay “Three Ways of Meeting Oppression,” King says many oppressed people simply  acquiesce to their condition because fighting against it is too hard and too exhausting. Then he cautions, “But this is not the way out. To accept passively an unjust system is to cooperate with that system; thereby the oppressed become as evil as the oppressor. Non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.” Some of our Republican senators should heed that precept as they eagerly cooperate with the evil rush to ramrod through a replacement for Justice Ginsburg after many people have already cast their ballots for the president they want to fill her seat.

Civil disobedience, as advocated by Henry David Thoreau, Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, and others, is the act of identifying laws that are unjust, immoral, and oppressive and refusing obedience to those laws. Obviously, careful distinctions must be made. An unjust law is not an inconvenient or annoying law; it is a law which requires you and me to act in an immoral way, to become an oppressor of a fellow human or group of fellow humans.

The mandate to wear a mask to prevent transmission of a deadly disease is not an unjust law, and there is no moral ground on which to refuse obedience. There are only ignorance, selfishness, and disrespect. Wearing a mask may be inconvenient and perhaps annoying, but it does not, in Thoreau’s words, require you to be the agent of injustice to another person; it does not violate, in King’s words, the moral law or the law of God. The law’s purpose is to save your life, not to oppress you. If Thoreau and King were alive today, they might say “This is a stupid hill to die on.”

What HDT, MLK, and RBG all–by their writings and by their examples–encouraged us to do is be active citizens. Passively accepting laws, just because they’re laws, is cooperation with evil if the law is unjust. Some laws, like slavery and Jim Crow, were never just or defensible; others, like those RBG fought against, were based on outdated norms and mores. The duty of active citizens is to use our voices and our influence to fight real injustice, not to waste our time and our voices whining about wearing a mask, not being able to get a haircut or manicure, or having to wait in line to enter Trader Joe’s and Costco during a pandemic.

The law is not sacrosanct. It is a living organism; it must grow and change to keep pace with change in the social order. Thoreau and King allowed for breaking unjust laws; Notorious RBG used the power of her position to change many of the unjust laws which robbed certain people of their human dignity and required humans to be agents of injustice to other humans. Now that mantle has been passed to each of us:

“Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”

Of those “178 laws that differentiate on the basis of sex,” that are “obstacles to our children’s aspirations,” how many still exist? How many others exist? As RBG taught us, “We all must take these laws on, one by one, for as long as it takes, for [our children’s] sakes.” Call it dissent, call it civil disobedience, just do it.

Each of us has both a need to make a living and an obligation to contribute toward a world that’s worth living in. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, “I’ve gotten much more satisfaction for the things that I’ve done for which I was not paid.” She left the world a better place than she found it; let the same be said of us who carry on her legacy.

Categories
Politics

Snow, Rain, and Gloom of Night

I’ve done my share of grumbling about the postal service. There was the mail carrier at my long-time home in Florida who consistently put my mail in neighbors’ boxes and neighbors’ mail in my box or occasionally left packages on the wrong porches. Part of the daily mailbox run was walking to the neighbors’ houses delivering the misplaced envelopes and parcels to the proper boxes and porches.

When I moved into a condo the last 18 months of my life in Florida, all of the mailboxes were together by the swimming pool. During the entire 18 months I lived there, I received mail for every previous resident of that condo; and when I got tired of writing on each envelope, I just started dropping them into the outgoing mail slot, figuring that would be enough to let the delivery person know they didn’t belong there. Nope. It worked for a while, then the new carrier started putting the envelopes right back into my box. You found this in outgoing mail. What should that tell you?

Then there was the time just a few months ago, after I had made my epic move right smack in the middle of a pandemic and was dependent on online ordering to get the things I needed for my new condo. I had ordered a pad to go under one of the rugs I bought. The company shipped the pad via USPS, and one morning I found a colored slip of paper in my mailbox (also the kind where all of the boxes are together), saying “Sorry we missed you. We attempted to deliver a package, will try again.” Mind you, this is a set of drive-by mailboxes; my little cubicle is possibly 3 inches high by maybe 10-12 inches wide and about that deep. You could probably have looked at that package at the post office and figured out that it wasn’t going to fit in any mailbox on the planet. And what do you mean you’re sorry you missed me? Were you really expecting to find me in that little box? Did you ring the bell and I didn’t come to the door? I was speechless; well, maybe not really speechless, but nothing I said would be decent to repeat here. The next day, I received a second note saying they were sorry to have missed me again.

After that, I left a response in the box, which I also won’t repeat here, because now that the post office is in so much trouble, I have to admit I’ve been feeling pretty guilty about that one. (I didn’t use any curse words, so at least there’s that.)

I’ve often told my children that the world we currently live in is so much different from the world in which I spent my youth that it’s almost as if I’ve moved to another planet. It would be easier to name the things that have stayed the same than the things that have changed, but high on that short list of things which have remained constant throughout my life is the six-day-every-week mail delivery. Except for holidays, there’s rarely been a day in my life when I have not checked the mailbox and anticipated what treasures I might find. Before email and Zoom, I fondly remember getting letters. Those were exciting, almost exotic! I come from a huge family, spread out over the entire United States and into northern Mexico, so we received many letters from aunts and uncles and grandparents. I can still remember the thrill of seeing a Mexico postmark, knowing it was news from my Uncle Lavee and his family.

The “mailman” was one of our favorite people–and powerful! He could rouse sleeping dogs into full attack mode (still can), make little children feel special with his friendly smile, bring joy to homes with news from distant loved ones, and deliver needed commodities to homebound neighbors. The importance of this job is caricatured in one of my favorite Cheers characters: the pompous know-it-all Cliff Clavin, who is rarely seen in anything but his blue postal uniform and who sees being a postal carrier as only slightly below knighthood.

Operating under the unofficial motto “Neither snow nor rain nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds,” those blue-uniformed men (and later women) made their way to my mailbox every day–some days pretty late during heavy volume times like Christmas. Oh, remember the Christmas cards! And we knew that, if we just did our part by getting our packages to the post office on time, the post office would work overtime to do its part by delivering them to their destinations in time for Santa’s arrival.

Mail-in voting in the form of “absentee ballots” dates back to the Civil War, when it was allowed for military personnel. Absentee ballots have been used continuously since that time for military voters as well as citizens unable to go to physical polling places. My former in-laws voted absentee because of my mother-in-law’s disability. In more recent years, five states have moved to voting almost completely by mail: Hawaii, Utah, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington. And an increasing number of other states are either making efforts to change to a mail-in system or are offering mail-in ballots as an option for all voters. My former state, Florida, has for a number of years been strongly encouraging mail-in voting. I opted for it several elections ago, because I found I could vote more effectively at home where I had access to information about the less familiar items on the ballot, which don’t receive the same level of hype as presidential candidates.

Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined the post office–the post office!–becoming the epicenter of a political battle and a tool in the hands of a power-hungry president hoping to become a dictator. I’m not sure I could tell you the names of three Postmasters General during my life, but now Louis DeJoy is one of the first names mentioned on the nightly news. What is supposed to be a completely a-political government agency, like the Justice Department, is–like the Justice Department–being used by an unscrupulous political party as its personal accomplice.

Together, Donald Trump and his henchman Louis DeJoy have moved quickly to cripple the postal service ahead of the upcoming election, because Trump has been building hysteria over the long-standing practice of absentee or mail-in voting (same thing!). Trump knows the more people who vote the smaller the percentage likely to vote for him, so he has worked feverishly to suppress voting, including getting himself a new Postmaster General who, like his Attorney General William Barr, will be willing to forget that he’s supposed to be working for the American Public and not acting as the president’s personal hit man.

Mail collection boxes have been removed from the streets or left in place but locked so as to render them useless. Sorting machines have been removed from distribution centers. They have also cut overtime and limited post office hours, causing massive delivery delays. Although public outcry caused DeJoy to stop short of completing some of the changes and to reverse others, enough damage has already been done to cast doubt on whether the USPS is ready to deliver the ballots for this November in time for everyone’s vote to be counted. These are the kinds of things that, if we were reading about their happening in another country, we’d be shocked and outraged. But since the last four years have numbed our ability to be shocked, now it’s just another news cycle. Who’s the shithole country now?

Much of the current controversy centers on the USPS’s financial stability. In Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s opening remarks to the Board of Governors on August 7, 2020, he said:

“That said, I am a realist, and am keenly aware of the magnitude of the financial challenges we face. Our financial position is dire, stemming from substantial declines in mail volume, a broken business model and a management strategy that has not adequately addressed these issues. As a result, the Postal Service has experienced over a decade of financial losses, with FY 2019 approaching $9 billion and 2020 closing in on $11 billion in losses. Without dramatic change, there is no end in sight, and we face an impending liquidity crisis.”

These are legitimate concerns, and if an overhaul is in order, it would not be the first time in our history that the postal service has been reorganized to keep up with current demands. Electronic communication has reduced many people’s reliance on letters delivered to physical mailboxes. Many packages are delivered by rival private for-profit businesses such as UPS and FedEx. For many people, checks have been replaced by direct deposit, wire transfers, and electronic transfer services such as PayPal and Venmo. Yet many do still rely on the postal service for those services, and for all of us it is still a vital part of our staying connected and receiving the goods and commodities we need.

More importantly, if an overhaul is genuinely needed for the reasons Mr. DeJoy mentions, doesn’t it seem a tad coincidental that massive restructuring would be started less than three months before an election, and especially an election which because of health concerns will depend more heavily than usual on mail-in voting? Doesn’t it also seem a bit odd that those high-speed sorting machines which were already there and already paid for would be disassembled and pushed into a corner–to accomplish what? One doesn’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to see what’s happening here. 

Many are calling for privatizing mail delivery, or breaking up the government agency’s monopoly and allowing private companies to compete. We already do that with package delivery, so why not letters and other services also? I don’t know what the future of the United States Postal Service will look like, but I believe it’s important for every citizen to understand what it is now and the history which has led it to this point.

This is a collection of facts about the postal service, in no particular order, which many people in my age range already know. However, it’s a good review for all of us and a fact check for younger people who may be hearing conflicting arguments about the value of this American institution.

So let’s sort out the FACTS:

  1. The U. S. Postal Service is a department of the U. S. Government.
  2. The postal service is NOT a private business. UPS, FedEx, DHL, and that shiny fleet of blue Amazon vans are private delivery services.
  3. Government services are not expected to turn a profit; they are supported by our tax dollars and by our payment for services.
  4. Private delivery services (such as UPS and FedEx) are for-profit businesses.
  5. If a government service is in the red, it means that it needs more funding or better management or both. That is the job of Congress and of the Board of Governors appointed to run the USPS.
  6. The responsibility “to establish Post offices and post roads” is among the powers accorded to Congress by Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution.
  7. As a government agency, the postal service is not intended to turn a profit. Private businesses are for-profit organizations; government agencies are public services, funded by tax payers.
  8. Also included in Congress’s list of powers in Article I, Section 8 are, among others, coining money, protecting copyrights and patents, raising and supporting armies, providing and maintaining a navy, and organizing and managing the militia. I haven’t heard anyone complaining that the mint, the copyright office, the army, or the navy isn’t turning a profit. We may debate over the appropriate amount of military funding, but we don’t expect a return on our investment–other than, of course, our safety.
  9. The centralized postal service has been in continuous operation since 1775 when the Second Continental Congress ordered the United States Post Office (USPO). This was the first national mail service; before that time, mail delivery had been handled by individual colonies and communities.
  10. Journalists led the push for a national mail service, which they believed was necessitated by the urgency of connecting the colonies and sharing news of national importance as the revolution was brewing.
  11. Benjamin Franklin was appointed the first Postmaster General.
  12. After the Revolution, George Washington created the U.S. Post Office Department (USPOD) in 1792, based on Article I, Section 8 of the new constitution.
  13. From 1792 until 1971, the Postmaster General was a member of the President’s cabinet.
  14. On August 12, 1970, following unrest among postal employees which led to a major strike over low wages and poor working conditions, President Nixon signed the Postal Reorganization Act.
  15. That act replaced the cabinet-level post office department with a new federal agency, the United States Postal Service (USPS), effective July 1, 1971.
  16. The new agency is described as a corporation-like independent agency with an official monopoly on the delivery of mail in the United States. The key word in that sentence is “like.” The USPS is a government agency, not a for-profit corporation.
  17. The first paragraph of the 1970 Postal Reorganization Act clearly describes the structure and responsibilities of the USPS:

“The United States Postal Service shall be operated as a basic and fundamental service provided to the people by the Government of the United States, authorized by the Constitution, created by Act of Congress, and supported by the people. The Postal Service shall have as its basic function the obligation to provide postal services to bind the Nation together through the personal, educational, literary, and business correspondence of the people. It shall provide prompt, reliable, and efficient services to patrons in all areas and shall render postal services to all communities.”

18. The governing body of the USPS is the Board of Governors, comprised of up to nine governors; they elect the Postmaster General.

19. Interesting side fact: The first postage stamps were issued in 1847. Before that time, letters were sent C.O.D., with the receiver picking up the letter and paying for its delivery. According to sources, some people resisted the change to having senders pay in advance. Some felt it was an insult to the receiver, suggesting the receiver was too poor or too cheap to pay for his/her own mail.

20. Things the USPS delivers besides letters and junk mail: medications, Social Security checks, income tax refunds, absentee ballots, plants and animals to farmers. There’s one I didn’t know: Farmers receive baby chicks by mail. I read one account of a woman who received a box of 500 newly hatched chicks, of which only 25 were alive because their delivery had been delayed by the antics of Trump and DeJoy.

The next time you grumble about the postal service, as we all will, here are a few other facts to remember.

  1. The USPS employs 469,934 of our fellow citizens, 40% of whom are minorities.
  2. Those 469,934 public servants help to deliver 472.1 million pieces of mail every day.
  3. Sometimes they put things in the wrong boxes, lose a few things, run late, or leave ridiculous notes. Sometimes the barista at Starbucks serves you a cappuccino when you asked for a frappuccino or an iced cold brew when you ordered a hot coffee. Sometimes your restaurant chef sends out a well-done steak when you specifically said medium rare. Sometimes your server neglects to refill your water glass. Sometimes your English professor gives you a B on that brilliant essay when it clearly deserved an A (right!). Mistakes happen in all professions, and most of them are not fatal. Any agency that can process and deliver 470,000 pieces of mail every day, six days a week, at affordable prices, to all neighborhoods, deserves our gratitude and admiration.

The postal service is a treasured American institution which we must not allow to be destroyed by political partisanship or by unethical power mongers. We should all heed the words of James Madison in Federalist No. 42:

“The power of establishing post roads must, in every view, be a harmless power, and may, perhaps, by judicious management, become productive of great public conveniency. Nothing which tends to facilitate the intercourse between the States can be deemed unworthy of the public care.”

Today’s reality is that high-level officials are using this constitutional power to do harm and to serve their own political ambitions. Therefore, those of us who benefit from it must accept our responsibility to care for it. If every one of us would just do the simple act of buying a sheet of stamps, we could infuse the USPS with millions of operating dollars. We the people must step up and save the institutions we treasure. That is the true definition of “conservative.”

Categories
Politics Religion

The Christian Right Is Neither

If you’re reading this article in 2020, you will notice that many of the specific facts are outdated: Hillary Clinton as Donald Trump’s political opponent, the disgraced Jerry Falwell Jr. as a leader respected among evangelicals, and others. I wrote the article in 2016, but I am re-publishing it because the Christian Right has continued to be ardent supporters of Donald Trump and have continued to be a political force at odds with their stated belief system.

When it’s difficult to see daylight between the alt-right and the Christian right, we’ve wandered into dangerously wrong territory. Today’s Republican Party has made strange bedfellows of some seemingly divergent groups: KKK sympathizers, alt-right thugs, the gun lobby, and others; and in the middle of them all is the “Christian” right, evangelicals whose voices are in unison with philosophies that undermine and threaten to destroy our republic and the values which we have always held inviolable. On the surface, it’s impossible to see what could unite groups that should be at opposite poles.

This strange new coalition which has formed under the umbrella of the Republican Party is not Christian, not conservative, and not Republican. The Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, and even Ronald Reagan is so far from the party of 2016 that the two shouldn’t be called by the same name.

Republicans have proudly called themselves the Christian party and the family-values party, yet in 2016 they have nominated and are supporting and defending a candidate who has lived his life by the opposite of any definition of Christianity I know. And his campaign CEO, Steve Bannon, has ties to the darkest elements from the underbelly of American civilization. At Breitbart news, he, according to Sarah Posner of Mother Jones, “created an online haven for white nationalists.”

The new Republican Coalition is not conservative. Louis Guenin, in one of my all-time favorite articles called “Why Voters Should Turn from the Pseudoconservative Party of the Great Recession” (Huffington Post, 24 Dec 2012), offers this definition of conservatism:

Conservatism, as eloquently introduced by Edmund Burke (1729–1797), advocates esteem for government and established institutions. It holds that within them lies an accumulated wisdom that citizens and their leaders should respect and consult. Revering the established order, its constitution, and its history, conservatism cultivates a cautious disposition. Legislators should proceed by careful deliberation guided by the counsel of prudence. Policy should change incrementally. When government errs, all citizens should, in Burke’s words, “approach to the faults of the state as to the wounds of a father, with pious awe and trembling solicitude.”

Has anyone seen any esteem for government at the Republican presidential rallies of 2015 and 2016? I’ve seen angry mobs screaming their rejection of “the established order,” chanting for the opposing party’s candidate to be locked up, rejecting the politics that has made our country what it is. The “accumulated wisdom” which Edmund Burke says leaders “should respect and consult” is derided as “political correctness,” which they see as having too long constrained them from expressing their baser instincts toward their fellow citizens of different race, skin color, religion, gender, or sexuality.

The campaign chief said this week, “What we need to do is bitch-slap” the Republican Party, expressing his anger at the “party elites” who are not falling in line behind the rogue nominee. He went on to add, “Get those guys heeding too, and if we have to, we’ll take it over to make it a true conservative party.” His definition of “conservative” is obviously quite different from Edmund Burke’s definition.

The new Republican Coalition knows nothing of caution, prudence, or respect for traditional American values. The scorched-earth politics that allows low and dirty stunts such as bringing people from an opponent’s past to a debate to bully and intimidate her and a candidate’s declaring himself free from the shackles that have bound him to party principles and now in a position to declare war on the party doesn’t sound conservative by any definition. Other language I’ve heard this week is that Donald Trump wants to burn down the party if it won’t play his way.

The opposite of conservative is not liberal; most liberals better fit the definition of conservatism than today’s “conservatives” do. The opposite of conservative is contemptuous: contempt for the established order, for American politics, for our constitution, for their fellow citizens, for anyone who disagrees with them.

The new Republican Coalition is not conservative, and it’s not Republican. The founding father of the Republican Party, Abraham Lincoln, devoted the last four years of his life to preserving our union when a racist, white supremacist group of states were determined to destroy it. In his second inaugural address, Lincoln eloquently said:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

The coalition at work today under the banner of the Party of Lincoln seeks not to bind up wounds and create peace but to inflict wounds and perpetuate conflict.

Earlier in his address, Lincoln said, contrasting the state of the nation at the time of his second inaugural address with its state when he gave his first inaugural address: “Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.” I think we’re seeing that same tension today. None of us want discord and strife, but some would rather accept disunity than compromise to bring about peace and harmony.

We have to recognize, of course, that Donald Trump did not destroy the Party of Lincoln; they destroyed themselves, and Trump is the result, not the cause. A Donald Trump could never have secured the Republican nomination for the presidency until the climate was right for it, and in 2016, it’s perfect.

In David Brooks’s article “The Governing Cancer of Our Time” (26 Feb 2016), Brooks explains that in a “big, diverse society,” there are “essentially two ways to maintain order and to get things done”: “politics or some form of dictatorship,” “compromise or brute force.” Having said that politics involves compromise and deal-making in an effort to please as many within the diverse group of people as possible, Brooks assesses what has led to the state of Lincoln’s party today:

Over the past generation we have seen the rise of a generation of people who are against politics. These groups—best exemplified by the Tea Party but not exclusive to the Right—want to elect people who have no political experience. They want “outsiders.” They delegitimize compromise and deal-making. They’re willing to trample the customs and rules that give legitimacy to legislative decision making if it helps them gain power.

That attitude is greatly at odds with Lincoln’s goal to “achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

The Republican Party freed the slaves and granted them citizenship; the new Republican Coalition wants to trample the rights of citizens of color. The new coalition has become the home of the alt-right white supremacists and KKK sympathizers who would destroy every bit of progress we have made in racial relations.

The new Republican Coalition is not conservative, it’s not republican, and it’s not Christian. Most shocking and perplexing of all those who now profess allegiance to this wing of the Republican Party are evangelical “Christians.” According to a new PPRI/The Atlantic survey released this week, “Nearly two-thirds (65%) of white evangelical voters remain committed to supporting Trump, while only 16% say they favor Clinton.” Among other Christian groups, the survey says support is more evenly divided.

The fact that two-thirds of the most vocal Christian group rabidly stand behind a candidate whose life and values are the polar opposite of their professed beliefs simply defies logical explanation. That their voices are indistinguishable from those of white supremacists and all manner of bigots is at odds with Christ’s words on Christianity. A group of Pharisees asked Jesus, the founder of the Christian faith, “Which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Jesus’ simple response was

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. (Matthew 22: 37-40)

“On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” In other words, it’s that simple. If you get those two things right, you’ve got it. Don’t fret over the details.

Micah 6:8 is powerful in its simplicity:

He has told you, O mortal, what is good: and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

Joining forces with a coalition that demands justice for only certain citizens, that hates our government and our politics, that seeks to destroy whatever justice for all we’ve managed to achieve does not fulfill the commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves or to love justice and kindness.

Often being the nasty voices in social media discussions also fails to demonstrate a love of kindness or love of other people. Presenting themselves as God’s spokespersons to silence anyone who disagrees with their narrow stance only alienates, especially when what they’re saying is filled with scorn and hatred, and is not in the spirit of walking humbly with their God. Memes about jailing Hillary Clinton, virtual high fives every time they hear Trump talking about locking her up—how do these show justice, love, or humility? They’ve adopted what David Brooks calls “the bashing style of rhetoric that makes conversation impossible.”

Defending lewd, vulgar talk and behavior and condoning sexual assault because it didn’t happen this week shows no love for one’s fellow humans. Claiming that one candidate has been forgiven by God’s grace but that the other cannot be and deserves only punishment is not only theologically screwed up, it’s not loving or kind.

When innocent children are gunned down in their little school desks, these loving, god-fearing people shrug their shoulders and say, “Bummer! But we can’t do anything because Second Amendment.” Ya know, God, guns, glory. Sorry, parents!

I listened to an interview last night with Jerry Falwell Junior, the president of Liberty University, the largest Christian university in the world; he defended Trump, says he still plans to vote for him, and nobody’s perfect. And he cited James Dobson, another prominent evangelical guru, as agreeing with him.

Falwell pointed out that Jesus was often criticized for dining with sinners. Yes, Doctor Falwell, you are correct. Jesus dined with whoever came to him, including those scorned by the Pharisees, religious elite and chief hypocrites of the day. But there’s a BIG difference. Jesus hung out with them and broke bread with them, but he didn’t talk like them; and his life and values were clearly distinguishable from theirs. He associated with them without becoming one of them. He didn’t adopt their attitudes or defend their lifestyles. He shut down the hypocrites who were persecuting the woman at the well and sent her on her way with the words “Go and sin no more.” He wouldn’t allow her to be judged, but he encouraged her to adopt a healthier lifestyle. His voice was always distinct from the voices of the people to whom he showed love and compassion by dining with them.

The majority of evangelicals I’ve talked to are single-issue voters. The candidate who says (this week) that he opposes abortion gets their vote, regardless of what else he does or stands for. This is what the Bible they claim to follow calls “straining at a gnat while swallowing a camel.” I’m not saying abortion is a tiny issue; it’s an important issue, but it’s ONE issue. If we elect someone to a powerful office because of his or her stance on this one issue but ignore gross violations on dozens of other issues, that’s not godly. If we love justice, as Micah so eloquently suggests we should, we will seek justice for all.

How did this unlikely coalition come together? What is the unifying element? Matthew McWilliams, who conducted a national poll of 1800 registered voters, says, “I’ve found a single statistically significant variable predicts whether a voter supports Trump—and it’s not race, income or education levels: It’s authoritarianism.” Bingo! This is what the alt-right and the Christian right have in common: the inclination to follow strong leaders (Falwell Sr. and Jr., James Dobson, Joel Osteen). It’s what David Brooks calls the opposite of politics. Yes, politics is messy, Brooks says, but the only alternative is the dictatorial leader; and that alternative has never ended well for any nation. We should be careful what we wish for!

Most deeply frightening is what will happen on November 9, 2016. As Americans, we’ve always prided ourselves on a peaceful transfer of power. Does anyone see Donald J. Trump making a sad but gracious concession speech and promising to get behind President Clinton to keep our country great? He’s already threatened to jail his opponent if he wins, and his supporters are already talking about revolution if he loses.

On November 9, I hope we will all—Republicans, Democrats, and everything in between—remember the words of Abraham Lincoln:

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

Categories
Politics Religion

Not Your Old-Time Religion

One of the most baffling, perplexing, even maddening questions of our time is how the “Christian right,” “the far right,” “the evangelicals” have become such a powerful political force and how on earth that movement has thrown its considerable clout behind such an unlikely standard bearer as Donald Trump. I have wrestled with this question, as have many others, for the past several years; and finally I’m ready to offer my answer: The “Christian right” has ceased to be a religious tradition and now exists only as a powerful political movement. In its current expression, evangelicalism bears no resemblance to a faith community except in its use of the Bible and religious dogma as weapons with which to clobber anyone who disagrees with them.

Let’s look at a little history which may shed some light on what has brought us to the place where we now find ourselves. Many of us would have little reason to care about the history of evangelicalism, what evangelicals believe, or whom they will vote for in the next presidential election. That all changed in 2016, when Russia and the evangelicals (the oddest of odd couples) chose our president. Evangelicals were the largest demographic group among Trump supporters in 2016, with 80-81% being the official number compiled from exit polls of self-professed evangelicals who cast their votes for Trump. Evangelicals continue to stand by their man, and a recent Public Opinion Strategies poll reports that 83% of them intend to vote for him again in 2020. Without this group’s overwhelming support, it’s highly unlikely that Donald Trump would be sitting in the Oval Office today. Therefore, I think it behooves us all to take a closer look at who these people are who can’t get enough of guns, cruelty toward refugees, and the most unfit person ever to disgrace the office of POTUS.

Two religious groups in the United States which are often conflated are fundamentalists and evangelicals. According to NPR’s Steve Waldman and John Green, these two groups are not the same but do have certain elements in common. Evangelicalism is a broader movement, of which fundamentalism is a stricter, more conservative, far less tolerant subset. So I think it’s accurate to say that all fundamentalists are evangelicals, but not all evangelicals are fundamentalists. The National Association of Evangelicals’ website quotes historian David Bebbington’s summary of four core distinctives which define evangelical belief: conversion (being “born again”), activism (missionary and reform efforts), biblicism (the Bible as the ultimate authority), and crucicentrism (Jesus’ death as redeeming humanity).

Fundamentalist evangelicals also believe these four distinctives but add to them. Whereas all evangelicals believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, fundamentalists also believe in a literal reading of the Bible; not only, in their view, is the Bible the final source of truth, but they believe every story, metaphor, and poem are literal historic records. Fundamentalists are also, among other things, far more isolationist than other evangelicals. They take literally the New Testament command to “ come out from among them and be ye separate” (II Corinthians 6:17). “Them,” by the way, fundamentalists interpret to mean “the world”–which incorporates everyone who does not share their worldview. They cannot recognize the legitimacy of Catholicism as a Christian faith because it is so different in theology and practice from their own narrow view of what constitutes Christianity. An overriding attitude of judgment against even other evangelicals who take a broader view of certain subjects further isolates fundamentalists into a tight-knit community whose primary goal in life is to avoid being “defiled” by anything which contradicts their beliefs.

The term “evangelicalism” has defied precise definition or agreement on its origin, but many see its roots in early 17th-century changes in the church. Fundamentalism is generally seen as a late 19th-, early 20th-century offshoot that arose in response to social and academic developments such as Darwinism, liberalism, and modernism. Leaders’ attempts to articulate and define the non-negotiable core Christian beliefs resulted in the 1910 publication of a multi-volume set of essays, edited by Reuben Torrey, titled The Fundamentals. Those who accepted this distillation of Christian theology came to be known as fundamentalists.

This little history is greatly over-simplified but serves to provide a general framework for the rise of the movement which has now given us a reality TV show presidency. It’s important to add that not all who call themselves Christians fall into either of these two camps, evangelicalism and fundamentalism. These two just seem to comprise the vocal, disruptive element that has co-opted the modern Republican Party.

Fundamentalists have earned the reputation of being anti-intellectual because of their rejecting  Darwin’s findings and other scientific information which doesn’t coincide with their literal reading of the Genesis creation account and the great flood story among others. Witness their current denial of climate science, and no more needs to be said.

Fundamentalist thought has been widely influenced by leaders such as Dwight Moody, Bob Jones Sr., Jerry Falwell, Jerry Falwell Jr., Tim LaHaye, James Dobson, Rick Warren, Pat Robertson, and Franklin Graham. What all of these men have in common is their belief in a literal, inerrant Bible; their disdain for anyone who deviates from their narrow view and their dismissal of such people as  not “real Christians”; and their view that the United States is a Christian nation and should therefore be ruled by Biblical precepts–or should I say, their interpretation of Biblical precepts.

When asked how a group, which professes to believe in the literal interpretation and inerrancy of the Bible and labels themselves the sole upholders and defenders of Biblical conduct and morality, can so enthusiastically embrace and defend the likes of DT–who violates every moral principle they claim to hold dear–their only answer is that “God often used imperfect instruments in events recorded in the Bible.” No argument there. The Old Testament gives us King David, who lusted after another man’s wife while she bathed on the rooftop, sent his servants to fetch her, had sex with her, impregnated her with his son, sent her military husband off to the front lines where he was sure to be killed, and then married her. In the New Testament, we learn that David was an ancestor of Christ and “a man after God’s own heart.”

David alone would make it pretty clear that, if all accounts are accurate, God’s not looking for perfection. But just to strengthen the case, we have Noah who celebrated safely landing the ark by getting passed-out drunk; Abraham who–impatient with waiting for God to fulfill the promise of giving him an heir–took the matter into his own hands and had sex with the maid; Rahab the prostitute, also in Jesus’ bloodline; Jonah who ran from God’s command to warn the people of Nineveh because they were wicked and, in his opinion, unworthy of God’s mercy; Matthew the tax collector, a profession generally thought to employ the scum of the earth; and Saul the persecutor of Christians who became Paul, the greatest missionary of his day for spreading the Christian faith. I think we get the picture.

Yet if the only thing that can be said in defense of electing a person to the office of president is that he’s no worse than a few people in the Bible, that’s some very thin ice.

What makes evangelicals tick? How can they be won over to a cause or a candidate? For one thing, they have long been conditioned to follow the rules out of fear: fear of hell (real flames here), fear of shame, fear of disapproval by bigger-than-life leaders, fear of ostracization. Donald Trump tapped into that fear in his very first speech, when he broad-brushed all Mexicans as murderers and rapists and continues to stir up fear to persuade supporters to go along with his cruel policies. Never mind that most mass shooters in this country have been white male citizens and we’ve done nothing to curtail gun violence, let’s build a giant wall to keep all of those Mexicans out because a few have committed horrible crimes. Fear is a powerful motivator.

Evangelicals have also been conditioned to accept their literal reading of the Bible over the hard evidence of science. The flood really happened, and the earth really was created in six days, just 6000 years ago–science be damned. Anything not specifically covered in the Bible can easily be  “proven” with a cherry-picked verse or two. Thus, the exclusion of LGBTQ people because . . . Leviticus. And some have validated their prejudice against black Americans with the story about the black race being descended from Noah’s son Ham, who was cursed for some not altogether clear reason and his descendants supposedly doomed to a life of servitude–to the end of time. Yeah, that really was taught.

With so much credence given to faith over fact, revelation over reason, is it such a stretch to understand why those same people would take the word of the person they’ve been told was sent by God over the word of fact finders, scientists, psychologists, journalists, and other smart people? Is it any wonder that they view all intellectuals with suspicion? With their conditioned response of separatism and superiority to those who see the world differently, of believing they’re the ones with the inside track to God, their blind loyalty to a criminal “president” shouldn’t be the least bit surprising.

Another characteristic of the modern evangelical and fundamentalist movements is their adulation of rock-star leaders. Although many outside those circles may know the names of only the most notorious–the Grahams, the Falwells, maybe the Joneses–ask any fundamentalist about Bill Hybels, Jack Hyles, Tony Perkins, Tim LaHaye, James Dobson, and there will be instant recognition. Different groups will give more or less respect to different names, but the names are known and revered by at least some subgroups. These are the gurus whose word is truth, whose pronouncements set policy, and whose approval is oxygen to  their followers.

Should it then come as any surprise at all when one of those esteemed celebrities puts his arm around a man who in no way represents their stated beliefs or anything they ever learned in Sunday school and says “This person is sent by God to protect and preserve our nation,” the masses accept that pronouncement as divine truth and follow that man as fervently as they follow the leaders who anointed him? Sadly, the leader who gets lost in the process is the one they profess to believe above all others: Jesus, who never endorsed any of this baloney.

Donald Trump’s immediate predecessor, Barack Obama, gave the clearest statement of his Christian faith I’ve ever heard from a sitting president. And he backed up his words with a moral and scandal-free life, a ready knowledge of Christian belief, and even a spontaneous rendering of the hymn “Amazing Grace” at a funeral. Contrast that with Donald Trump’s mention of “Two Corinthians” as the only evidence of biblical knowledge he could muster on the spot. Yet President Obama is reviled by evangelicals as a non-citizen Muslim, and Donald Trump is hailed by “a significant portion of his supporters [as] literally . . . an answer to their prayers. He is regarded as something of a messiah, sent by God to protect a Christian nation” (Bobby Azarian, Ph.D., in Psychology Today).

The so-called “Christian Right” has ceased to be Christian. Although they claim unquestioned allegiance to the Bible, I’m going to venture a guess that most have not read much of the Bible; and the parts they have read are twisted to support preconceived beliefs. If they bothered to read the book they claim to follow, they would have run across a few passages which define what the Christian faith actually is. When your only reason for reading the Bible is to find support for what you already believe, you’re missing a lot.

If one wanted to know what the Christian faith is really all about, Micah 6:8 is a one-verse primer: “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think locking children in filthy cages with no access to hygiene supplies, adequate food, human touch, or even a real blanket qualifies as justice, kindness, or a humble walk with God. Then again, these children are brown, so perhaps they’re excluded from the general rules? Somehow I can’t imagine those same fine Christian people looking the other way or sending their attorneys to court to defend such treatment of white children.

James 1:27 echoes Micah’s summary: “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” “Care for the orphans and widows in their distress.” Yet allowing Puerto Rican Americans to languish in distress after a hurricane, desperate for the bare essentials of life, isn’t given a place on the “conservative” agenda. Nor are the children in the concentration camps or the families without health insurance or the minimum-wage workers who can barely exist on their paychecks and who would be wiped out by one unanticipated expense.

Then there’s Jesus’ own quick summary of what faith is meant to be. Asked by a Pharisee, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest,” Jesus responded: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” (Matthew 22:36-40). “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” In other words, the whole Old Testament is summed up in 28 words, further reduced to “Love God and love your fellow humans.”

Jesus reiterates those points a few chapters further on, in Matthew 25. There he gives a metaphorical description of a judgment of the nations, in which the nations will be divided into two groups: sheep and goats. The sole criterion for the division is the way in which the nations have treated the disadvantaged, “the least of these.” The sheep are those who have fed the hungry, given drink to the thirsty, welcomed the stranger, clothed the naked, cared for the sick, and visited the prisoner. The goats are the ones who have not done any of that. Those examples illustrate what it means to “love your neighbor as yourself.”

Notice the pattern here? What do all of these passages have in common? Each one defines faith as the acknowledgment of God and the loving treatment of one’s fellow humans. Nothing else. Nada. Not abortion, LGBTQ people, public bathrooms, right to bear arms. Nothing but loving God and loving each other. Anything added to those two distinctives is politics, not faith. It’s the attempt to weaponize faith as a means to gain power and control.

When fundamentalists formed not only their own churches but their own schools–pre-K through college–they made it possible to immerse a large enough population in their so-called theology to gain the numbers needed for the political clout they strove for. Today their information network has expanded to include news outlets, mainly one: Fox News. It’s like a virtual commune in which it’s possible to live and die without ever being exposed to any other ideas than those spouted by their powerful leaders. And just recently came this announcement:

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey has signed legislation permitting Briarwood Presbyterian Church to establish its own police force for its church and school campuses. The law approved two weeks ago allows the Birmingham-based church to set-up a private law enforcement department to make arrests when crimes are committed on its properties. (Patheos.com)

Legitimate concerns about this move include the strong possibility that such a police force would lead to further cover-up of crimes like sexual assault, since the enforcers would be guided more by their loyalty to the church than by their loyalty to the law of the land.

It should be clear by now that the modern evangelical movement has divorced itself from every religious principle on which it was established and has devoted itself to the accumulation of political power. This phenomenon is nothing new. Theologian Richard Rohr says this:

“Christianity is a lifestyle–a way of being in the world that is simple, non-violent, shared, and loving. However, we made it into a ‘religion’ (and all that goes with that) and avoided the lifestyle change itself. One could be warlike, greedy, racist, selfish, and vain in most of Christian history, and still believe that Jesus is one’s ‘personal Lord and Savior’ . . . The world has no time for such silliness anymore. The suffering on Earth is too great.”

The Christian church has often stood on the wrong side of history. The church did not act to oppose either slavery or the many years of violence against the freed slaves and their descendants. Martin Luther King Jr., in a section of his well-known “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” delivers a strong rebuke against the white church in 1960s America:

I must honestly reiterate that I have been disappointed with the church. I do not say that as one of those negative critics who can always find something wrong with the church. I say it as a minister of the gospel who loves the church, who was nurtured in its bosom, who has been sustained by its Spiritual blessings, and who will remain true to it as long as the cord of life shall lengthen. I had the strange feeling when I was suddenly catapulted into the leadership of the bus protest in Montgomery several years ago that we would have the support of the white church. I felt that the white ministers, priests, and rabbis of the South would be some of our strongest allies. Instead, some few have been outright opponents, refusing to understand the freedom movement and misrepresenting its leaders; all too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained-glass windows. In spite of my shattered dreams of the past, I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause and with deep moral concern serve as the channel through which our just grievances could get to the power structure. I had hoped that each of you would understand. But again I have been disappointed. I have heard numerous religious leaders of the South call upon their worshipers to comply with a desegregation decision because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers say, follow this decree because integration is morally right and the Negro is your brother.

Abuses of power in the name of religion are not new, but we must never cease to call them what they are. Today’s evangelical movement is built not on faith but on white supremacy and white nationalism. Why else would a grifting, immoral, cruel, ignorant white con man be revered while an intelligent, honest, morally upright, kind, generous black man is reviled? Why else would a pious Senate Majority Leader be allowed to get away with violating the Constitution in whatever way is necessary to continue promoting the “conservative” agenda of discrediting and destroying the legacy of our only black president?

Frank Schaeffer Jr., former evangelical leader turned reasonable person, author of numerous books and articles, offers this history of the modern evangelical-political movement:

The 1970s Evangelical anti-abortion movement that Dad (Evangelical leader Francis Schaeffer), C. Everett Koop (who would be Ronald Reagan’s surgeon general) and I helped create seduced the Republican Party. We turned it into an extremist far-right party that is fundamentally anti-American. There would have been no Tea Party without the foundation we built.

The difference between now and then is that back then we were religious fanatics knocking on the doors of normal political leaders. Today the fanatics are the political leaders.

You can’t understand why the GOP was so successful in winning back both houses of congress in 2014, and wrecking most of what Obama has tried to do, unless you understand what we did back then.

You see, in the late 1960s Dad published the first of many best-selling evangelical books. When Dad toured evangelical colleges and churches all over North America, I often accompanied him while Mom and Dad — unbeknownst to them at the time — were gradually being elevated to Evangelical Protestant sainthood. This meant that a few years later when Dad took a “stand” on the issue of abortion, a powerful movement formed almost instantly, inspired by his leadership, and the evangelical-led “pro-life” movement (and the religious right) was born.

(My Horrible Right-Wing Past: Confessions of a One-Time Religious Right Icon, published in Salon)

Opposition to abortion became the rallying cry for a group also described by Schaeffer: “Evangelical Christianity was now [in the 1980s] more about winning elections than about winning souls.”

Saving unborn babies sounded much more Christian and noble than barring black students from universities such as Bob Jones University and forbidding interracial dating. Make no mistake, though: it’s always been about white male supremacy and the fear of losing that advantage to the influx of other races. Underlying all of the noble-sounding rhetoric, the one-issue litmus tests, and the religious veneer is the belief that there were “very fine people” on both sides of the Charlottesville tragedy and the claim that the Civil War was not really about slavery.

People who follow the simple precepts of loving God and loving each other don’t defend the “right” to own arsenals of deadly weapons; don’t shrug their shoulders and say there’s nothing we can do when the owner of one of those arsenals goes on a rampage and commits mass murder; don’t condone locking children in concentration camps; don’t laugh and applaud when an orange-haired cretin mocks war heroes, women who accuse him of sexual assault, handicapped people, the press, and anyone else who gets under his very thin skin; and they sure as hell don’t vote to elect that person to yet another four-year term as president. People looking for political power and the perpetuation of white nationalism do all of those things.

Let’s call it what it is.

Categories
Politics

Racist Is as Racist Does

Everyone is familiar with the words of that immortal philosopher Forrest Gump: “Stupid is as stupid does.” My mother had a similar saying which she used any time she felt we were placing too much emphasis on trying to make ourselves physically attractive: “Pretty is as pretty does.” Both sentiments serve to state what seems too obvious even to need saying: what we do is who we are. Talk is cheap. Words can be deceptive. My mother also frequently reminded us “Actions speak louder than words.” Another well-known teacher, Jesus, said it this way: “ You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles?  In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit” (Matthew 7:16-17).

In the current war of words over who is racist and who isn’t, what we’re learning is that in today’s political climate, the word “racist” is more offensive than the racially biased actions are. A person who says racially degrading things may be described as unwise, crude, or careless; but anyone who calls him racist is the real villain. It’s considered racist to call out a prejudiced person and give a name to the person’s actions. We’re lost in a maze of circular reasoning, with no sign of finding our way out any time soon.

One of the reasons we’re not going to find a quick or easy solution to our nation’s polarization is the nature of today’s “conservative” movement.

Donald Trump’s supporters fall into three main categories, as I see it: white nationalists, evangelicals, and the types of people who are most likely to join a cult. As diverse as those three categories may seem, they actually have several common characteristics. Essential to survival for all of them is maintaining an us vs. them mentality. For the white nationalists, it’s white people (specifically white men) vs. everyone of color; for evangelicals, it’s the real Christians (as they see themselves) vs. nonbelievers, Muslims, and Christians who have a different view of Christianity than they have. They are God’s chosen; they are the insiders. For the cultists, it’s the members vs. the outsiders, obviously. But it’s worth enumerating here the characteristics which make people prone to joining cults and the fulfillment they find in membership.

Carolyn Steber (June 21, 2018 on Bustle.com) lists these nine personality traits as the primary markers of those most likely to join cults: wanting to feel validated, seeking an identity, being a follower (as opposed to a leader), seeking meaning, having schizotypal thinking (more on that in a moment), being highly suggestible (falling for conspiracy theories, e.g.), constantly blaming others, having very low self-worth. Important note, Ms. Steber defines “schizotypal thinking” as “walking along the edge of schizophrenia, without actually having the delusions or disconnection from society that’s associated with the disorder”–yet still falling prey to “alien-type,” “conspiracy-type,” or “supernatural-type” beliefs.

I think the cult-like nature of Trump’s base has been well established, but when you add in the characteristics of the people who are attracted to cults, you have a pretty clear picture of who these followers are and the futility of trying to reason with them.

A second distinctive which all three legs of the Trump Base share is reverence for authoritarian leaders. White nationalists, evangelicals, and cult members all exhibit fanatical devotion to their grand exalted leaders, even at times following the leader into their own graves.

A third distinctive, and the one which makes the currently existing critical mass of these types most problematic, is the utter lack of reason in their thinking and their actions. All are taught to accept only what they hear within the group; outsiders are the enemy and are out to steal their brains and deceive them into denying their allegiance to the group. Attempting to present facts or to reason with them has the adverse effect of causing them to cling more fervently to the ideas with which they have been brainwashed. The person attempting to engage them in discourse and expose them to logic becomes the face of the enemy who is trying to lead them astray from the truth. When you consider what’s lost by leaving a cult (one’s identity, validation, meaning, and self-worth), it’s not hard to understand why members cling so frantically to their membership.

A fourth distinctive shared by these three groups is fear: fear of losing their racial majority, fear of going to hell, or fear of being disconnected from the social order. Fear keeps them loyal, keeps them chanting, keeps them deceived, because listening to reason would lead to having to completely revamp their world view and let go of their safety net. And that’s scary for anyone.

All three of these groups, in their fervent devotion to their authoritarian leader, will defend that leader against all critics, no matter how outrageous the leader’s actions. This is how it becomes acceptable for a fascist dictator to tell women of color to go back where they came from, even though they came from here, but not okay to give a name to his statements and his attitudes. Those who do call a spade a spade become the enemy because they have assaulted the untouchable, so they are in fact the ones who are prejudiced.

But racist is as racist does, so here’s what racists do. You may be a racist if . . . Wait, no, you ARE a racist if . . .

. . . you think there are degrees of citizenship.

The United States of America was founded on this premise, written by Thomas Jefferson as the introduction to our declaration that we were claiming our rightful place as an independent nation:

“We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

What does it mean for a truth to be self-evident? It means it is or should be obvious; it doesn’t need explanation, justification, or defense. It just is. In other words, Thomas Jefferson was not stating ideas or personal opinions; he was putting into words a fundamental principle: there are no degrees of humanity. Of course, we can’t escape the fact that Jefferson’s definition of “all men” was different from ours. It didn’t include black men, and it didn’t mean all humans; it literally meant men, not women. However, as enlightened citizens a couple of centuries later, when we say “All men are created equal,” we mean all human beings. To believe differently assigns degrees of humanity, and assigning people of color to a lower caste is racist, because racism is a form of prejudice, and prejudice is the prejudgment of people based on a particular characteristic. When that characteristic is race, the judgment is racist.

The rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, according to Jefferson, are given by our Creator (more room for discussion there, but let’s save that for later); they are not given by the government, and because they are “unalienable rights,” they can’t be taken away by the government. Depriving certain people of their God-given rights because of their race is a racist act. Causing certain citizens to feel “less than” because of their race is a racist act; placing certain citizens’ lives in danger because of their race and because your fanatical followers have been so whipped into a frenzy that they say a woman of color “deserves a round” is racist, dangerous, and evil.

. . . you agree with and defend other people’s racist statements.

Spreading dangerous and degrading attitudes requires the cooperation of many people, not all of whom agree with the attitudes being spread but some of whom lack the courage to take a stand against them. We have as a culture too long held the belief that discussing politics in polite company is inappropriate. Conventional wisdom teaches that in social gatherings, at Thanksgiving dinner, in school classrooms, and in church, politics and religion are taboo (with the obvious exception of discussing religion at church). In the 21st century, add social media to that list. Make too many political posts and see what happens to your friends list.

Politics is life; it’s our communal beliefs about how we join ourselves into a civil body, how we relate to each other within that body, and how our government should facilitate our peaceful and harmonious existence. How did those subjects become taboo? They should be discussed frequently, and what better places than with family, friends, faith community, and educational institutions. Why can’t a family have a rational conversation around the Thanksgiving dinner table without its ending in a mashed-potato fight? Why can’t a minister point out ungodly government actions without expecting a tirade from a parishioner as he greets people at the door, an angry Monday-morning phone call, or a letter of notification that some parishioners have found a different congregation where they’re not challenged to think about matters of national importance?

. . . you treat people differently–or excuse their inequitable treatment–depending on their race, color, religion, country of origin, or length of residence in the U. S.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar are citizens of the United States of America. Representative Ocasio-Cortez was born in the Bronx, New York; her father was also born in the Bronx, and her mother was born in Puerto Rico, which–contrary to Donald Trump’s belief–means she also was born a citizen. Representative Pressley was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and raised on the north side of Chicago. Does it get more American than that? Representative Tlaib was born in Detroit to Palestinian immigrants, making her the first generation of her family to be born in the U.S. Representative Omar was born in Mogadishu and lived in Somalia until forced to flee to escape the war. The family arrived in New York in 1992 and were granted asylum, when Ms. Omar was ten years old. The family moved around a bit before settling in Minneapolis. Of the four young elected officials who have been the objects of unprecedented vicious attacks by the POTUS, Ms. Omar is the only one who is not native born; she has, however, been a naturalized citizen since 2000, when she was 17 years old. In addition to her skin color and foreign birth making her a target, she also wears the hijab in respect to her Muslim faith.

Donald Trump is only the second generation of Trumps born on American soil. His grandparents migrated here from Germany. On his mother’s side, he is the first generation native born; she was from Scotland. In other words, his roots in this country don’t go deep. He has been married to two immigrants: Ivana from Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic) and Melania from Yugoslavia (now Slovenia). Melania, the First Lady of the United States, migrated here in 1996, a mere 23 years ago. She became a citizen in 2006, a mere 13 years ago. A recent Huff Post article points out that Ilhan Omar has been a citizen six years longer than Melania Trump has, yet so far, Donald has not ordered Melania back to where she came from.

When the person who holds the highest office in our land goes on an unprecedented rampage against four young elected officials, the fact that all four are people of color can’t be a coincidence. To say that he is not motivated by racism is to be either mentally deficient (using my nice words) or so blindly devoted as to be incapable of admitting the obvious. Maybe both.

. . . you ignore or reject the legal parameters governing interaction with people of different race and different national origin.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission makes it illegal to discriminate against anyone because of the person’s national origin:

“It is unlawful to harass a person because of his or her national origin. Harassment can include, for example, offensive or derogatory remarks about a person’s national origin, accent or ethnicity. Although the law doesn’t prohibit simple teasing, offhand comments, or isolated incidents that are not very serious, harassment is illegal when it is so frequent or severe that it creates a hostile or offensive work environment or when it results in an adverse employment decision (such as the victim being fired or demoted).

The harasser can be the victim’s supervisor, a supervisor in another area, a co-worker, or someone who is not an employee of the employer, such as a client or customer.”

Based on that definition, Donald Trump’s protracted attacks on those four women would get him fired from Applebee’s, Macy’s, or Walmart. We’ve reached a sad stage in our history when the qualifications for POTUS are lower than for a supervisory position at McDonalds.

We’re in a mess, and we’re not getting out of it any time soon, but complacency is a luxury we can ill afford right now. Truth is our only refuge during troubled times, and we must keep proclaiming it. Silence is complicity.

“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe.”

Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor
Categories
Coronavirus, COVID-19 Politics

Where My Nose Begins

I grew up in the age of folksy sayings; there was a catchy aphorism for just about anything a child could think of. A couple of my mother’s favorites were “Pretty is as pretty does” and “God helps those who help themselves.” Obviously, expressing universal truths in pithy sayings was effective, because I remember many of them–along with the lessons they taught me–now that I am many years past childhood.

One such saying which is replaying in my head repeatedly these days is “Your right to swing your arm ends where my nose begins.” Swinging one’s arm is a common act, for a variety of reasons; and it’s one in which the government and our fellow citizens would typically have no say. However, if the arc of my swing intersects with part of another person’s body, that person’s right not to be assaulted must be given equal weight with my right to swing my arm, and that person’s right will limit my right. Seems logical.

If there were a word counter that could calculate the number of times a particular word is spoken in our country, I’d bet “rights” would be thousands ahead of the next most common. But what’s sad about that thought is that most of the time when an American is talking about rights, it’s about their own personal rights and those of their “tribe”; equal weight is not given to those outside their sphere.

There’s a very large, very loud contingent of Americans who adamantly claim their right to own firearms–any number and any type they choose–because Second Amendment (Don’t get me started!). Not only does that claim ignore the language and limits stated and implied in the amendment itself, but it callously ignores the “noses” of others whose rights should be given equal consideration. My grandchildren have the right to feel secure in their schools; they have the right to go to school each day without having to fear that they may leave in a body bag; they have the right for active shooter drills not to be part of their required curriculum. Limiting a few of the gun lovers’ rights would help to insure our children’s rights, but many are too self-centered to see it that way.

Did early settlers in the American South have the right to build large farms to support their families and make strong communities? Of course they did. Did they have the right to travel across the ocean and kidnap fellow human beings and force them to do the hard work of the plantation with no share in the profits? Well, no. Did early European settlers have the right to come to this continent and establish communities in harmony with the native inhabitants? I would say yes. Did they have the right to kill many of those natives and drive the rest onto reservations so that they could have the whole place to themselves? Well, no.

If I may digress for a moment from examples within our own country, did displaced Jewish people have the right to return to their land of origin and establish themselves as a nation? I believe they did. Do they have the right to bulldoze homes and communities of those natives who have been there continuously since antiquity? Do they have the right to displace these people from their ancestral lands? Do they have the right to bulldoze Bedouin villages, home to people who want nothing more than to live in peace and enjoy simple lives, to operate schools in which children can be educated? Do they have the right to establish their own nation by destroying another one? NO, they do not.

Humans are the cruelest breed.

To return to my main subject, the banner under which the conservative movement has marched over the last several decades is Right to Life, or the hoped-for revoking of Roe v Wade. Yet when these same advocates of protection for the unborn are confronted with the right of immigrant children in detention centers to be released from the cruel circumstances in which they’re being held and returned to their parents, the only response is “Meh! They wouldn’t be there if their parents hadn’t tried to enter the country.” When confronted with the fact that “Black lives matter,” their response is “All lives matter,” even though their attitudes toward many other groups belie that statement.

It’s enough to make one think unborn lives are not really their concern after all. Could it be that advocating for the rights of embryonic humans is a smokescreen? Could it be that they’re using an emotional appeal to gain more support for their “conservative” agenda? Could it be that they’re really just pulling at some people’s heartstrings in order to gain more power for themselves and their party? I wouldn’t go so far as to assign motives to people I don’t know, but I think those questions are worth considering.

I’ve often quoted Thomas Paine, writer of many influential pamphlets during the American Revolutionary period, because I think he had the most clear-eyed view on human rights that I’ve read. In Paine’s 1792 book “Rights of Man,” he opines that all humans have two categories of rights: natural rights and civil rights.

This is his definition of natural rights:

“Natural rights are those which appertain to man in right of his existence. Of this kind are all the intellectual rights, or rights of the mind, and also all those rights of acting as an individual for his own comfort and happiness, which are not injurious to the natural rights of others.”

In the previous paragraph, he has discussed the Genesis account of creation, not as a religious sectarian, which Payne was not, but as a philosopher explaining the origin of this category of human rights. Our natural rights, according to Thomas Paine, were given to us at our individual creation, and every human receives exactly the same endowment. Thomas Jefferson expresses the same idea in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” We all know by now the problems with those words; but taken at face value, they echo Paine’s statement of natural rights and equality of all humans.

It’s also worth noting that, even in this initial statement, Paine includes the caveat “which are not injurious to the natural rights of others.” Even our God-given rights, according to the great thinkers, have limits; and that limit is “where my nose begins.” At no point in history have humans ever been recognized as having unlimited personal rights, although our actions certainly speak louder than those words–to use another familiar folksy saying from my youth.

Paine goes on to explain the concept of civil rights:

“Civil rights are those which appertain to man in right of his being a member of society. Every civil right has for its foundation some natural right pre-existing in the individual, but to the enjoyment of which his individual power is not, in all cases, sufficiently competent. Of this kind are all those which relate to security and protection.”

Thomas Jefferson put it this way in the Declaration of Independence: “To secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

The purpose of government, then, according to both Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, is to protect our natural rights. As Paine says, security and protection are the benefits we gain from being part of a civil body, since we are individually not always capable of protecting ourselves and insuring our own security. I think I feel another old saying coming on: “There is strength in numbers.”

Paine goes on to add another caveat: “It follows, then, that the power produced from the aggregate of natural rights, imperfect in power in the individual, cannot be applied to invade the natural rights which are retained in the individual, and in which the power to execute is as perfect as the right itself.” In other words, if I can execute one of my natural rights on my own–and my exercise of that right is “not injurious to others,” the government does not have the authority to take over that particular right.

Thomas Jefferson lists our natural, or “unalienable” rights, as “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” He uses the words “among these,” meaning that these are just three examples, not a comprehensive list.

Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau–among others–called this concept of natural and civil rights, and the relationship between the two, the social contract. Individuals who wish to enjoy the security and protection of a civil body enter into a contract with that body. I believe the most important thing to remember here is that a contract is an agreement between two parties which is binding on both parties. In other words, we each have a responsibility in the forming and maintaining of that “more perfect union” that the writers of our Constitution envisioned.

So what does all of this mean to us right now? If you’re one of those who believe you have a right to go wherever you want without a mask, I would say you’re wrong. You have a right to be maskless any time you are alone or in the open air with no one else less than six feet away from you, but you do not have the right to refuse wearing a mask in a public place where other members of our civil body will be in close proximity. I would also say you do not have the right to discount the information given by people who know more about the subject of disease than you or I know. Those experts do their part to uphold the social contract by sharing their expertise with the rest of us, and my ignorant opinion is not equal to their scientific research. The same principle applies to following social distancing guidelines and limiting our number of contacts. Wait, I’m thinking of another not-so-old saying: “You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts.”

America is leading the world in COVID infections and deaths. That’s not the way we’re supposed to be the leaders of the free world! We are a civil body, and what affects one of us affects us all. There is no “God-given” right–not in any of our governing documents, not in any religious text, and not in common-sense thinking–to ignore medical guidelines meant to protect the whole civil body. It just doesn’t exist, and if it did, it would be superseded by the greater good of keeping the whole body alive and healthy.

It’s not about you. Or me. So here’s my final wise saying, not so very old but it will be by the time this is over: “Wear the damn mask!” Oh, yeah, and for God’s sake put it over your nose.

Categories
Politics

Bread Crumbs, Q Drops, and Code 17

Many years ago, home alone on a Saturday morning and in search of entertainment, I  came across a movie called Capricorn One, about an elaborate hoax to fake a Mars landing. Kidnapped flight crew, secret sound stages, special effects, and a desperate escape through the desert–it has all the makings of a thriller. This movie was my Intro to Conspiracy Theories/Conspiracy Theories 101 class. Because it had never before occurred to me that perpetrating such a grand hoax could be possible–let alone that anyone would have reason to do such a thing–I admit I was intrigued for weeks. It raised questions about the moon landing and everything else I had ever read about NASA, space exploration, and the integrity of our government and its agencies.

To be clear, when I say “intrigued,” I do not mean I ever believed the notion of grand hoaxes perpetrated by NASA or questioned the legitimacy of our country’s advances into space travel. I mean I was intellectually curious: curious to know why anyone would propose such an idea, curious to understand what kind of mind questions verifiable scientific fact, curious to know whether such a hoax could be pulled off.

That film was produced in 1977, so obviously conspiracy theories are not a 21st-century phenomenon, and they were not even a 20th-century phenomenon. It does seem, however, that conspiracy theories have proliferated and gained traction more in the last decade than in all the other decades of my life.

Q Anon is one of the hot groups right now chasing some wild theories about the inner workings of our government. Recently, after hearing the name mentioned so often, I realized I didn’t have a clear understanding of who or what this group is, beyond the obvious, that it’s pretty crazy. So I found some articles in reputable publications (I refuse to visit Q Anon sites) and educated myself. If, like me, you’re not quite sure what Q Anon is or whether you should rush out to sign up, here’s a little of what I learned.

The core belief of those who identify as Q Anon followers is that the United States is governed by a “deep state” made up of Satan-worshiping pedophiles. Although that would certainly explain a lot about what’s happening right now, we’ve advanced from Conspiracy Theories 101 into the post-doctoral courses: Conspiracy Theory Meets Twilight Zone. An August 20 New York Times article adds, “Members of this group [also] kill and eat their victims in order to extract a life-extending chemical from their blood.” So for the sake of brevity, let’s call them the SWPCs (Satan-worshiping pedophilic cannibals).

It’s pretty hard to imagine such far-fetched stuff going mainstream, but it has done just that. The same NYT article says social media platforms have been flooded with misinformation propagated by this umbrella “for a sprawling set of internet conspiracy theories that allege, falsely, that the world is run by a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles who are plotting against Mr. Trump while operating a global child sex-trafficking ring.” It’s also known as a “big-tent” conspiracy theory, so it’s an equal-opportunity clearing house for all types of wackos.

And that brings us to the least shocking fact of all: Donald Trump is at the center of this madness. In fact, Donald Trump is the hero they are trying to rescue from the grips of the deep-state SWPCs; or, as ABC News puts it, he is their “crusading savior.”

Most of the people I hang out with, when Q Anon is mentioned, will respond with either a furrowed brow and a “Huh??” or an eye roll and a “Pffft.” The scary thing, however, is that since I’m rather selective, as I imagine you are, about the people I hang out with, my circle is probably not an accurate sampling of the population at large. The list believed to be part of the SWPC Clique include, but is not limited to, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, George Soros, Oprah Winfrey, Tom Hanks, Ellen DeGeneres, Pope Francis, and the Dalai Lama (New York Times 8/20).

Various sources estimate the number of Q Anon followers–that is, the ones who actually believe Tom Hanks and Barack Obama worship Satan and eat children–in the hundreds of thousands to the millions. So while your immediate circle of friends may not include any QAnon types, that person behind you in the grocery store checkout line, the person ringing up your groceries, that sweet old couple next-door, your hair stylist, your dentist (I’ve always suspected they’re aliens), the people in the house down the street that you tell your kids to stay away from, or even the slightly odd person sitting on the pew beside you (pre-COVID of course) scrolling on their phone during the minister’s sermon. If the estimates are accurate, we’re all sure to encounter a few.

So what is it that these followers are following? “Q” is allegedly a high-ranking intelligence officer who has infiltrated the deep state in order to expose and destroy it. The person first started posting on an Internet message board in October 2017 under the name Q Clearance Patriot, later shortened to just “Q.” Q is the Department of Energy’s designation for Top Secret Restricted Data, National Security Information, and Secret Restricted Data–meant to suggest that this person has access to all of the most highly classified information possessed by the United States intelligence community.

No one knows who this person is (that’s the Anon part), but he or she sends out coded information as marching orders to the faithful. Q posts these coded messages on Internet boards; the posts are called “bread crumbs” or “Q drops.” There are even Q drop apps which collect all of the crumbs and notify the user when a new one arrives, for the highly organized wacko. The number 17 is important, because Q is the 17th letter of the alphabet and also one DT has used several times, which makes it an obvious choice for use in coded messages. Are you with me so far? Am I with me so far? This is deeply disturbing territory we’re in here.

It’s not certain whether Q is a single individual, a group, or an identity that morphs over time; but all who follow believe they are engaged in a global war against an evil cabal, which will “soon culminate in ‘The Storm’ — an appointed time when Mr. Trump would finally unmask the cabal, punish its members for their crimes and restore America to greatness” (New York Times 8/20). Hmm, does this mean MAGA is also code?

This Storm thing reminds me of “The Rapture,” something I was taught as a child in church, not exactly a conspiracy theory, but with some similarities. The story goes that Jesus will some day, when least expected, sneak up on us and beam up all of his favorites, then rain down death and destruction on all the poor saps left behind.

But back to the SWPCs and those faithful soldiers helping Donald Trump win the war against them, this is stuff that Rod Serling and Stephen King might be proud to have written; but as real-life politics, one must wonder just who the hell believes it. And more importantly, why? What does anyone gain by accepting weird fiction as reality?

In elementary school, I read the tall tales of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox. Throughout my school years, we read about the deities of various countries, most notably Greece and Rome. There was a whole horde of gods and goddesses in each of the mythologies, created by pre-scientific people as explanations for natural phenomena for which there were so far no more sophisticated explanations. Those myths survived science to become literature that captures our imaginations with epic tales of intrigue, personal rivalries, sex, and war.

After President Kennedy was assassinated, conspiracy theories abounded, because humans always crave explanations when tragedy strikes; we need something that makes sense of a senseless act. According to some theories, he was still alive but gravely wounded. I met someone who told me she had heard first-hand from a family member that the wing of the Dallas hospital in which Kennedy had “allegedly” died was closed for months afterward, suggesting he was still there. I even heard that Jackie married Aristotle Onassis only because he owned a private island where she could keep her invalid husband. And then of course, there was the whole string of theories about who really shot him and why.

The thing that makes tall tales, epic stories of mythology, a faked Mars landing, and a dead president who wasn’t really dead relatively harmless is that they are either clearly fiction or they’re isolated theories confined to small groups or to individuals. What Donald Trump and the modern Republican Party have done for conspiracy theories is to take them mainstream. The number of followers is huge and growing daily.

Just this week, Marjorie Taylor Greene won a Georgia primary for a seat in Congress; and most pundits think she has a strong chance at winning in the general election. So Q Anon goes to Congress. It doesn’t get much more mainstream than that. These people will make the Tea Party look like a tea party.

Second on the not-at-all-shocking list is that Donald Trump likes these people because they like him. When asked at a White House briefing what he thinks of them, he responded, “I’ve heard these are people that love our country. So I don’t know really anything about it other than they do supposedly like me.” Well, then, they’re okay. DT’s sole criterion for a person or group’s legitimacy is how much they like him. His buddy Vlad calls him frequently, Kim Jong Un writes him beautiful letters, and Q Anon peeps like him. What else is there to know? Meanwhile, he spins his own conspiracies that Barack Obama and Kamala Harris are not natural citizens and–this morning’s gem–that Joe Biden was not born in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

There is just one word of caution which I think should be mentioned here. Like the term “fake news,” which was coined to name a specific type of information of which all should be wary but now is the aspersion cast at anything unfavorable to our own biases, “conspiracy theory” can also lose its meaning if used indiscriminately.

There’s a difference between an alternate theory and a conspiracy theory. Alternate theories are often breakthroughs that lead us to “think outside the box,” to open our minds to possibilities. Conspiracy theories have no redeeming value. When a thinking person questions the accuracy or legitimacy of a mainstream opinion and decides to challenge it, that person does some research and presents their alternate theory grounded in the factual evidence which led to the theory. That theorist will make a logical argument to explain and defend the validity of their conclusion. A conspiracy theorist can make no such argument because conspiracy theories are never based on fact.

By definition, a conspiracy theory can’t have factual evidence to support it. Brittanica.com defines the term as “an attempt to explain harmful or tragic events as the result of the actions of a small, powerful group. Such explanations reject the accepted narrative surrounding those events; indeed, the official version may be seen as further proof of the conspiracy.” Such theories, then, seem to be the concoctions of suspicious minds, not the conclusions of rational thought.

In science, a theory is

“a well-substantiated explanation of an aspect of the natural world that can incorporate laws, hypotheses and facts. The theory of gravitation, for instance, explains why apples fall from trees and astronauts float in space. . . . A theory not only explains known facts; it also allows scientists to make predictions of what they should observe if a theory is true. Scientific theories are testable. New evidence should be compatible with a theory. If it isn’t, the theory is refined or rejected.” (American Museum of Natural History website)

Conspiracy theories are closer to paranoia–“suspicion and mistrust of people or their actions without evidence or justification”–than to scientific theory (definition from online dictionary). Isn’t it interesting that many of the same people who call wearing a mask to prevent the spread of disease “living in fear” see watching message boards for coded messages about Satan-worshiping pedophilic cannibals perfectly reasonable. They ain’t afraid of nothin’.

My favorite Friday night TV show in the early 1960s was The Twilight Zone, though I often slept lightly after watching it. At the beginning of each episode, Rod Serling, the writer of the series, looked into the camera and laid the premise for what was to come. His introduction changed slightly over the years, but this is one version which seems eerily relevant today:

“You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension: a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You’re moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You’ve just crossed over into… the Twilight Zone.”

Most days over the last four years, and most intensely since January of this year, I’ve felt we crossed that line and are deep into the Zone. I don’t recall Rod Serling telling viewers how to get out of the Twilight Zone; but I fervently hope we can find the map, because I’ve had enough of living in a world where everything feels surreal, where I don’t even recognize my native country, where citizens are divided into warring tribes, and where we have a president who fans the flames of division. Enough.

Vote on November 3 like your life depends on it. (It does.)

Categories
Politics Religion

Thoughts about Prayers

Listening to the current national conversation, one might believe our only two options for managing a public health crisis are either to follow the advice of medical experts or to “pray about it.” Aside from the latter choice being misguided and possibly deadly, it also suggests that prayer must be done in isolation from other action. I would suggest that those who believe in praying can offer their heavenly petitions while keeping their distance from others, wearing their masks, and washing their hands. It doesn’t have to be an either-or.

Most of the atheists I’ve known have at some point made a statement similar to this one: “I just don’t believe in some great fairy in the sky.” Well, I am a theist, not an atheist, and I also do not believe in some great fairy who rules the universe with a magic wand. The space here does not allow a theological treatise on God’s nature; and even if it did, I’d be ill equipped to lead that study. However, since one’s approach to prayer is determined by one’s concept of God, it might be helpful to look at the source which many of those who have opted to “just pray about it” claim as their inspiration: the Christian Bible.

I’m a writer and retired English professor, not a theologian, and I don’t want anyone to think I’m launching into a sermon. But since “thoughts and prayers” is one of our current cultural clichés, I decided to do a bit of digging to see what prayer really is and how it’s recorded in religious texts, the Bible in particular. Here are a few of the things I learned.

Prayer is mentioned hundreds of times, and hundreds of individual prayers are recorded in the Bible. Prayers fall into several categories: worship, peace and comfort, confession/repentance, forgiveness, and petition. (Remember, I’m not a theologian, so I don’t claim my lists are exhaustive.)

I’m as confused as anyone else by some of the prayers and the concept of God recorded in the Old Testament. Asking God to destroy whole civilizations, including every man, woman, child, animal, and cockroach evokes a concept of God which is a bit scary; so if it’s okay with you, I’ll stick mostly to the New Testament.

What I find in the New Testament prayers is not humans abdicating their own responsibility but humans asking God to empower them with the strength, boldness, endurance, and wisdom to carry out those responsibilities. Those who pray for God to end a deadly virus while they continue on in their normal routines are abdicating their own responsibilities and evoking the “great fairy” image of a God who might, with a wave of the magic wand, rid the world of a disease. Those who choose praying about gun violence, while stockpiling munitions and voting for lawmakers who allow such stockpiling, abdicate their human responsibility to guard the social welfare and expect God to save people’s lives. Those who admonish us to pray for our “president” while they vote for those who enable his corruption abdicate their human responsibility to elect responsible lawmakers and expect God to change someone who doesn’t want to be changed. It doesn’t work that way.

Although Philippians 4:13 is not a prayer, it seems a good place to start: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” I start here because I think this verse suggests a divine-human partnership in which the human is committed to right actions and the divine is the source which enables the human to carry out those actions when they are in accordance with divine principles. Such requests as “help our team win” may not exactly meet the requirement of aligning with divine principles. Just saying.

Romans 8:26–“Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought . . .”–reinforces the idea that God strengthens humans to do good works but does not promise to clean up the damage when humans act in their own selfish interests.

Borrowing just one example from the Old Testament, remember the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. In the book of Genesis, Abraham negotiates with God to spare Sodom from destruction brought on by the corruption that has engulfed the city. God’s response is that God will spare the city if Abraham can find a particular number of righteous people. The number continues to decrease until God finally says, “Okay, warn your nephew Lot to take his family and leave, and then I’ll do the job.” The story gets a lot creepier after that, but the point I’d like to make here is that God is unwilling to take action without some human cooperation. God is not our fixer.

The Lord’s Prayer, sometimes called the Model Prayer, suggests the same spirit of human-divine cooperation: “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” There are no freebies here; those who want God to do God’s part must first be willing to do their own part.

In Jesus’ well-known prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, just before his arrest, Jesus prays: “My father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want” (Matthew 26:39). Even Jesus knows it’s not all about him and his freedom to do as he wishes while God takes care of the business of running the world. Jesus makes himself a willing participant, knowing the grave suffering he is about to face.  

Some people today seem to view God as the Michael Cohen in the sky, the fixer who will clean up human messes without our having any responsibility to help. I don’t believe it works that way. I believe if prayer is to have any effect at all, it must be active, not passive. Prayers recorded in the Bible are answered or unanswered depending on the degree to which they align with what is already known of God and God’s plan. The person praying is asking to be equipped for his/her personal mission. I agree with the adage, “Put feet under your prayers.” To put it another way, pray on your feet, not your butt.

Sending “thoughts and prayers” to families torn apart by gun violence or police overreach, while opposing any action that might reduce further incidents of carnage, is an insult to those families and makes a mockery of human communication with the divine. I’ve read numerous comments from finger- waggers on social media admonishing those who oppose the current corruption in our government to just shut up and pray about it. “Pray for our ‘president’; don’t point out his incompetence and criminality.” Am I allowed to do both?

Those who believe in prayer should by all means keep praying. Our nation needs all the help it can get to climb out of this mess, and seeking guidance and strength from the Almighty seems a good place to start but not to end. My mother often told me “God helps those who help themselves.” It’s our job to make this nation what it should be: your job and my job. Some may believe God has a part in it; I believe that. But I don’t believe God will take the wreck we’ve made and put all the pieces back together while we continue to do the same things which caused the problem. We have to help ourselves if we expect God to help us.

Here’s my prayer for the day. (Just to be clear, I don’t own a hunting rifle.)

Now I kneel me down to pray,

A bottle of hand sanitizer a few inches away.

A mask is nearby, on demand

In case a non-family member is close at hand.

My hunting rifle is locked away in its case

And an assault rifle would be out of place.

I’ve written my senators and my rep

Encouraging them to stay in step.

I’ve done what Jesus said to do:

Love my God and love all of you.

I didn’t vote for Donald Trump

Because I’m not a big dumb lump.

My mail-in ballot is ready to go,

With votes for all of the candidates who show

Integrity and an ounce of wit,

Who know how to get us out of this shit.

I’ve tried my best to do my part.

Now I ask you, God, to strengthen my heart

To continue the fight for right and good,

And to keep doing all I should.

Our country’s in a great big mess,

So we ask you all of our hearts to bless.

Amen