Tag: Donald Trump

Trump’s Republicans Are “The Most Dangerous Organization in the History of the World” (Sunday Homily)

climate-change

Readings for First Sunday in Advent: IS 2: 1-5; PS 122: 1-9; ROM 13: 11-14; MT 24: 37-44

It’s impossible for thoughtful homilists not to be stopped dead in their tracks by the opening words of today’s Gospel selection.

Jesus said to his disciples:
“As it was in the days of Noah,
so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.                                                                                       In those days before the flood,
they were eating and drinking,
marrying and giving in marriage,
up to the day that Noah entered the ark.
They did not know until the flood came and carried them all away.
So will it be also at the coming of the Son of Man. . .”

Of course, everyone knows the Noah tale. There God warned the great patriarch that a huge flood was coming to destroy the earth, because its inhabitants had become so violent.

Presumably, Noah shared such forewarnings with his contemporaries – or at least with those wondering why he was constructing so mammoth a vessel. Apparently no one listened. You might even say they were in denial about the coming deluge. But the disaster came anyway and swept them all away.

Jesus’ words seem unmistakably pertinent to themes of climate change today — particularly in a context where USians have just elected a climate change denier to the White House and have given control of all branches of government to a party of “representatives” who refuse to recognize that humans can or should do anything about predicted natural disasters that threaten to completely replicate the catastrophe recounted in the legend of Noah and his Ark.

Such denial has rendered the Trump-led Republican Party (in the words of Noam Chomsky) “the most dangerous organization in the history of the world.”  And that includes Hitler’s Nazis. Even aside from their not possessing nuclear weapons, the Nazis did not have the power to destroy all of human life even if they wanted to. The Republicans do.

And they are completely dedicated to that project. They are racing as fast as possible towards the destruction of organized human life. In the meantime, their allegiance to the fossil fuel industry and unwillingness to fund alternative sources of energy will undoubtedly produce millions of refugees from low-lying coastal regions throughout the world. The resulting influx of refugees from sea-level rise will render any exclusionary “walls” impotent and useless.

Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel reading become even more pointed since they connect the Noah story with imperialism — another great producer of refugees. The device for doing so is the Master’s reference to “the Son of Man.” That’s the character that the Book of Daniel invokes as the judge of all the empires that had conquered Israel – from Egypt to the Greeks. In his own day, Jesus apparently identified himself with that judge in relation to his people’s imperial enemy in first century Palestine, viz. the Roman Empire. Colonial violence, Jesus promises, will be Rome’s downfall.

Besides their suicidal climate change denial, Republicans , of course (like their Democratic counterparts), are champions of empire and U.S military supremacy.

Today because of their denial and dedication to empire, Trump and his party have taken Rome’s place as an even more dangerous Enemy of Humankind. Jesus words call us to “wake up” and recognize that danger.

All of us, the Noah reference suggests, must awaken and pray for a holy insomnia that refuses to accept as somehow “normal” the most dangerous organization in the history of the world.

If we don’t take to the streets and refuse to join Republicans’ rush to the precipice, there will surely come. . . LA DELUGE!

Cubs Win! Cubs Win! Now Anything Is Possible!

cubs

(Here’s a piece I wrote at the beginning of November — before the disaster of November 8th. Because the reflection is so upbeat, I hesitate to publish it now. Optimism somehow seems inappropriate after the recent election. But for what it’s worth, this is what I reported before Trump’s election.)

The worm has turned. Now anything is possible.

It’s the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. The 2012 New Era of the Mayan Calendar has begun. And along with those new beginnings, Theo Epstein’s arrival as President of the Chicago Cubs has changed everything there in just five (albeit painful) years.

Now the Chicago Cubs have won their first pennant in 46 seasons – their first World Series championship in 108 years!!

Count ‘em: one hundred and eight years!! (As they say, “Anyone can have a bad century.”)

Look, I know that in the end sports don’t really mean anything. I know that my colleagues on the left would tell me that it’s all part of the scam. It’s a distraction from what’s really important – love, peace, social justice and the struggle for their practical realization.

Professional sports are one of the ways working stiffs like me are tricked into channeling our energies towards false identities, superficial causes, and corporate celebrations. It’s a narcotic; a dope more powerful than religion. It keeps us asleep and tranquilized, when we should be out in the street throwing Molotov Cocktails.

I know. I know.

But I have to admit that I’ve happily allowed myself to be scammed like that for all of my 76 years – or at least for 66. I mean I’ve been a Cub fan ever since my family on Chicago’s North Side got their first television around 1950, when I was 10 years old. Since then every summer afternoon from April through October (and at night when they were on the road), the Cubbies have broken my heart and the hearts of all their fans (as Steve Goodman put it) “year after year, after year– after year, after year, after year.”

Who among us can forget 1969, when they blew a 9 ½ game lead in August and finished 8 games behind the Miracle Mets? What about the horrendous turn of events in 2003 when they wasted a 3-1 series lead against the Miami Marlins and missed going to the World Series by just 5 outs?  (Thanks, Steve Bartman!)

All that time, I’ve lived and died with the Cubs – mostly died. Ernie Banks was my boyhood hero. I imitated his batting stance. Yet, the “lovable losers” have disappointed with unbelievable consistency . As I said, they’ve been doing it to us all for those 108 miserable years!

All that time, at seasons’ end, we’ve been forced to say “Wait until next year.”

Well, the wait is over. Next year has arrived! The Chicago Cubs won their first World Series. And (I blush to admit) it made me very happy.

Thanks to the generosity of my daughter and son-in-law, I was in Wrigley Field’s “friendly confines” for game four of this year’s wrangle with the Cleveland Indians. The atmosphere inside and outside the park was absolutely electric. And when the Cubs scored first, the din made me think I was about to lose my hearing. It was delightfully excruciating. “Go, Cubs, go. Go, Cubs, go!”

My euphoria however soon turned to déjà vu. The Indians came back and turned that early lead into a 7-2 rout against my home team. We left the park tired and cold with a distinct feeling of “here we go again.” The Indians had a nearly insurmountable 3-1 series lead. The feeling was sooo familiar.

Next year, anyone?

But the Cubs came back! They won their final game in Chicago, and then two more on the road in Cleveland. Three in a row!

The final contest was a rain-delayed, extra inning thriller that no one with my Cub history will ever forget. Even there the Cubs blew what had been a 4 run lead in the 8th inning when their best un-hittable relief pitcher (Aroldis Chapman) gave up a 2-run homer. It was heart-stopping. But the Cubs went on to win.

So what do I take away from it all.

Sports are transcendent. They’re better than church – more fun. They give us a chance to identify and commune with people of all stripes and identities recognizing our common humanity despite those differences. It is possible to overcome it all.

Sports give us hope. They help us realize the truth of Mother Jones’ observation: “You lose, you lose, you lose, you lose, and then you win.”

Triumph is inevitable. It’s the way the Universe is constructed. At least that’s what the great spiritual Masters – and sports fans all over the world – tell us.

Now if we can just transfer those convictions and realizations to what’s really meaningful, we might be able to turn our entire battered world into friendly confines.

 

Donald Trump and His Christian Supporters Hate Jesus (Sunday Homily)

trump-jesus

Readings for the feast of “Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe”: 2 SM 5: 1-3, PS 122: 1-5; COL 1: 12-20; LK 23: 35-43.

How on earth were USian Christians able to elect a man like Donald Trump?

After all, Trump represents the polar opposite of the values embodied in Jesus of Nazareth. In fact, Jesus was the kind of person Donald Trump and his supporters actually hate.

I mean, the Nazarene was poor, dark skinned, the son of an unwed teenage mother, and an immigrant in Egypt. Jesus was viscerally opposed to an empire very like the United States. And that empire (Rome) executed him as a terrorist. Jesus ended up on death row and finished as a victim of torture and capital punishment. To repeat, Trump and the Republicans hate people like that. They want Middle Easterners like Jesus out of their country at best, and dead at worst.

Again, how could followers of Jesus elect his sworn enemy?

The readings for today’s feast of “Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe” provide the answer. They explain what might be termed the great “makeover” of Jesus of Nazareth changing him from the leader of an anti-imperial revolutionary movement into a pillar supporting the very institutions that assassinated him.

In other words: through 4th century sleight of hand, the Jesus who sided with the poor and those oppressed by empire was made to switch sides. He was co-opted and domesticated – kicked upstairs into the royal class. He became not only a patron of the Roman Empire, but a “king” complete with crown, purple robes, scepter and fawning courtiers.

Reza Aslan’s best-seller, Zealot, explains the process in detail. The book centralizes today’s account of Jesus’ crucifixion in Luke, Chapter 23. There Aslan pays particular attention to:

  • Jesus’ cross,
  • to the Roman inscription identifying Jesus as “King of the Jews,”
  • and to the dialog between Jesus and the two “thieves” presented as sharing his fate.

Take the cross first. It was the mode of execution reserved primarily for insurrectionists against the Roman occupation of Palestine. The fact that Jesus was crucified indicates that the Romans believed him to be a revolutionary terrorist. Aslan asks, how could it have been otherwise?  After all, Jesus was widely considered the “messiah” – i.e. as the one, like David in today’s first reading, expected to lead “The War” against Israel’s oppressors.

Moreover, Jesus proclaimed the “Kingdom of God,” a highly politicized metaphor which could only be understood as an alternative to Roman rule. It would return Israel, Jesus himself promised, to Yahweh’s governance and accord primacy to the poor and marginalized. The Romans drew logical conclusions. Put otherwise, the Roman cross itself provides bloody testimony to the radical threat the empire saw personified in Jesus.

That threat was made specific in the inscription the Romans placed over the head of the crucified Jesus. It read, “King of the Jews.”

Typically, those words are interpreted as a cruel joke by the Roman procurator, Pontius Pilate – as if he were simply poking fun at those who saw Jesus as the worthy successor of Israel’s beloved King David.

However, according to Reza Aslan, nothing humorous was intended by the inscription. Instead it was a titulus. Every victim of crucifixion had one – a statement of the reason for his execution. The motive for Jesus’ crucifixion was the same as for the many others among his contemporaries who were executed for the same crime: aspiring to replace Roman rule with home rule – with an Israel governed by Jews instead of Romans. The titulus on Jesus’ cross, along with the cross itself identify him as the antithesis of what he eventually became, a Roman tool.

And then there are those two thieves. Aslan says they weren’t “thieves” at all. That’s a mistranslation, he points out. A better translation of the Greek word, lestai , would be “bandits” – the common designation in the first century for insurrectionists. And there probably weren’t just two others crucified the day Jesus was assassinated. There may have been a dozen or more.

In this context the dialog between Jesus and two of the terrorists crucified with him takes on great significance. Actually, it documents the beginning of the process I described of changing Jesus’ image from insurrectionist to depoliticized teacher.

Think about it. Luke’s account of Jesus’ words and deeds was first penned about the year 85 or 90 – 20 years or so after the Roman-Jewish War (66-70 C.E.) that utterly destroyed Jerusalem and its temple. In the war’s aftermath, defeated Christians became anxious to show the Roman world that it had nothing to fear from their presence in empire.

One way of doing that was to distance the dying Jesus from the Jewish insurgents and their terrorist actions against their oppressors. So in Luke’s death-bed dialog among three crucified revolutionaries, one of the terrorists admits that Jesus is “under the same sentence” as he and his comrade in arms. Given what Aslan said about crucifixion, that fact was undeniable. All three had been sentenced as insurrectionists.

But now comes the distancing between Jesus and Israel’s liberation movements. Luke has the “good thief” (read good terrorist) say, “. . . indeed we have been condemned justly, for the sentence we received corresponds to our crimes, but this man has done nothing criminal.”

In other words, Luke (writing for a post-war Roman audience) dismisses insurrection as “criminal,” and removes Jesus from association with such crime – a fact endorsed, Luke asserts, by insiders like the honest lestai crucified with Jesus. Luke’s message to Rome: the killing of Jesus was a terrible mistake; he meant no harm to Rome. And neither do we, his followers.

After the 4th century, Luke’s message became the official position of the Catholic Church – adopted subsequently by Protestantism. The message transformed the poor, brown, bastard, revolutionary martyr from a tortured and executed criminal into “Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe.”

So by now in 2016 Jesus has changed color and class. He is the white, rich, bigoted “American” champion of U.S. empire. Those pretending to follow the one-time immigrant from the Middle East show they want to keep riffraff like Jesus, Mary and Joseph out of their land of the free and home of the brave. They want enemies of empire like the Nazarene tortured and executed the way Rome tortured and killed the historical Jesus. Their president-elect even wants to go after Jesus’ parents while he’s at it.

We’ve come a long way, baby! Or have we?

The truth is that only by rescuing the historical Jesus – the antithesis of his Republican version – can we be saved from Jesus-hating Trumpism.

Trumpocalypse: America Just Voted for the End of the World (Sunday Homily)

trumpocalypse

Readings for 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time: MAL 3: 19-20A; Ps. 98: 5-9; 2 THES 3: 7-12; LK 21: 5-9.

We’re still reeling from the astounding results of the November 8th U.S. elections, aren’t we?

For many – especially immigrants, people of color, Muslims, progressives and followers of Jesus – what some have called the “Trumpocalypse” nearly seems like the end of the world as we know it.

Even the Republican Establishment is not completely happy. Mr. Trump is not really one of them.  In effect, (like socialist Bernie Sanders for the Democrats) the Donald was a third (Fascist) party candidate. His election shows that both major parties are disintegrating before our eyes. Powerful third and fourth parties are proliferating alongside Greens and Libertarians. In reality six relevant parties contended in the recently concluded election cycle.

At the moment however, it’s the anti-Gospel political right that is enjoying its moment in the sun.

All of that makes today’s readings disturbingly relevant. They appear to centralize “the end of the world.” And on top of that Paul’s dictum from Second Thessalonians seems eerily to confirm right wing tendencies towards “tough love.” There Paul says “. . . if anyone is unwilling to work, neither should that one eat.”

But don’t be misled. There’s not a trace of “tough love” in Jesus’ treatment of the poor. And “apocalypse” is not about the end of the world. It’s about unsustainability. The word apocalypse means “unveiling.” It’s about “revelation” in that sense – making evident what’s hidden about the world and who’s in charge. Apocalypse affirms the unsustainability of empire. Radical change is inevitable.

Apocalypse emerged a few centuries before the birth of Jesus. To convey its message of impending radical change, it employed stock images of natural catastrophe, plagues, wars, earthquakes, and portents involving the sun, moon, and stars. The change would be cosmic.

The audience of this strange literary form was empire’s victims. It was meant to encourage the poor and dispossessed, the unemployed, sick, widowed and orphaned – not the rich and well-off. Apocalypse assured the poor that all systems of oppression end in flames whether they’re Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, or Roman. (Those are the global giants that oppressed Israel at one time or another in its history.) Where are they today? They’ve been swept away by the tide of history. And the apologists for “Eternal Rome” find themselves somewhere in antiquity’s dustbin.

So it’s ironic that apocalypse should be embraced by conservatives and their rich patrons – by those who want to keep things as they are. Things do not have to be that way. And “by God,” they won’t be! That’s the message of apocalypse. A new era is dawning, and you’d better be on the right side of history or you’ll lose out. Being “left behind” means supporting the old order that’s doomed.

The problem is that right from the beginning, believers took literally the cosmic and highly poetic symbolism of apocalypse. (We always get in trouble for being too literal.) That’s the attitude that caused Paul to tear his hair out in today’s second reading. Some in the early Christian community took the imminence of this expectation so seriously that they even stopped working.

What was the point of work, they reasoned? Everything was about to change profoundly by God’s intervention. That made human work meaningless. All believers had to do was sit back and wait for Jesus’ triumphant arrival. Eat, drink, be merry, and whistle past the graveyard in the meantime.

Those are the people Paul addresses in this morning’s excerpt from Second Thessalonians. He’s clearly exasperated. He says, “Look I’m working. And I’m the one responsible for your believing in Jesus’ Second Coming! Get real, people. Go back to work. Stop sponging off the community. Instead, be like me and do your part to bring about the new order we all expect. “

Paul’s words bring to mind the people who refuse to work today because they deem apocalyptic expectations divinely ordained or “natural.” And I’m certainly not referring to welfare queens.

Instead, I’m talking about people so committed to the old order that (with Margaret Thatcher) they’re convinced that “There is no alternative,” even though the “inevitable order” they support threatens the very survival of their own grandchildren. So they do what must be done to perpetuate what in God’s eyes is unsustainable.

Such “busy-bodies” refer to their endeavors as “work,” but in reality, their occupations represent a refusal to work. That is, if we identify that term with what contributes to life and the establishment of the Kingdom community Jesus proclaimed.

On this understanding, involvement in the military and the military-industrial complex is certainly not work. Neither is labor in financial market casinos or in the health-insurance and fossil fuel industries and their nuclear power counterparts. Advertising, fashion, professional sports, or much of what we refer to as “education” and journalism might also qualify as anti-work. Such occupations are not only highly questionable in terms of building up human community and protecting the planet. They are often positively destructive. Their purpose is to ward off or distract from the impending Big Change promised by the great unveiling.

Do I mean followers of Jesus should renounce such “work?” Yes I do. Or at least, we need to work to bring about a world where such occupations are not rewarded with pay – i.e. with a ticket to overconsumption even in terms of food and drink. And, to quote St. Paul, if arms manufacturers want to continue their anti-work as inevitable, let them starve! The world will be better off.

What about the unemployment caused by such radical change? It’s simple: share the remaining work. Make sure everyone is working – say for four hours each day, or three days a week, or six months each year. Get everyone to work building or rebuilding infrastructure, paving highways and covering rooftops with solar cells, and cleaning up the dump sites where all our toxic waste has been buried.

Think of the freedom such changes would create for building up God’s kingdom – to play, to garden, write, converse, make love, raise our children, and do all the things that make us human!

“Totally unrealistic” you say? Precisely! Apocalypse is by nature unrealistic. It calls us to work for an entirely different order we can hardly imagine. It calls us to reclaim our humanity from the insanity of destructive anti-work.

So maybe the election of Donald Trump is exactly what we needed. After all, “America” is just another of those oppressive empires God’s People have always suffered from. It is doomed and will soon disintegrate like Babylon, Rome – and the Soviet Union.

Our apocalyptic readings tell us the present order must end. Second Thessalonians helps us discern directions for a new one

The destruction of both the Democratic and Republican Parties portended by Mr. Trump’s election is a very good start.

Americans Just Elected Archie Bunker!

bunker-for-president

Remember Archie Bunker? He was the central character in Norman Lear’s “All in the Family.” Archie was the working class bigot we all laughed when Carroll O’Connor brilliantly played him during the 1970s.

Everyone loved Archie. Someone even printed a t-shirt: “Archie Bunker for President.”

The Carroll character admired Herbert Hoover. He longed for a time when “we didn’t need no welfare state,” and when “’goils’ were ‘goils’ and men were men.” He was patriarchal, racist and xenophobic. He despised “homos” and called liberals like his son-in-law “meatheads.”

Well, believe it or not: Americans just followed through on that t-shirt slogan. They elected Donald Trump — a billionaire Archie Bunker. Better put, America’s Archie Bunkers voted in Mr. Trump as (in Norman Lear’s own words) “another version of themselves.”

Like those who elected him, Donald Trump is tired of having to pussyfoot (ahem!) around the sensibilities of blacks, women, Hispanics, non-Christians, and others who have exhibited annoying touchiness around the epithets white men have applied to them so comfortably in the past. Like them, he is the sworn enemy of “political correctness.”

True, Trump doesn’t know much about history or politics. He can’t even define the “nuclear triad.” He is mistrustful of scientists warning about human-induced climate change. He wonders: “If we have nuclear weapons, why don’t we use them?”

But to his admirers (in Orwell’s words) such “ignorance is strength.” Once again, it means Mr. Trump is like his constituency.  He reflects their own mental processes. For them, what his detractors call “ignorance” means Mr. Trump is unencumbered by indoctrination into the Beltway’s arcania and by the restrictions of international business-as-usual. None of that is working anyway. So to hell with it all!

Since things can’t get much worse, why not elect a climate change denier and someone accused of and having bragged about multiple instances of sexual assault? Why not vote for a man endorsed by the Klan – or one who has promised to punish women who have abortions. So what if he wants to build a wall along the Mexican border, prevent Muslims from entering the country, reinstate torture, racial profiling and stop-and-frisk policies, deport undocumented Hispanics, jail his presidential opponent, lower taxes for the wealthy, dismantle the Affordable Care Act, and punch those who disagree with him in the face?

Archie Bunkers love all that stuff.

And maybe it’s just what we all need. It may bring the entire dysfunctional system down. I mean, Donald Trump is hated nearly as much by the Republican Establishment as by Democrats. This may be the end of them both.

And at least he isn’t as hawkish as his opponent, Hilary Clinton. His vaunted friendship with Vladimir Putin may keep us out of the nuclear war that Mrs. Clinton appeared to salivate over. As well, Trump seems less trustful of NATO than Clinton who loves that particular engine of war.

Moreover, the Donald will predictably mobilize the “Meatheads” among us. In fact, they somehow seem to do better when people like Nixon or “W” are in power. So after January’s inauguration, watch progressives from Black Live Matter activists to Dakota Access Pipeline Water Protectors mobilize in unending protest.

Finally, the surprising election results where (once again) the victor received fewer votes than the defeated, may lead to election reform. It’s time to insure that everyone’s vote actually matters, rather than those cast in just a few “swing states.” Reforms should include shortening of the electoral season, reversal of the Citizens United decision, abolition of the Electoral College, universal reintroduction of paper ballots, reinstatement of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and elimination of voter suppression tactics that militate mostly against people of color.

Choosing Archie Bunker for president is not entirely without merit.

President Trump: Harbinger of Revolution

trump-president

So Donald Trump is now our president-elect!

Of course, the F.B.I.’s James Comey is the proximate cause of this disaster. His October Surprise intervention in the presidential campaign represents yet another coup by the ruling class to nullify grassroots democracy. It’s like the Supreme Court’s selection of George W. Bush back in 2000. This time however the F.B.I. is the agency of intervention on behalf of the elite.

In any case, Comey’s maneuver, like what happened 16 years ago, embodies the corruption of a system that needs to come down for reasons far beyond banana republic pre-election shenanigans.

After all, the American system with its burgeoning police state at home and its brutal imperialism abroad is responsible for most of the world’s problems: unending wars, oppression of poor people everywhere, planetary destruction by way of human-induced climate chaos, and reversion to pre-Magna Carta torture and imprisonment without charge or trial.

In the name of humanity, in the name of Mother Earth, then, the system just described has long deserved dissolution.

But how would such destruction occur? Until November 8th, it all seemed so entrenched –  controlled by overwhelming military and law enforcement powers, not to mention a network of propaganda and miseducation that keeps citizens asleep and rebellion at bay.

Enter Donald Trump! Enter the U.S. electorate!

The election of Donald Trump represents (in Michael Moore‘s words) the Molotov Cocktail the desperate subconsciously required to destroy dysfunctional arrangements that no longer serve them. It’s like the Brits and Brexit. There too ordinary people refused to be led by the “experts.” They knew the system had to be destroyed. So they gave the middle finger to their “betters.”

Yes, Trump remains an absolute lout, and a know-nothing. He’s a climate-change denying sexist and racist xenophobe. But as such he makes clear to the entire world what “America” has become – what it in fact is: loud, boorish, fearful, uneducated, racist, sexist, domineering, undemocratic, and xenophobic. With his election, it is no longer possible to pretend otherwise.

Ironically, however, the Donald Trump version of us all might represent exactly what’s needed to spark and catalyze the revolution against everything he, our country and many of us have come to embody. He’s what’s required to destroy the system as we know it, and to coalesce revolutionary forces roiling just below the surface of contemporary American life.

So following his inauguration just watch the agents of revolution come together.  I’m talking about:

·      The civilized world

·      Women tired of being objectified and harassed and underpaid

·      Environmentalists

·      Black Lives Matter activists

·      “Fight for Fifteen” workers

·      The new First People’s Movement resisting installations like the Dakota Access         Pipeline

·      Prison strikers

·      Immigrants

·      Young people energized by Bernie Sanders

·      Muslims at home and abroad

·      Religious leaders like Pope Francis

·      And Mother Earth Herself

But, be forewarned: the next four years will be rough. There will be a lot of broken heads and imprisonments. We’re about to experience a genuine revolution.

Thank God.

Donald Trump and Torture (Sunday Homily)

torture-trump

Readings for 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time: 2 MC 7: 1-12, 9-14; PS 17:1, 5-6, 3, 15; 2 THES 2:11-3:5; LK 20: 27-38.

One of the wonderful aspects of the Judeo-Christian tradition is how so much of it reflects the consciousness of the poor and oppressed, while at the same time giving expression to a “preferential option for the poor.” That’s a gift for us in a culture that generally despises poor people, oppresses the world’s impoverished majority, and spins the news in ways that ignore the poor and reflect a decided “preferential option for the rich.”

This morning’s first reading is especially valuable for us who live in a system where a candidate for president, Donald Trump, advocates torturing poor people who rebel against American imperialism. He has promised, to bring back water boarding.  He’s said, “I would bring back water boarding, And I would bring back a hell of a lot worse than water boarding.”

Before Abu Grahib, a statement like that would have been unthinkable. Torture is against international law. It contradicts Article 5 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights which identified the right not to be tortured as a fundamental human right. At least since the end of World War II, torture has been considered one of those intrinsic evils about which there simply could be no debate.

However, ever since Abu Ghraib gave the lie to George W. Bush’s famous prevarication, “The United States doesn’t do torture” – ever since our government redefined the word to exclude even waterboarding – it has become apparent that Bush (and so many others of our “thought-leaders”) was lying. So today, it’s possible for a presidential candidate to propose measures worse than water boarding – perhaps cutting out of tongues and removal of limbs – as measures Americans admire and advocate..

But what do tortured terrorists actually think about while having limbs removed and tongues cut out? Read today’s selection about the Maccabee brothers and find out.

The Maccabees were members of a heroic family of guerrilla fighters who in the mid- 2nd century BCE terrorized the invading Greek forces of Antiochus IV Epiphanes. (Actually, “Maccabee” wasn’t the family’s name; it was more a nom de guerre for an entire resistance movement. The word meant “Hammer” – the Hammer Gang – so-called because of its delight in pounding to mincemeat the invaders of their beloved homeland. The term “Maccabee” was similar to “al Qaeda,” when it simply meant “the list” – a reference to the Rolodex of assets the CIA used when it employed al Qaeda back when they were “freedom fighters” against the Russians in Afghanistan.)

For his part, the Seleucid king, Antiochus, was fiercely anti-Semitic. He considered the Jews historically and culturally backward. For him and his empire’s advancement, Jews had to be brought into the 2nd century BCE even if it meant their kicking and screaming the whole way.

Today we might understand Antiochus’ project as “modernizing” the Jews – as Hellenizing them for purposes of imperial control. Evidently the Seleucid king subscribed to the position that if empire can persuade conquered peoples to adopt its patterns of thinking and especially of imagining God, the task of imperial administrators is made that much easier.

Many Jews agreed with the program of Antiochus. After all, the Greeks’ empire seemed invincible. If the empire couldn’t be beat, it was better to join it willingly. So these “Hellenized Jews” stopped circumcising their sons, and changed their diets even to include eating pork. They became more Greek than the Greeks.

They also became the targets of Maccabee “terrorist” attacks. In today’s terms, such Hellenized Jews would be the targets blown up by Maccabee suicide bombers in marketplaces located in Jewish but Greek-loving neighborhoods. (Even if the Maccabee targeting may have been more selective than that, it is certain that Hellenized Jews were as much the objects of Maccabee terror as were the Seleucid forces themselves.)

In countering such extremism, Antiochus IV proscribed the Jewish religion as itself criminal and illegitimate. This was very similar to the way many “Americans” consider Islam. So Greek troops burnt and otherwise desecrated copies of the Torah in much the same way as our “Christian” troops are frequently caught burning or urinating on the Holy Koran and on corpses of Muslim resistance fighters.

Though the Greeks considered the Maccabean forces to be terrorist, faithful Jews admired them as national heroes and servants of God. They understood that the Maccabees were fighting a Holy War against the much more powerful Seleucids. It was David against Goliath all over again.

In any case, according to today’s selection from Second Maccabees, seven brothers of the gang’s leadership were finally arrested (along with their mother) by the Greek invaders. (This would have been reported to Greeks “back home” as a great triumph – “Senior Leaders” captured making “our troops” and “our world” much safer.)

Then the torture and the screaming start.

According to today’s reading, all eight are beaten with whips and instruments designed to tear open their flesh. Then following standard operating procedures still practiced today, other enhanced interrogation techniques were used to torture the brothers one after the other in the presence of their blood-drenched mother, herself near death. The purpose here, of course, was to induce the woman to divulge names, places, and plans that she was privy to as the wife of the one who started the Jewish resistance to the Seleucids.

But what does she do? And what about her sons?

In a word, they are all – mother as well as her sons – completely defiant.

“What do you expect to achieve by questioning us” one of the brothers shouts? “We are ready to die rather than transgress the laws of our ancestors.”

Even at the point of death he spits out the words: “You accursed fiend” (I wonder what expletive he really used!), “you are depriving us of this present life, but the King of the world will raise us up to live again forever. It is for his laws that we are dying.”

Another of the brothers sees that his torturers are actually enjoying their work. (The text refers to cutting out his tongue and amputating his hands as “cruel sport.” Does that remind you of Abu Ghraib?) So he sticks out his tongue and stretches out his hands inviting them to do their work. “It was from Heaven that I received these,” he says. “I’d rather lose them than offend Yahweh” (read Allah).

“Even the king and his attendants marveled at the young man’s courage,” the text says. Far from being intimidated, the freedom-fighter “regarded his suffering as nothing.”

Just before dying, another of the tortured brothers undergoing the very same cruelties says: “It is my choice to die at the hands of men with the hope God gives of being raised up by him; but for you, there will be no resurrection to life.” As indicated by those words, conviction of a happy eternity moved these guerrilla fighters to embrace death willingly. (Seventy-two virgins, anyone?)

So what goes on in the heads of the tortured? Disdain for their torturers. Defiance. Show of courage. Love for the motherland. Hope.

And what is the response from the people they die for? Admiration. Elevation of martyrs and the tortured to sainthood. Motivation to follow their example.

And ultimately victory for the tortured and assassinated. . .  I mean, against all odds, the Jewish resistance – the Hammer Terrorists – did succeed in evicting the Greeks from their homeland.

As I was saying, this reading should cause us to reevaluate our attitude towards terrorism, terrorists, and the scandal of debating the pros and cons of torture. It should cause us to reevaluate any thoughts of voting next Tuesday for the would-be torturer-in-chief, Donald Trump.

Maybe We Should Embrace President Trump: Is He Our Only Hope?

trump-shit

Since last weekend and F.B.I. director, James Comey’s decision to intervene in the presidential election, I’ve been depressed. It struck me as yet another coup by the powerful to nullify democracy. It’s like the Supreme Court’s selection of George W. Bush back in 2000. This time the F.B.I. is the intervening agency. Its maneuver, like what happened 16 years ago, embodies the corruption of a system that needs to come down.

After all, American Imperialism is responsible for most of the world’s problems: unending wars, oppression of poor people everywhere, planetary destruction by way of human-induced global warming, and reversion to pre-Magna Carta torture and imprisonment without charge or trial. The U.S. system has the world controlled by a relative handful of the obscenely rich capitalists whose economic theories and practice provide no hope of alleviating the poverty afflicting most of the planet.

All of that demands that in the name of humanity, in the name of Mother Earth, the system just described must be destroyed.

But how would such destruction occur? It all seems so entrenched and is controlled by overwhelming military and law enforcement powers – not to mention a network of propaganda and miseducation that keeps citizens asleep and rebellion at bay.

It’s like the Soviet Union before 1989. Ours is a weary, completely dysfunctional Old Order supported by politicians such as Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, Jeb Bush, and yes, by Hillary Clinton and her husband. All of them (and especially the Clintons in today’s electoral context) represent the very embodiment of the ancien regime. They all endorse unending war, restrictions on human rights at home and abroad, constant surveillance of our communications and persons, low wages and cut-backs on the government services previously funded by taxing the rich. None of our politicians is willing to address criminal wealth disparities, climate change, the threat of nuclear war, falling living standards prohibitive health care costs or student debt.

In such dire straits, and as Michael Moore has suggested, most of us intuitively see that the system just described needs to be blown up. It needs someone to throw a Molotov Cocktail at the whole thing. But who?

Enter Donald Trump! Enter the U.S. electorate!

Voting for Trump represents the bomb the desperate subconsciously require to destroy arrangements that no longer serve. It’s like the Brits and Brexit. There ordinary people refused to be led by the “experts.” They knew the system had to be destroyed. So they gave the middle finger to their “betters.”

Yes, Trump’s an absolute lout, and a know-nothing. He’s a climate-change denying sexist and racist xenophobe. But as such he makes clear to the entire world what “America” has become – what it in fact is – a country controlled by the greedy, uneducated, anti-scientific, religiously fundamentalist, racist, sexist, domineering, undemocratic, and xenophobic. With his election, it will no longer be possible to pretend otherwise.

In other words, Donald Trump represents what’s needed to spark and catalyze the revolution against everything he and our country have come to embody. His election may be what’s required to destroy the system as we know it and to catalyze the revolution roiling just below the surface of contemporary American life.

So following his election just watch the agents of revolution come together.  I’m talking about:

  • The civilized world
  • Women tired of being objectified and harassed and underpaid
  • Environmentalists
  • Black Lives Matter activists
  • “Fight for Fifteen” workers
  • The New American Indian Movement resisting installations like the Dakota Access Pipeline
  • Prison strikers
  • Immigrants
  • Indebted students
  • Other people energized by Bernie Sanders
  • Muslims at home and abroad
  • Religious leaders like Pope Francis
  • And Mother Earth Herself

But, be forewarned: there will be a rough ride ahead of us. Should Trump win, we will experience all the troubles connected with a genuine revolution.

God help us!

Silent Thunder: Jill Stein’s Absence from the Third Debate

cornel-west-endorsement

Well, I watched the final debate last night. Once again, it pointed up the debate format’s limitation and the absence of alternatives to the duopoly of Democrats vs. Republicans.

Specifically, it made me miss the voice of Green Party candidate, Jill Stein.

Her absence on the debate stage prevented voters from hearing her viewpoint on vital issues virtually excluded from the three personality-focused brawls between Mr. Trump and Ms. Clinton. I’m referring to income inequality, student debt, climate change, public transportation, disease prevention, and the continuing need for 9/11 transparency to blunt its rationale for insane military expenditures and endless war.

Liberal funnyman, John Oliver, recently endorsed such exclusion in a strained barely-comic monologue that merits comment not only because of its shallowness, but because it discouraged expanding the narrow parameters of current political debate. (See Stein’s own response to Oliver here.) In his routine, Oliver attempted to disqualify Dr. Stein because she raised the very issues just indicated. More specifically:

  • She looks too nerdy.
  • Her plan for relieving student debt lacks specific detail.
  • She chose not to explain the intricacies of “quantitative easing” in a press conference.
  • Even as a physician with 27 years’ experience, she (like everyone else btw) is not completely certain about possible connections between vaccines and autism.
  • She agrees that the recently declassified pages from the government’s 9/11 report justify further investigation into that signal event that even Official Inquiry leaders, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, say was “incomplete and flawed.”
  • She was part of a 1990s folk rock band whose lyrics contain a poetic device (paradox) that Mr. Oliver apparently doesn’t grasp – specifically, the apparent contradiction, “silent thunder.”
  • She is not a perfect candidate.

Ignored in all of this is the fact that Jill Stein’s positions are identical with those of Bernie Sanders who (now that he is no longer a candidate) has been nearly canonized by people like Oliver. In fact, Dr. Stein invited Sanders to join her on the Green Party ticket; she would run, she offered, as his V.P.

Ignored too were the actual lyrics of candidate Stein’s songs that (unlike Mr. Trump and Ms. Clinton) dared to raise the issue of climate change – as well as specifics about child and maternal health. Instead, Oliver focused on Stein’s voice [which turns out to be about as (dis)pleasing as Bill Clinton’s saxophone on Johnny Carson or Michelle Obama’s dancing with Jimmy Fallon.]

However, the most significant omission from Oliver’s denunciation was the importance of voting for Dr. Stein in red states. If Stein garners only 5% of the national vote, her name can appear on presidential ballots in many states in the next election cycle, Even more importantly, the Green Party will receive millions of dollars in campaign funds in 2020.

So, red state Democrats (like me in Kentucky) concerned about overcoming the dominance of the duopoly, and about continuing the Bernie Revolution should discount Oliver’s shallow criticisms and recognize their vote for Jill Stein as a small, but significant step towards reaching the Green Party’s important 2020 goals.

Last Night’s Debate: Now That Was Really Depressing!

debate-posture

I was afraid this would happen. Donald Trump actually out-performed Hillary last night. Admittedly, given the sex-tape disaster that had broken two days earlier, the man had nowhere to go but up. But in our media-driven horse-race approach to politics, where issues are ignored, memories and shockingly short and facts don’t matter, he probably did much last night to pick himself up off the floor.

Meanwhile, Hillary was left simply flailing. She seemed nonplussed throughout the whole affair having foolishly chosen (as she put it) to “go high” rather than deliver a knockout blow to an opponent who entered the debate reeling, bloody and battered. She couldn’t put him away.

Trump’s performance truly surprised me. Although he’s clearly an ethical moron, he has proven to be a brilliant debater. As in his spheres of business and taxes, he apparently knows how to manipulate broken systems and their rules. And these debate clown-shows play to that strength. They present him with (1) parameters entirely controlled by the parties of the debate’s participants, (2) an opponent who largely agrees with him on the most important issues, (3) opposing (third party) viewpoints systematically excluded, (4) weak-kneed “celebrity” newscasters who concerned about their own images are easily bullied, and (5) just two minutes to answer each question.

In other words, the whole thing is rigged. And, if nothing else, Donald Trump is a master at gaming rigged systems. By comparison, and despite all her vaunted experience, Hillary Clinton comes off as a rank amateur.

Trump has actually figured out that given the debate format, all he has to do is bob and weave, jab and jive, rope and dope. That means physically dwarfing his female opponent by strutting around the stage in barely-concealed threatening postures, complaining about the bias of is incompetent interrogators, and simply trotting out the old CIA spookstrategy: (1) admit nothing, (2) deny everything, (3) make counter accusations.

Last night it all worked like a charm.

As a result, the whole affair ended up completely mystifying. Candidates were allowed to ignore the actual questions, to answer other ones instead, and to ramble on, talk over each other, and ignore commands to stop their ranting. Most of the time, I was left scratching my head wondering, “Now what was the original question?” And then if I remembered, my follow-up was “What does this ‘answer’ have to do with that?”

Meanwhile our country’s and world’s most important issues were all but ignored. There was nothing about climate change until the last minute and a half (literally). And as usual the phrase itself and “global warming” remained unuttered. There was nothing about student loans, police murders of black people, Black Lives Matter, or voter suppression. And Clinton and Trump basically appeared to agree on “clean coal,” fracking, the need for Muslims to report on each other, privatized health care, military spending, the renewed nuclear arms race, and on how much they like each other.

As for the war in Syria, Trump made much more sense there than Hillary. He did! She’s actually willing to risk nuclear war with Russia to institute an impossible “no fly zone” there. (She practically spit out the phrase “THE RUSSIANS” while discussing the issue.) Trump, on the other hand recognizes that ISIS, not THE RUSSIANS is the real enemy in the Middle East. He advocates dialog with the Kremlin. It made me wonder, is he the peace candidate?

I was also left wondering about Hillary’s ethics compared with Trump’s.  Both of these characters are unsavory to say the least. I wonder who’s worse?

Trump’s actions border on rape. That’s serious. His offense was not “just words” – locker room banter – compared with Bill Clinton’s actions. The sex tape showed Trump bragging about unwanted kissing and groping.  Anyone else but a rich white billionaire would at the very least lose his job over an expose like that. Even Roger Ailes had to step down. (But, of course, Ailes had less money than Trump.)

But Hillary’s problem is lying and warmongering. Except for the justified furor over Trump’s sex tapes, last weekend’s publication of her long-hidden Wall Street speeches by Wikileaks might have mortally wounded her campaign. The leaks have her defending a practice of publicly advocating populist positions and then in private pushing more business-friendly policies. That’s what the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party had warned of all along. Her strategy in dealing with the revelations is to blame THE RUSSIANS – to ramp up the paranoia that melds seamlessly with her willingness to risk nuclear war.

But then, of course, Trump appears totally clueless about nuclear war himself. Isn’t he the one who asked repeatedly, “If we have nuclear weapons, why can’t we use them?”

It’s depressing. Candidates bickering over who’s more corrupt, ignoring the real issues, and despite the public’s yearning for change, both promising business as usual – or worse.

In the face of all this, I’d vote for Jill Stein and the Green Party, were it not for the issue of Supreme Court justices. Instead, I find faint hope in Bernie Sanders’ strategy of voting for Hillary this time around and then working hard for Bernie, Elizabeth Warren, Dr. Stein or whoever steps up over the next four years to help a now depressed and angry populist movement coalesce against the nonsense these two establishment candidates represent.

We also must work to return these debates to control by the League of Women Voters.