Tag: Donald Trump

On Loving America

In light of the news of Republican Arizona Senator John McCain deciding not to seek further treatment for his brain cancer, I shared that even though I did not agree with his politics, of one thing I was (and am) sure: He loves America.

The statement got some immediate push-back, with people reminding me of his political record: he was a hawk, he opposed the Affordable Care Act, and most recently, he cast a vote for the president’s tax reform bill, a measure which in my opinion helps only the very wealthy.

I know all of that. But what sticks in my mind is that John McCain has stuck to his beliefs and principles, even when they have been unpopular with his base and with this president. And I will forever respect him for shutting down the ugly lies about his opponent, then-Senator  Barack Obama, as whites shared that they were afraid of him and their belief that he was an Arab, or, more specifically, a Muslim.

McCain shut it down – and said that Obama was a good, decent man, which was and is true.

It takes courage to stand up and say what you believe, even when it means you may pay a great cost. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote the book, The Cost of Discipleship, which I refer to quite a bit, and Christians should remember that Jesus the Christ says in the Gospels that whoever wants to be his disciple must deny him/herself, pick up their crosses daily, and follow him.

In defending the character of Obama, when it cost him votes and must criticism, McCain was living that scripture.

We are not supposed to hate those with whom we disagree. We can dislike their beliefs, but at the end of the day, that is actually kind of juvenile. There is no one way to look at the world. If there were, this world would be a much better place. I will never forget reading the account of a Southern senator who believed in segregation. He was asked if he didn’t know the scripture about how one should love his neighbor, and this senator said, “Of course I know. But I get to choose my neighbor!”

Not so. Our neighbors are those with whom we agree and those with whom we disagree. In the frenzy to get and keep political power, most politicians cave to cultural demands. They will do what they need to do and say what they need to say in order to get elected and to stay in office.

McCain sought the presidency twice and lost both times. That had to have been horribly difficult to bear. I was not unhappy that he lost because I didn’t believe in his politics and believed that if president, he would pass laws and enact policies that would hurt “the least of these,” especially black, brown and poor people. I was angry with him for picking Sarah Palin as a running mate, in an attempt, I suppose, to appeal to angry white people; I was glad their ticket lost.

But the senator held his ground. He, unlike the majority of this current Congress, had the courage to speak out against the current president, a man who seems hell-bent on leading America away from democracy and toward fascism. While others in Congress have become sycophants, many to a sickening degree, McCain has held fast.

He endured the disgusting insult hurled at him by the current president, who downplayed his being a war hero, criticizing him because he had been caught and was a prisoner of war. This, from a man who never served a day in the military, burned me to my soul. Yet, McCain didn’t meet him on his ground or at his level, but held his own and worked to serve his country in the way he saw fit.

That McCain, a wealthy white man, and myself, a struggling African American woman, do not see and have never seen eye-to-eye is not the issue here. What is the issue is that this wealthy white man stayed true to what he was, regardless of what it cost him. And that is something I will always respect, especially now as the executive and legislative branches of our government seem to be hell-bent on creating an autocracy in which most of us will suffer greatly.

A candid observation …

The Day of America’s Fall

In Psalm 137:7, the psalmist writes, “Remember, O Lord, the Edomites, the day of Jerusalem’s fall.” The words are those of Israelites who have been cast out of their homeland; they sit on the bank of a river in Babylon and mourn their exile from Jerusalem. They remember how things “used to be” in Jerusalem, and how things are now that they have been captured by the Babylonians. They are in shock. They were God’s people, but God, tired of the people’s constant rejection of God’s rules and laws, used the Babylonians, their enemies, to bring them down.

The Israelites are angry. They plea to God to “remember the Edomites,” who joined the Babylonians in the attack on Jerusalem. The Edomites had been vicious, saying to their soldiers to “tear it down,” meaning Jerusalem. In the psalm, the beleaguered Israelites, in essence, curse the Babylonians, and vow vengeance, “Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us!”  The psalm concludes with the Israelites saying, “Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock.”

They are angry and hurt and lost; they had a good thing in Jerusalem, they now realize, as they sit under the rule of foreigners who laugh at them and beg them to “sing one of the songs of Zion.” They balk, insulted, one might guess, and ask, “How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?”

In 2001, the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr, then the pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, preached a sermon entitled, “The Day of Jerusalem’s Fall,” quoting this psalm and prophesying that America was in trouble. It was shortly after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11. The nation was reeling and angry; Wright, the prophetic preacher, recalled in the sermon how those who had gone against the will of God had been forced into exile …by God.

Nebuchadnezzar II was the king of Babylon in 597 BCE and he fought against the Pharaoh Necho in the Battle of Carchemish and then went on to invade Judah. The king of Judah at the time, Jehoiakim, resisted Nebuchadnezzar but lost. Jerusalem fell, and the Israelites mourned the loss of all they had ever known and treasured.

Today the president of this nation sided with a modern-day Babylonian king, Vladimir Putin of Russia, and on international television, put his own country down in obeisance to one of America’s arch enemies. It was stunning to watch. Today we watched the “day of America’s fall.”

It has been coming for some time, though nobody could have predicted that the man elected to be the president of this nation would hand it over to Russia. It has been shocking to watch the president cow-tow to Putin, putting this country’s systems down and insulting its institutions, and it has been noticeable that this president, who has put down almost everyone in this government, has not said one negative word about Putin.

Not even today.

This president has put the country he swore to protect – and its institutions and constitution – in real jeopardy, leaving the way clear for our present-day Babylonians – aka Russia, to have its way.

He has not done this alone. The Republican-led House and Senate have been partners in the undoing of America. The rabid fear of the browning of America, along with other social changes that Conservatives have hated, has been paralyzing even as it has been motivating for these primarily white men to resort to base instincts which have led them to make moves and create policies that will have repercussions for generations. They are afraid to stand up to him and to oppose him, a fear which has encouraged him to do what he did today: give the America we have known since its birth – to an arch-enemy.

The American democracy was far from perfect, but it was better than many governments. This country was known, even in somewhat mythical proportions, as the “land of the free and the home of the brave.” People had confidence in what America claimed to be.

Not anymore.

The world has watched this president destroy the progress that has been made over five decades; it has watched as the president has trashed allies and praised and supported autocrats. Already, so much damage has been done that it will take at least a generation to repair what has been destroyed – if, in fact, it can be repaired.

Americans have not believed that its democracy could be destroyed. We have been like Germans, who when Hitler was grabbing power, never believed it would get as bad as it did. The truth is, in most countries where democracies die, the leaders of the destruction have been voted into office by the people.

When Jeremiah Wright preached that infamous sermon in 2001, he was bombarded by critics who called him everything from racist to anti-American. He preached that America was being paid back and would be paid back for what it had done over the years in its quest for power, and he reminded listeners of some of America’s history.

It was not pretty.

In the name of God, he preached that we should be reminded that God sees what both individuals and countries do and that there is a price to pay when God’s people stray from God’s requirements.

God directed the fall of Jerusalem.

And God is in this, the day of America’s fall. We, too, may find ourselves looking back at what we had, taunted and insulted, asked to “sing a song of Zion,” and we, like the over-confident Israelites, may find our voices quieted, our spirits wounded, because we did not believe that this country would ever see the day when its president threw it under the bus.

(To listen to Wright’s sermon, visit (http://www.orlandosentinel.com/opinion/os-ed-put-trump-online-letters-20180716-story.html)

Shut Up and Dribble

American-flag-America

The accusation from the president of this nation that the black athletes who have chosen to kneel to protest racism marks a disrespect for the flag is as ludicrous and ignorant as it is wrong, and the decision of the NFL to acquiesce to the spirit of the president and make it a requirement that all players on the field must stand reveals the master/slave relationship which has always been the case between white and black people.

The players are being treated as property – the property of the owners – with no rights, and the owners, like overseers, have only one thing in mind: to become more rich off of the labor of black bodies and enrich not only themselves but the NFL. The president’s suggestion that those who kneel should not play sports and should perhaps leave the country revealed as well not only his racism but the racism that is in the core of this country

He apparently does not know and/or does not care that it was black people who built this country and who are responsible for the establishment of this nation’s economy as the wealthiest in the world. He also does not know, apparently, that black people have fought in every war in which this country has been engaged, but have been treated as second-class citizens once they returned home.

It is not the flag they are protesting. It is the putrid, rancid system of white supremacy which has robbed them and black people in general of their rights as American citizens.

Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative has been quoted as saying that slavery never ended; it just evolved. Black people – both men and women- willingly and eagerly fought in America’s wars, believing with every fiber of their being in the principles this country espoused but which were, for the most part, denied to them. They sacrificed as much as did their white soldier counterparts, but instead of being honored once they got home, were again relegated to the metaphorical back of the bus, back to “their place.”

The sacrifices they made have meant nothing to the white supremacist power structure.

Their post-service treatment is difficult to swallow, but what is even more problematic is that too many people – white and black – do not know the humiliation black service people suffered when they returned to the United States. Dr. Adam Robinson, who served as the 36thSurgeon General of the United States, wrote recently about the plight of an African American soldier who, returning from a tour of duty, died of a broken neck in a Tulsa jail after being tortured for 51 hours, begging for food and water. He had been arrested in a motel as he suffered a mental breakdown. He needed medical care, not to be arrested.

Adams also recalls that Civil Rights leader Medgar Evers “survived the Battle of Normandy but died in a 1963 Civil Rights battle, killed by a Klansman.” (http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-op-0115-black-veterans-20180111-story.html)

The stories of the horrific treatment black soldiers received after serving this country in war are legion. White people resented them and were frightened that, upon returning home, they would upset the “way of life” put in place by white supremacy. They needed for these heroic black soldier, who fought for this country and its flag, to understand their place. Many were beaten and/or lynched or killed while still in uniform. The perks afforded white soldiers, including low-interest mortgages and loans to start businesses were denied them. Banks would not lend to them.

And still, when the next war came, black people enlisted.

It is disingenuous for the president and in fact anyone to suggest that kneeling in protest of white supremacy is evidence of a lack of patriotism. To the contrary, protest against injustice is how this country came to be. It is cruel and flat-out racist for those same people to suggest that those who protest might need to “leave the country.” The white supremacist system still wants black people to remain “in their place;” in the words of Laura Ingraham, many white Americans want African Americans to “shut up and dribble,” and forget how this country has treated and continues to treat them. (https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/02/19/587097707/laura-ingraham-told-lebron-james-to-shutup-and-dribble-he-went-to-the-hoop)

There are not enough words to express the outrage that comes with being continually being insulted and put down by racists who will deny to their dying day that they are in fact that they are just that. But the prayer is that in these times, when the president is pushing racist rhetoric and ideas, that African Americans will continue to stand up for the rights and dignity that this sick system of white supremacy has never been able to offer to a group of people who have fought to the death for a country that does not respect them.

The accusation from the president of this nation that the black athletes who have chosen to kneel to protest racism marks a disrespect for the flag is as ludicrous and ignorant as it is wrong, and the decision of the NFL to acquiesce to the spirit of the president and make it a requirement that all players on the field must stand reveals the master/slave relationship which has always been the case between white and black people.

The players are being treated as property – the property of the owners – with no rights, and the owners, like overseers, have only one thing in mind: to become richer off of the labor of black bodies and enrich not only themselves but the NFL. The president’s suggestion that those who kneel should not play sports and should perhaps leave the country revealed as well not only his racism but the racism that is in the core of this country.

He apparently does not know and/or does not care that it was black people who built this country and who are responsible for the establishment of this nation’s economy as the wealthiest in the world. He also does not know, apparently, that black people have fought in every war in which this country has been engaged, but have been treated as second-class citizens once they returned home.

It is not the flag they are protesting. It is the putrid, rancid system of white supremacy which has robbed them and black people in general of their rights as American citizens.

Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative has been quoted as saying that slavery never ended; it just evolved. Black people – both men and women- willingly and eagerly fought in America’s wars, believing with every fiber of their being in the principles this country espoused but which were, for the most part, denied to them. They sacrificed as much as did their white soldier counterparts, but instead of being honored once they got home, were again relegated to the metaphorical back of the bus, back to “their place.”

The sacrifices they made have meant nothing to the white supremacist power structure.

Their post-service treatment is difficult to swallow, but what is even more problematic is that too many people – white and black – do not know the humiliation black service people suffered when they returned to the United States. Dr. Adam Robinson, who served as the 36thSurgeon General of the United States, wrote recently about the plight of an African American soldier who, returning from a tour of duty, died of a broken neck in a Tulsa jail after being tortured for 51 hours, begging for food and water. He had been arrested in a motel as he suffered a mental breakdown. He needed medical care, not to be arrested.

Adams also recalls that Civil Rights leader Medgar Evers “survived the Battle of Normandy but died in a 1963 Civil Rights battle, killed by a Klansman.” (http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-op-0115-black-veterans-20180111-story.html)

The stories of the horrific treatment black soldiers received after serving this country in war are legion. White people resented them and were frightened that, upon returning home, they would upset the “way of life” put in place by white supremacy. They needed for these heroic black soldier, who fought for this country and its flag, to understand their place. Many were beaten and/or lynched or killed while still in uniform. The perks afforded white soldiers, including low-interest mortgages and loans to start businesses were denied them. Banks would not lend to them.

And still, when the next war came, black people enlisted.

It is disingenuous for the president and in fact anyone to suggest that kneeling in protest of white supremacy is evidence of a lack of patriotism. To the contrary, protest against injustice is how this country came to be. It is cruel and flat-out racist for those same people to suggest that those who protest might need to “leave the country.” The white supremacist system still wants black people to remain “in their place;” in the words of Laura Ingraham, many white Americans want African Americans to “shut up and dribble,” and forget how this country has treated and continues to treat them. (https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/02/19/587097707/laura-ingraham-told-lebron-james-to-shutup-and-dribble-he-went-to-the-hoop)

There are not enough words to express the outrage that comes with being continually being insulted and put down by racists who will deny to their dying day that they are in fact that they are just that. But the prayer is that in these times, when the president is pushing racist rhetoric and ideas, that African Americans will continue to stand up for the rights and dignity that this sick system of white supremacy has never been able to offer to a group of people who have fought to the death for a country that does not respect them.

 

Is America’s Democracy in Trouble?

The antics and behavior that are coming out of the White House are disturbing on many levels, but one of the most troubling is that it feels like this country is moving toward becoming an autocratic state.

A survivor of the Buchenwald concentration camp during the Holocaust, architect Stephen Jacobs, said in a recent interview that the “rise of Donald Trump is reminiscent of the years that led to the Nazi takeover of Germany.”  (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5596737/Holocaust-survivor-says-Trumps-America-reminds-years-lead-Nazi-takeover.html)

At the time that Hitler rose to power, Germany was experiencing economic, social and political unrest. Hitler seized the moment, telling Germans that he could restore their country to its former greatness. The people bought his argument, and the fall of civilized government resulted in the murders of over 6 million Jewish people.

What is astounding is not so much that the president is doing what he is doing, but that so many people seem not to care. From the Congress – representatives and senators alike – to Evangelical Christians, to masses of people who like it that he “tells it like it is,” there seem to be few people in power – politically or morally – who have the best interests of “the least of these” at heart.

These people turn a blind eye to the role of the Congress to check the raw ascent of power of the Executive branch of our government. Evangelical Christians, who have been known to be deeply judgmental of all kinds of people for behavior much less offensive and troubling than that of the president, are silent and acquiescent.

It has been amazing to listen to people defend this president at every turn; nothing, it seems, not even the cyber-attack of our voting system by a known enemy, has been enough to inspire people to do something to put the brakes on what seems like a train running downhill, spiraling out of control.

We thought that our government was immune to becoming autocratic. We thought that our Constitution and our professed love of “liberty and justice for all” were enough to incubate us from encroaching fascism. It appears that many Conservatives feel like there is no danger of our democracy falling into disrepair or ruination. But democracies, historically, have fallen, following a course much like the one on which America now finds itself.

What is worrying is that the only people who might seem to not have to worry are the very rich. This country has not been a “democracy” for some time; it has been a plutocracy, with a very few really wealthy people making policies for everyone else. But even that number of wealthy people, in control of the lives of the masses, is dwindling; we are more an oligarchy now than ever before.

Oligarchies do not care about the masses.

During the Holocaust, Hitler and his minions made decisions about who was worthy to live and who was not. The Jews were certainly deemed unworthy, but so were people with disabilities, people with mental illnesses, gay people, gypsies, twins, priests, and other groups, were murdered. It is estimated that 5 million non-Jews died under Hitler.

Germany, using the science developed in America that formed the foundation of the eugenics movement, made it its cause to eliminate those who were not the right kind of “white” person – i.e., those with Nordic features.

It feels like everyone, with the exception of that very small group of wealthy white people, are in danger from the way this administration is running the country, and none of the people who we might have thought would defend the masses from this kind of tyranny are stepping forward.

It is difficult to understand how “people of faith” can marginalize the directives given for how to create a “Beloved Community” by Jesus the Christ. Jesus is far removed from what is going on, it seems, and very few people are working to bring Jesus of Nazareth back to the center of who we are.

It feels like we are on a collision course with tragedy, and in this, the so-called “land of the free and home of the brave,” that ought not be the case.

A candid observation …

 

America Has the Flu

If one of the main problems of influenza is that it attacks the body’s respiratory system, leading to pneumonia and other pulmonary issues which ultimately cause death, it would seem that America, under this president, is on life support, unable to breathe. This president and his administration  have shown us our disease and instead of leading us to ways to heal it, is ignoring everything that would “make America right again.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), pneumonia is one of the most common and serious complications of the flu. Pneumonia caused by the flu can be viral or bacterial, but both can be deadly and in fact, do cause many deaths. (https://www.cdc.gov/pneumonia/index.html)

America’s racism has been its chronic illness  – its flu, if you will – since its inception; English people came here to escape British oppression, but also to make this “New World” a land created by white people for white people. They immediately began to oppress Native Americans and soon, black people. They declared Native Americans as being savages and brutes and justified their treatment of them on those beliefs about them. Racist ideology was included in nearly everything that these very religious people did from the 1600s on and was built into the United States Constitution.

Black and other oppressed people have fought the racism and sexism, anti-Semitism and many other “isms” for generations. Gains have historically been made and are then lost because angry white people have risen up and worked to undo the gains made by the oppressed groups, almost always violently.

Under this administration, the white backlash is serious and toxic; the venom of white nationalism is filling the lungs of America’s capacity to breathe in “liberty and justice for all,” while simultaneously breathing out racism, sexism, Xenophobia and all other forms of oppression.

Whenever blacks have made gains and fought racism, whites have done everything they could to undo those gains, furious that the federal government has at times supported the quest for freedom, justice, and dignity of people who are just as American as are whites.

America’s influenza – its racism – has not only been toxic but contagious. We are seeing white nationalists boldly declaring and boasting about their racism; Steve Bannon the other day said that whites should wear the badge of “racist” proudly. (https://www.thedailybeast.com/steve-bannon-racist-label-is-a-badge-of-honor) while the GOP-controlled Congress and Senate sit idly by and let the president do and say what he wants, as well as his followers. There is no outrage about the violence being perpetrated by White Nationalists; there are no efforts to stem the tide.

America’s capacity to be a just nation – a place where there is true “liberty and justice for all” – is being hindered by her lungs filling up with the deadly bacteria which causes cultural pneumonia. The safeguards of liberty and justice, morality, and goodness do not apply in the minds of those who believe that this nation should be a nation of white people. Our very plurality – something which other nations have celebrated – is what the White Nationalists abhor, and neither the US Constitution nor the Holy Bible or the religion called Christianity protect those who are attacked and discriminated against simply because of who they are.

Historian Forrest G. Wood in his book The Arrogance of Faith notes that Christianity has been “fundamentally racist in its ideology, organization, and practice.”  Christian idealism apparently means that the dominant ethnicity or race of this country must be homogeneous and puritanical, Wood says.

To hear and to watch this country backslide into a blatantly racist and sexist “norm” is disheartening, but worse, it is ominous because pneumonia damages the lungs and makes it impossible for a person – or in this case, a nation – to breathe. Empires fall. America, the Empire, is in the intensive care unit and its lungs, filled with the bacteria of hatred, are getting more and more weak.

A nation which despises, ignores, and casts aside “the least of these” is destined for death.

A candid observation …