Truth and Meaning: Friendly Fire

As a boy, I remember hearing this phrase during the Vietnam War. My oldest brother served a tour in the Central Highlands, and I remember well events like the killings at My Lai 4. The country was in deep shock at the notion that our soldiers could act so brutally … so inhumanly. I was old enough to understand the debate about the changing nature of war, the chain of command and responsibility.

Noncombatants die. That has always been a fact of life. Throughout history, the women and children, the farmers and shepherds, the poor innocents have always paid the price for our inability to resolve conflict. The events during Vietnam, however, numbed us deeply to the notion that these victims deserve our sympathy.

Friendly fire rages all around us. Our nation drops bombs all over the world every day. We argue that drones kill terrorists and that we are justified in using this great technology. We cut food stamps for millions of children. We argue that our government must be fiscally responsible. We starve public schools, cripple organized labor, and ship jobs overseas. We argue that our economy depends on “free markets” and capitalism.

Here is what I say. If we cannot stop terrorism without murdering children, then we are no better than the terrorists ourselves. If we cannot balance a budget without making children go hungry, then we have become morally irresponsible. If we cannot support an economy without lining the pockets of selfish special interests, then we doom our public welfare to financial slavery.

How did we become so heartless? When did the unfettered purchase and possession of any firearm start to trump children’s lives? When did our pursuit of profits become a higher priority than our entire global climate? When did grandstanding and brinksmanship become the only tools in our political repertoire? When are we going to grow up and put out the friendly fires we are lighting everywhere?

If you support democracy, and you feel as I do, then the time has come to speak out. Until people of faith place moral values above conquest, people above balance sheets, and economic self determination above trickle down lies, then our nation will continue its spiral into moral decay. As citizens, we must let our voices be heard and stop listening to the corporate media spin machine. People are dying, starving, living homeless and hopeless. It is up to us to stop it.

Truth and Meaning: Putting our Podophobia into Perspective

My dad traveled quite a bit as part of his job. I remember fondly going to the airport, riding the moving walkways and collecting Avis buttons that said “We try harder” in different languages. But I most remember standing at the gate, anxiously waiting and watching for him to walk off the plane.

Those days are, of course, long gone since one now must have a boarding pass and proceed through a rigorous examination to be granted access to the gates. As someone with a pacemaker/defibrillator, I was recently reminded of the heightened concerns for security in our nation’s airports. Since I cannot pass through the standard scanning machines, I typically must endure the TSA pat down. If you have not had the experience, I imagine this examination rivals the treatment of prison inmates. Every time I travel by air, I recall our ever-expanding safety priorities and the clutch that the iron fist of irrational fear holds us in.

Well over one million people fly in the U.S. every day. And because someone tried to sneak a shoe bomb onto a plane, one million people must take off and put back on their shoes every day before approaching the gates. (In case you are curious, at 30 seconds per person, that requirement equates to almost one full year of lost person time each day). Our possessions are restricted, probed and scanned, our bodies X-rayed and fondled, all in the name of security. And the sad fact is that anyone who passed high school chemistry could still get a pretty wicked combination of explosive concoctions onto any plane in a modest carry-on bag.

Now, even if you believe this massive bureaucratic effort is worth the price, consider this. With last week’s shootings at Sparks Middle School in Nevada, there have now been 32 school shootings since the murders at Columbine High School in 1999. Thirty-two school shootings compared to one domestic shoe bombing attempt. And yet, in spite of overwhelming support among the American people, we still have no mandatory universal background checks on gun purchases and no restrictions on assault weapons or high-capacity magazine clips. Why are we more afraid of our feet than of guns?

All the American people want is common sense. Even gun owners generally support mandatory background checks. When will our legislators stop acting like petulant children and start showing some real concern for the safety of their constituents? Instead of shoes, we should be afraid for poor people losing their food stamps, veterans getting poor medical attention, and hard-working people without jobs because their employer shipped the work off to China. And we should really be afraid of our crumbling infrastructure, poorly-supported public schools and inadequate regulations on fossil fuel producers.

Liebmann: The soul of America

We face a spiritual battle for the soul of America. And yet, rather than address our real mutual enemy, we bicker amongst ourselves about the color of our uniforms. We the people, of all faiths and beliefs — religious and spiritual people, caring and thinking people — have allowed the enemy to define this battle. We have allowed the enemy to keep us separated by pitting us against false threats. We have allowed the enemy to label us — Catholic and Protestant, rich and poor; Muslim and Jew, conservative and liberal; agnostic and atheist, black and white; believer and nonbeliever, gay and straight. And by accepting these labels, we divide our forces and allow a united enemy to undermine our common core values. Who is the real enemy?

• Obamacare is not the enemy. The enemy is our indifference toward the plight of the uninsured.
• Abortion is not the enemy. The enemy is our failure to embrace God’s gift of sexuality and to treat that gift responsibly through education, medical treatment and birth control. 
• Unions are not the enemy. The enemy is our runaway greed and the misguided and dangerous notion that a corporation possesses the same inalienable rights as a human being. 
• Women are not the enemy. The enemy is our culture of machismo that sanctions abuse, domestic violence and rape, blaming the victim rather than the men who commit these cowardly acts.
• Gay people are not the enemy. The enemy is our fundamentalist arrogance that presumes to know all truth about human nature, and to punish anyone who does not share our personal vision of cosmic design. 
• Guns are not the enemy. The enemy is our ignorant belief that by refusing to regulate the sale of guns, we protect democracy and are not directly responsible for thousands of innocent deaths each year.
• Terrorists and immigrants are not the enemy. The enemy is our complacency in accepting undeserved privilege and failing to correct the imbalance in our society and our world.
• The poor are not the enemy. The enemy is our failure to apply capitalist theory correctly and our amnesia regarding our responsibility to be our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. 
• And lastly, religion is not the enemy. The enemy is our dogmatic assertion that any one religion possesses unique ownership of truth, or is the sole recipient of divine providence.

This enemy will stoop to all manner of evil to keep us enslaved — enslaved in the cycle of poverty, racism, homophobia, misogyny and religious intolerance. But we have the power to disarm our enemy of these weapons. We have the ultimate weapon – a weapon our enemy cannot use.

And that weapon is love. Until we love each other unconditionally, indifference and irresponsibility will undermine our society. Until the privileged love the poor and oppressed, greed and cowardice will rule our governments. Until Christians love non-Christians, arrogance and ignorance will stifle common purpose and action. Until we love everyone regardless of their gender identity, skin color, social class, ethnicity or personal theology, then complacency and amnesia will doom our people to violence and hopelessness. Until we reject the labels our enemy pins on us and unite as Americans, dogmatic pride will define us as a nation.

“I steer my bark with Hope in the head, leaving Fear astern. My hopes, indeed, sometimes fail; but not oftener than the forebodings of the gloomy.”

– Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, April 8, 1816 as published in Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies, from the Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 4, p. 271

We are surrounded by fear mongers, by voices announcing forebodings of gloom. These voices pervade our media, our public discourse, our every conversation.

We live on a mighty ship lighting a beacon of freedom for the world. But we must trust our masthead of Hope and leave the doomsayers in our wake. And we must all take up the oars to keep the ship’s direction true.

Truth and Meaning: What’s wrong with us?

Five years ago, I developed a sudden ventricular tachycardia that nearly killed me. The doctors said this condition is caused by a virus that can affect anyone. After a few days in the hospital, I had a new pacemaker/defibrillator in my chest — and more than $150,000 in medical bills. Fortunately, my medical insurance covered nearly all of the expenses.

I was born into a privileged family. My white, middle class parents could afford to buy a home in the best school district and pay for my college education. So it was easy for me to get a job with great benefits for myself and my family.

Without that medical insurance five years ago, I would have had two options — impoverishment or death. That was the choice faced by tens of millions of people in America, the richest nation in the history of the world. That was the choice faced by tens of millions of people until the passage of the Affordable Care Act.

The events of this past week in Washington, D.C., however, leave me pessimistic about our future as a nation. We have watched legislators gleefully extol the shutdown of our government, showing not the slightest concern for those affected by their singular preoccupation with denying people access to affordable health care. Even if you oppose the Affordable Care Act; even if you disagree with everything President Obama does, how do you justify this act of political terrorism? How do you justify what amounts to a street mugging — a thug saying “do what I say or I will hurt you. “

This shutdown results in:

• Millions of people directly or indirectly furloughed from their jobs;
• More millions of people getting no financial assistance for food, medical treatment and child care;
• Veterans facing even longer delays than usual for their benefits; and
• Workplace and food safety inspections stopping, as well as many programs providing assistance to consumers and small businesses.

And for what? This action is specifically directed at denying people access to affordable medical insurance. Even if the ACA is flawed, can it possibly be worse than people dying because they cannot afford medical treatment that will bankrupt them and their families? What is wrong with us?

If you want to effect changes in law, you debate the law before it is passed; you offer alternatives to the law; you elect politicians who will enact the laws you want passed. The Affordable Care Act is law. The opposition has offered no alternative aside from outright rejection. And they lost the last major election. This government shutdown is nothing short of a childish tantrum with devastating effects on countless innocent people. Any delight expressed in support of this effort is un-American and in violation of our most basic principles of democracy.

And as a nation that prides itself on its religious foundations, people of all faiths agree that the current course of action is reckless and counterproductive. I will go further. I believe that the suffering inflicted by this shutdown is unconscionable and evil. I listen to the words of those who caused this shutdown and hear in them a meanness of spirit and cruelty I could not ever have imagined possible.

I could not agree more with Thomas L. Friedman, whose New York Times column Our Democracy Is At Stake published on Wednesday, Oct. 2, summarized the trends leading to this tipping point of American democracy — gerrymandering, the corruption of campaign financing and the decline of an objective media holding politicians accountable for their actions. If we don’t start standing up to this bullying, to this political fear mongering, then any semblance of our democracy will evaporate in the days and weeks to come.

Truth and Meaning: Social Welfare

Midland Daily News editor Jack Telfer’s thoughtful and heartfelt blog posting this week began with this statement. “Many conservatives have a difficult time with government social welfare programs.” As a progressive, I also have a difficult time with government social welfare programs. As a progressive, I believe that the social contract between the people, the private sector and the government should function so that such programs are not necessary. As a progressive living in a nation committed to a form of capitalist economy, I believe that more than enough profit exists to adequately support return on investment, to fairly compensate labor and to sustain an appropriate social infrastructure guaranteeing future prosperity for all.

The problem arises when the system gets out of balance. When the private sector seeks to maximize its share of profits at all costs, then resources available for social welfare decline. When the private sector then uses its profits to corrupt government and control public policy to its exclusive benefit, then democracy suffers. When the private sector seeks to control the application of all profits — even those designated for the benefit of the people and society — then freedom and self-determination suffer.

I agree with Jack — people of faith can lead the way to achieving balance. By calling on all parties to first ensure the basic safety and well-being of all people, we can meet social welfare needs before profits are skimmed, and not after the fact with expensive and bureaucratic government programs. By calling on the private sector to be responsible citizens, then everyone — investors, businesses, labor and government — is credited with their contributions to profit generation. By calling on the people to serve the public interests selflessly and to participate in our democratic processes, we expose light on those who would corrupt our government for their personal gain.

I eagerly anticipate a continuation of this dialogue. Our current environment of name calling and victim blaming serves no purpose and wastes the opportunity that is the United States in the history of humankind.

Truth and Meaning: Silence

Midland Daily News Editor Jack Telfer recently blogged about the frustration he feels lately. He expressed his sadness over people who “have no tolerance for Christians who believe the Bible is the word of God and that it provides all the wisdom we need to live our lives.”

I can certainly understand the frustration when one receives criticism and negative comments from people who reject one’s religious viewpoints. But far more worrisome for me than the barbs of critics is the deafening silence from those who purport to be religious.

This nation lies in the grip of a fundamentalist movement typified by mean-spiritedness, selfishness and intolerance. Legislators denounce people daily whose lifestyle differs from their own, or who lack the privilege granted white, straight men in this country. This group disrespects our president, even when doing so is inconsistent and illogical, and I am hard-pressed to not attribute some of this hatred to their bigotry. They have ground the functioning of our government to a standstill and continue to throw political tantrums (and millions of taxpayer dollars) at attempts to block our provision of basic, affordable health care to 50 million Americans.

Far more mystifying to me than the regressive politics of these extremists that have hijacked the Republican Party, however, is the silence of many Christian colleagues and friends. This group purports to speak not only for conservatives in this country, but also for the Christian majority. And in doing so, this group promotes cutting aid to the poor, attacking civil rights of minorities, trampling medical care access for women and children, and undermining governmental support for community infrastructure.

Victim-blaming has become a national pastime — from an innocent boy stalked and murdered in Florida, to countless women raped and beaten, to gay youth bullied every day into suicide. To people of faith, when are we going to say “Enough is enough!” When are we going to say that it is time to institute common sense gun control laws? When are we going to start telling men that rape is NEVER permitted? When are we going to stand up to the bullies and command them to stop hating their neighbors?

This is not anti-Christian rhetoric. The wisdom of the Bible is very clear on these matters — as is the wisdom of the Qur’an and the Tao te Ching and the Analects of Confucius. Love your neighbor. Care for the poor, the hungry, the sick, the imprisoned. Do not worship golden idols. You will be judged not only on what you believed, but by what you did in life — “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

If you remain silent when your brothers and sisters ask for your help or demand justice, then don’t be surprised at the response your silence receives.

Truth and Meaning: Bombs Are Not the Answer

For more than a decade, many Americans wished they had done more to prevent the inexcusable waste and destruction of our invasion of Iraq. The combined stupidity and immoral willingness of our government to lie our way into war must never be forgotten, especially now as we stand once again on the brink of madness.

The events taking place in Syria are tragic and must be addressed. However, the world community has not even begun to exhaust the nonviolent, diplomatic avenues toward peace and reconciliation. And if Barack Obama — with or without Congressional approval — engages this country’s military with Syria before those avenues have been tried, then he will be as guilty of war crimes as his predecessor.

If you love America, then do not stand idly by while this nation rolls down the path to unnecessary war once again. If you love the men and women of our military, do not remain silent waiting for them to die once again on foreign soil while non-military options remain. If you support life and freedom, then do not sacrifice both so that the United States can once again play the role of world police. If you support justice, then voice the opinion that the corporations of our military-industrial complex should not grow fat on more contracts building bombs while our own people live homeless, hungry and hopeless.

If you regret your silence preceding George Bush’s wars, then speak up now. If you watched American bombs fall on Baghdad on CNN from the comfort of your living room, then get out on the streets now before they start falling on Damascus. If you saw neighbor children die or come home injured or suffering from PTSD, then protect your own children now.

If you remain unsure whether involvement in Syria is just, ask yourself these questions:

• There are ongoing conflicts all over the world: Central African Republic, Darfur, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burma, Chad, Somalia, Sri Lanka. Why are we not engaged in those conflicts?
• Just what is the history of the conflict in Syria, and have Western governments and corporations aided in the creation of the chemical weapons now being unleashed? If you don’t know these answers, then how can you possibly justify bombing a sovereign nation without knowing our own role in creating the situation?
• Could we invest billions of dollars each day more productively toward resolving this conflict? How about aid for Syrian refugees? Or support for the United Nations peacekeeping forces?

President Obama has already tarnished his Nobel Peace Prize with drone attacks that have murdered countless innocents. Oppressed people across the globe already view Americans as heartless imperialists only interested in oil and military bases. It is time for us to make our government prove that position wrong.

The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Midland will host a Peace Prayer Vigil on Saturday, Sept. 21, at 7:30 p.m. Each year since 1981, when the General Assembly of the United Nations created the observance, the International Day of Peace has been observed around the world on this day. Come and let Sept. 21 be a day devoted to strengthening the ideals of peace, both within and among all nations and peoples. All are welcome.

Truth and Meaning: Labor

On this holiday weekend, I am reminded of everything we have to be thankful for as a result of our institutions of organized labor. Workplace safety regulations, fair wages, fringe benefits, standardized hours and work weeks … the list goes on. Having recently returned from the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, I was reminded of the words of Walter Reuther, president of the United Automobile Workers of America and vice president of the AFL-CIO, who spoke before Martin Luther King Jr. on that day in 1963. Sadly, I was reminded of the truth of his words ringing in today’s America, where politicians hold our citizens hostage in order to coddle special interests and radical fringes.

“We need to join together, to march together, and to work together until we have bridged the mortal gap between American democracy’s noble promises, and its ugly practices … American democracy has been too long on pious platitudes …”

“There are too many high octane, hypocrisy Americans. There is a lot of local talk about brotherhood, and then some Americans drop the brother and keep the hood … this rally today should be the first step in a total effort to mobilize the moral conscience of America, and to ask the people in Congress of both parties to rise above the partisan differences …”

“If we can have full employment, and full production for the negative ends of war, then why can’t we have a job for every American in the pursuit of peace?”

“Men of good will must join together, men of all races, and creed, and color, and political persuasion, and motivated by the spirit of human brotherhood. We must search for answers in the light of reason through rational and responsible actions. Because if we fail, the vacuum of our failure will be filled by the apostles of hatred, who will search in the dark of night, and reason will yield to riots, and brotherhood will yield to bitterness, and bloodshed, and we will tear asunder the fabric of American democracy.”

So, this Labor Day, as we watch the parades and picnic around barbecues, let us also remember the greatness of the labor union movement — a movement dedicated not only to a better workplace, but to a better society … a better America.

Tuesday reader’s view: No standing in race conversation

Mr. Chris Stevens, the religious person in me wants to forgive your shallow and heartless diatribe on Sunday, August 25 as merely misguided and ill-informed. But, the realist in me hears the voice of the bigot, the snap of the overseers’ whip and the angry shout of whites claiming righteous indignation when the target of their oppression dares to advocate for equality. Your editorial exhibits a shocking and remarkable vacancy of knowledge of the black experience in this country and in American history.

How dare you, the beneficiary of much privilege in this country, equate any paltry response in retaliation for the Zimmerman travesty with the countless examples of white racism perpetrated over centuries. You are obviously an educated man, but apparently have not availed yourself of African American history courses or any of the many informative books detailing the unique actions of white racism in this country. Sadly, the fact that you use your position to spew such malicious trash on readers in this community displays an unwillingness to learn about our history of racial cleansings, pernicious economic and social violence against blacks and ongoing systemic efforts to impoverish and dehumanize people of color and the poor. Recent efforts installing dictatorial emergency managers have targeted mostly black communities, and state governments passing voting rights restrictions to resolve non-existent fraud but clearly aimed at poor people and students, are just two examples of current deliberate attempts to disenfranchise blacks from the American dream that you so easily take for granted.

The common ground you call for starts with you, and all whites, educating themselves about the black experience in the United States. The common ground you seek starts when you learn about our history of violence against blacks, our history of legal repression of blacks and our ongoing social and economic assault on blacks in this country. The common ground you call for starts when you accept your complicity in accepting the largess of white racism through the accident of your birth and recognize the vastly unlevel playing field we live on. Until you accomplish this, you have absolutely no standing in this conversation.

As we mark the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, all people of good will and believers in social equality remember the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. and his commitment to nonviolence. But, violence is not just about hitting someone with a fist. Violence is also persistently paying people low wages, restricting access to affordable health care, underfunding public schools, providing little of no access to avenues of social mobility readily available to others and supporting a separate and not-equal justice system. If you want to trot out your handful of examples of violence, then you must be prepared to answer for the wave after tsunami wave of violence perpetrated on blacks in this country by whites for the past three centuries. Once you are prepared to undertake that work, then and only then, will you understand that you have no claim to victimization. Then and only then will your heart be tempered with the humility and compassion needed to serve, honor and respect the true victims of racism.