Donald Trump and the Threatened Triumph of Ideology over Democracy

It is increasingly apparent that ideology is threatening to overcome our democracy. The right is currently in the driver’s seat, but the left could just as well be there, and may well be in the future.

As we have become more and more fragmented and compartmentalized socially and politically, a vacuum has been left in our national fabric. It’s a vacuum that ideologies are eager to fill. We know and encounter one another on increasingly impersonal and functional terms, and are less able than in the past to match faces to the names of people with whom we interact. One sign of this is the unacceptable and offensive habit of talking on a cell phone will paying for purchases. There is apparently no need to acknowledge the human being who is serving you when you’ve got your own little circle of friends and family to attend to. Online shopping regularizes our indifference to people who are different than us, and makes such indifference acceptable.

Ideology categorizes people, problems, and solutions according to impersonal standards. Its success depends upon blindness to the rich variety of humanity and of human experience. The more we know about and understand one another, the harder it is for us to speak and think in discrete categories about one another. Ideology subverts democracy, which functions because we are individuals who participate with one another in public, civic activities (such as voting), by shaping us into compliant cogs in someone else’s ordered machine. That machine depends upon adherence to particular laws and rules which cannot be broken without threatening the entire machine. Democracy, by definition, is messy…the way life itself is messy.

Earlier this week our all-powerful immigration folks deported a man to Mexico who had been living illegally in the United States since 2001 but who has been, by all accounts, a contributing and responsible member of our society. You can say (as some of you will) that they were only enforcing the law, and you would be right to a point. But not to the point of justice, which should be the goal of all law and its enforcement. When Jesus was criticized for breaking Sabbath regulations, he told his accusers that the Sabbath was made for humanity, not humanity for the Sabbath. Laws and rules should serve people and human flourishing, not stifle or exclude them.

What does President Donald Trump have to do with all of the above? As a narcissist, he is the perfect leader in an era of ideology over democracy because is actually interested in neither. His primary and consuming interest is in himself and (perhaps) in a very, very tight circle of immediate family members. People who are driven by ideology (think Steve Bannon) can run roughshod over him because he cannot see how their plans affect anyone other than himself because he cannot see anyone other than himself. I believe he is, in fact, being used by extreme right-wing/alt-right forces to place America under lock and key. Then, they’ll throw away the key.

Yesterday I read that Trump’s Chief of Staff came very close to suggesting they are “looking at” the First Amendment, perhaps to find ways to “protect” the President and other political leaders from criticism. Today’s headline is that Trump is wondering if he might be able to pardon himself. This is narcissism run amok with political power, and one can only wonder how long and far it will have to go before the whole nation figures it out.

Not Enough America to Go Around?

How do those of us who are appalled by the dangerous and disheartening directions our country seems to be heading celebrate the Fourth of July…Independence Day?

Someone who shares my political apprehensions said to me last night, “It’s hard to celebrate the Fourth with what’s going on.” I think I have been feeling the same way recently, but her speaking those words jolted me into analyzing my feelings.

I realized that since last November I have been thinking a great deal about what it means to me to be an American, about what patriotism means to me, and have been expressing my patriotism in statements of resistance to current political trends and follies. In a way, it is easier to celebrate the Fourth of July when what today means to me as an American is under attack.

What does being an American mean to me? Start with freedom and liberty . . . the freedom and liberty afforded each individual as Americans together. It’s not just MY freedom and liberty that matter to me, but the freedom and liberty we all are promised. So, to be an American is to be one who is as passionate about the freedom others enjoy as about his or her own.

Justice…justice for me, justice for you, justice for each one. “Equal justice under law,” expresses the American ideal of justice. I deserve justice no more than does anyone else.

Opportunity and responsibility go hand-in-hand with freedom and justice. (That’s a lot of hands!) I have had many opportunities in my life, and I’ve carried out at least some of my responsibilities. Every American is deserving of opportunities no less than those afforded to me, and every American should be free to assume all the responsibility she or he can for living in our society.

The point I am trying to make is that being an American is not just about me, nor is it just about people like me. It is about all of us together. There are basics we all should be able to enjoy even as we fuss and fume with one another about how as many of us as possible might achieve them.

Unfortunately, complex and intertwined economic, cultural, religious, and political forces are converging in our time to isolate us from one another. They are stoking fear that each of us can only get what we think we want if we deny others what they need, as if there is not enough America to go around. We harden our hearts and minds to let no outsiders into our circle, and America–first the ideal and then the reality–fragments.

Last week we were able to visit Independence Hall, the Statue of Liberty, and Ellis Island. Not a one of those has any meaning to me as an individual unless it speaks to and of the experiences and aspirations of us all. They speak of big hopes and of bold dreams for today and far into the future.

We also visited the 9/11 Museum and Memorial. It, too, is about us all. It tells a horrible story, but also points to how we face and overcome adversity and terror.  We face and overcome them together, by birth or adoption sons and daughters together of what Independence Hall, Lady Liberty, and Ellis Island represent.

The American patriot never stops believing there is more than enough America to go around. Happy Fourth of July, all 325,000,000+ of us!

A Text for Yesterday and More

Yesterday evening – toward the end of the day of shootings in Alexandria and San Francisco – I happened across the following by Argentine-Chilean-American writer Ariel Dorfman:

You want to free the world, free humanity, from oppression? Look inside, look sideways, look at the hidden violence of language. Never forget that language is where the other, parallel violence, the cruelty exercised on the body, originates.

It seemed an appropriate text for another day of horrendous violence in our violence-saturated world. I sat quietly, stunned, for a full five minutes after I read it.

Watch out, Dean, for what you say. You do not own a gun, but what if your words help accelerate our spiral into anarchy?

My Personal Gripe with Airlines

Allow me a first-world complaint, please. Such complaining comes with privilege.

A day after members of congress grandstanded their scolding of airline execs, word slips out that American plans to squeeze seats even closer together than they already are on the major airlines. The space between seats is already too small for "normal" sized humans, and virtually impossible for 6'6"-ers like me. I fly with my knees wedged against the seat in front of me, or with one leg snuck into the aisle. They don't like that much. I know because they crash their food carts into that leg when they can.

It's all intended, of course, to make us pay extra to purchase a seat we can sit in, which should be a minimum acceptable standard, a Creator-endowed human right. I should not have to pay extra for size beyond my control.

Then there are the glossy, full-page ads for the wonders of first-class, so generous that there's not a crumb left for the peasants. And boarding procedures that prioritize the lucky few in a thousand categories far above most of us . . . how do they ever dream up all those upper-crust categories? It's humiliating and it's silly.

There oughta be a law, and there would be, but we don't want to over-regulate the airlines, do we?

It was good optics to bawl out United's President for the unfriendly dragging of a passenger off one of his planes. But ordinary, day-in, day-out indignatives affect 90% of airline passengers. These corporate-generated indignities heighten the stress and frustration which the cabin crews have to manage as best they can. 

Despite it all, I will no doubt fly again. May the cameras roll when they drag me off, felled by a blood clot in a leg I had not been able to move for hours. Maybe someone "up there" will notice. Or even care.

My Very Good Friday

Today began with a three hour visit with my friend Eric, incarcerated in Ohio's Grafton Correctional Institution. He's been there more than two decades. He said something this morning that seemed appropriate for Good Friday, though I didn't recognize it until during worship this evening.

Eric told me that someone once told him that he needed, in prison, to live each day as if he were going to "go home" (be released) tomorrow. He called it the best advice he'd ever been given.

Somehow we got distracted from what should have been an obvious follow-up conversation about what that advice means to him. But on my drive home I thought about what living every day like that might mean to him: to live as if tomorrow he will be free and ready to take his place in society; to do what he can today to prepare for what he most dearly hopes for in the future; to be able to move into new life without regret or remorse. Eric has always seemed to me to live that way, and maybe now I know why.

Tonight's Good Friday service was beautiful, as Episcopal services, I am learning, tend to be. Long, yes, (as Episcopal services also tend to be) but filled with powerful, compelling, poetic words and soul-touching music and rich symbolism and actions.

In some strange long-distance leap from Grafton's visitation room to that classic, colonial American-like sanctuary, I heard Eric's words: "Live each day as if you are going home tomorrow."

Somehow the rituals of these somber services of Holy Week prepare us for the joy of Easter. But by Easter I mean not just the day after tomorrow, but tomorrow itself. They help us taste the freedom for which we devoutly long, to do what we need to do to live the kingdom of God in whose midst we are, to live forgiven of regret and liberated from remorse. Eric's advice from prison is good advice to all who live in prisons that keep us from real life.

At the end of the service worshippers were invited to come forward "to offer their adoration of the Cross by touching it and offering silent prayer." The Cross in question was a simple wooden one with a symbolic "crown of thorns" hanging from its crossed beams. From the choir area I watched worshippers come forward, almost lean on the cross and silently pray. (We were leading the congregation in singing, "My Song is Love Unknown.")

Toward the end a man with a maybe three-year-old child in his arms came forward to touch the cross. First he touched it, and then he guided her hand to touch it, too. He was white, the child was black. I don't know their story. I do know the scene brought tears to my eyes. Not just, perhaps, father and daughter, but also white and black. I know she learned a whole lot of real Christian theology tonight. And I know that they are ready for God's realm of peace, justice, and freedom that is at hand–so near they reached out together and touched it.

When Our President Gets Generous, Hold On to Your Wallet

I am amused and appalled by Donald Trump's donation of his first quarter's presidential salary to the National Park Service. That comes to $78,333, a pittance given his administration's proposed $1.5 billion cut in the Park Service's funding for the coming fiscal year. It's even a pittance compared to  $229 million, which is how much Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke says the Service is behind "in deferred maintenance on our battlefields alone." Trump designated his "gift" for historic battlefield maintenance.

If he'd given the NPS the value of the perks and benefits he's received in flitting back and forth to Florida and in maintaining and protecting luxury homes for his far-flung family this might be a different story. Perhaps it would provide enough money to remove all references to "climate change" from all Park Service signs and publications, no doubt a costly project. But perhaps ExxonMobile is underwriting it already.

Of course, Trump's minions made a big deal of it. Smilin' Sean Spicer presided over the giving of the check to Secretary Zinke, who was accompanied by Harpers Ferry National Historical Park Superintendent Tyrone Brandyburg, who just happens to appear to be black! A perfect photo op if the world ever saw one.

President Trump's gift is amusing, but in an appalling sort of way. The president who is hellbent on turning our Park Service, and many other beneficial government agencies, into charity cases, donates money that means nothing to him to the maintenance of historic battlefields.  Battlefields . . . lest anyone doubt his love for military spending.

He turns the National Park Service into a plaything for him to be "generous" to, or not, upon his whim. Take away $1.5 billion here, put in $78 thousand there. Enough $78 thousands gifts and you might get to $1.5 billion some day, or even to $229 million.

What a joke. When will everyone see the sham and shame this guy represents?

What Facts Support the President's Environmental Actions?

If I thought anything President Trump and his administration are doing was based upon facts, or even informed observation, I'd be more likely to be giving him a chance.

For example, his actions yesterday regarding the environment and global climate change: the vast majority of experts in those fields are convinced that those actions fly in the face of facts.

(Disclaimer: majorities can be wrong, and the "vast majority" of environmental and climate change experts might be wrong. But the rigors of the scientific method, which include the verification by others of observations and conclusions, have proven over time to provide reliable information, information upon which we can base informed decisions. Yes, new information can alter or even disprove previously-held conclusions. That's the way of science. But in many situations we must make our best decisions now based upon what we know now, because the future can't wait.)

So, whose verified or at least potentially verifiable research did the Trump team cite to justify pulling back on President Obama's environmental policies or reopening the way to increased use of coal and other fossil fuels? Who is saying that pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere will not hasten the onslaught of the most drastic effects of climate change, evidence of which we are already seeing around the globe, not to mention in our own backyards, this March of 2017? Which economists (those practitioners of what someone once called 'the dismal science') believe that government deregulation will revive the struggling coal industry?

The rest of the world, including even China, is positioning itself to move toward a future of cleaner energy, while the United States seeks to revive the towering smokestacks that once dotted our skylines and filled our lungs with deadly particles and poisons.

I believe we can protect the environment, can possibly manage climate change, and can create and maintain good jobs. But not by increasing our use of fossil fuels. Trump's actions encourage the fossil fuel industry that helped elect him and they encourage the short term interests of people like me who prosper when the markets go up. But they are not good for our children or grandchildren. And the coal fields of Appalachia will remain as depressed as they are.

Today's Plain Dealer reports that a Cleveland City Councilman is on his way to Washington to try to counter the planned near-destruction of the EPA by President Trump and the Secretary of the Late EPA. What better messenger can there be than one whose city's "burning river" proved to be the flame that ignited the largely bipartisan environmental protection movement that cleaned up the Cuyahoga River and much, much more?

Your thoughtful and informed responses will be welcomed.