The Difference Between Purity And Political Reality - On The Use Of "Illegals"

NO DOUBT IF he were alive and running for the presidency in 2024, Abraham Lincoln would have been effectively shut out for what he said during those iconic Lincoln-Douglas debates during his campaign to get a Senate seat, one which Douglas won in the end.  You know, the ones that are often named but almost never read or studied.  The debates that were real debates about the most important issues of a campaign, not the stupid show in which media talking heads lob gotcha questions at the Democrat and puffs of eiderdown to the most fascist of Republicans.  

Lincoln would certainly have been shut out during the first one, held in Ottawa, Illinois in which he used the "N" word as he ridiculed the fear tactic that Douglas employed, like a Lou Dobbs or Donald Trump holding out the fear of Illinois being swamped with free Black People if Lincoln's proposals for the promises of the Declaration of Independence were to become law.  

Admittedly, it is jarring to read Lincoln using that word and also denying that he held that Black People were the complete equals of white People, no doubt knowing that even a good number of those who might agree with him that slavery was evil would, nonetheless, be highly offended if someone pointed out that Black People were their equal if not their superiors in some regard. I'd guess a lot of them would have been as offended if someone said that the Irish or other groups of white People were their equals, certainly if Native Americans were, though that didn't come into the debates.

It's one of the truths of American history that the two presidents before Lyndon Johnson who did the most to further equality in reality instead of theory, Lincoln and Harry Truman, are on record as having uttered that very detestable word and probably others.  Today the idiotic political discourse would concentrate on that use of a word and not on the substance of what they did.  Thurgood Marshall once said that Harry Truman integrating the military was, up to that point, the most radical single action a president had ever undertaken in the move towards equal rights, I would guess he meant since Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.  I don't know if he said that before or after the Voting Rights and Civil Rights acts were passed, which I think are even more important.  If Lyndon Johnson is on record as having uttered that word, I don't know but it wouldn't surprise me if he had, being of his time and place and provenance.  Real American democracy starts with the Voting Rights and Civil Rights Acts, before that it was a everything from a total to growing less than the sham it started out being.  Which is why the Rehnquist and Roberts Courts have been dismantling them, especially the all-important Voting Rights Act.  

I've been looking hard at what Lincoln said in his political speeches and am struck, repeatedly at how often he was playing the crowd while he was leading them beyond where they likely were.  I found his use of the Declaration of Independence, the language of Thomas Jefferson that convicts him of hypocrisy in his increasing dependence on and enthusiasm for holding Black People in slavery (including his own children) after the Revolution was won and the government set up.  The following passage from the first debate held in Ottawa, Illinois is especially interesting in that regard.   Answering an hour and a half of political slamming from Stephen Douglas, he said:

I will say here, while upon this subject, that I have no purpose, either directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. 

I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality; and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position. 

I have never said anything to the contrary, but I hold that, notwithstanding all this, there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence-the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects-certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man.

To a real abolitionist, certainly to all Black abolitionists (who history still wants to ignore to focus on White abolitionists), Lincoln's statements in that political debate would be highly and deeply offensive even if his argument for freedom couldn't help but be welcomed. His argument that the Declaration of Independence claimed sufficiently equal rights for everyone, Black People and anyone who anyone claimed wasn't as smart as they were, to enjoy freedom and the right to the fruits of their labor were more radical than the Constitution was and where things were in 1858. I would point out that there were certainly many white People who were not held to be the intellectual equals of others, Women, for example, many of the immigrant population, others in the various regions of the country.  Certainly some of them, hearing or reading those arguments would have understood they applied to their condition, as well.  Though that was certainly not the law of the land.  

I recall reading somewhere that Lincoln was faulted by the most ardent abolitionists of his day as being behind their thinking and slower to act to issue the proclamation banning slavery in the Confederate States than they would have liked, some probably slammed him for not banning it in the states that just barely stayed in the union during the Civil War, Maryland being one of those.  

But it is impossible to not note that whatever the Garrisons and Phillips  did to push on abolitionism, they never held office to make it happen.  They didn't deal in the raw materials to make that happen, persuading voters to vote them into office and to keep them in office long enough to make it happen.  They were able to  remain pure, or purer than a politician can if they have any hope of getting a House or Senate seat or doing what's hardest of all, winning the presidency with the national vote and the engine of corruption baked into that, the Electoral College.  

In a public speech, be it in a debate or a State of the Union or any other, it's very easy to make a gaff or public statement that will offend a part of the audience you are counting on to vote for you and contribute to your margin of victory.  Live performance of something as generally unrehearsed as a speech, especially one containing improvisation, is very hard to pull off with total success.  

The American left, the one that most often gets called "the left" has never been in a position to make the most radical change that can be made, it has never controlled anything much more than a few city councils back in the days of the old Socialist Party - the one the "real radicals" destroyed in 1919 - they don't have much of any ability to do anything but talk and rage.  They don't engage in reality, they don't choose to do the hardest work of all to make real change, get elected in numbers large enough to even make themselves essential to the political success of those who can move things in the right direction.  There's a reason that such a "left" finds its greatest appeal among teenagers and young adults, they are the most callow and those who imagine that there is some distant horizon towards which they can insist things be pushed to RIGHT NOW!  That they have, repeatedly during my lifetime, done exactly the opposite by getting Nixon, Reagan, Bush II and Trump elected, not to mention the House Senate and State offices they've played spoiler in, and so they are not the progressive force they advertise themselves as being but are, in fact, useful idiots, useful tools for the worst among us.   That's such a useful tool for them that they are rather openly aiding the brain-dead candidacy of RFK jr. and have repeatedly financed Green Party politics.  What they don't get from them directly in terms of electoral spoiler candidacies, they reap in highlighting the ballot box poison that is provided by play-lefties with mouths bigger than their intellect playing the game of "most lefty in the room."  

The play-left has been a lot more useful to Republican-fascism than it ever has been the effective and so real left, the ones who get and hold offices, gain real power and can make real laws.  So they buy themselves not being taken seriously by real leftist politicians who know at best they'll have to try to cajole them along but who know, full well, they will turn on a dime and enable fascism.  

the new unexpected abundance is given by human agency that is propelled by the generosity of God

 Wednesday after Lent 4

Psalm 101; Genesis 50:15-26; 1 Corinthians 12:1-11; Mark 8:11-26

God who breaks the cycles of fearful scarcity, break those cycles in our lives.  Give us enough gracefulness to receive your abundance and to accept it as the new norm of our daily existence.  In his name.  Amen

The disciples of Jesus, like almost all of us, were habituated into scarcity.  They assumed there was not enough.  They feared running out.  As a result, they had no interpretive categories by which to compute the overflow of abundance of bread that Jesus made possible.  His wondrous act of feeding the hungry crowd attests to his capacity for abundance.  But they missed the point, even when they could count the surplus baskets of bread as twelve and seven.  They had abundance in their hands, but they missed the point.

In the same way the brothers of Joseph lived in fearful parsimony.  They assumed that Joseph would act in kind toward them and retaliate against them for their hateful action earlier in their lives.  They did not anticipate that his largess of spirit would break the vicious cycle of parsimonious interaction .  Or more properly,  they did not reckon on the providential goodness of God who stood behind the generosity of Joseph.

These two narratives explicate the habit of fearful scarcity that is so powerful among us.  That fearful scarcity dictates so much of our neighborly life and so much of our grudging policy toward needy neighbors.  But these two stories also bear witness to the breaking of the cycles of parsimony that we assume will continue to perpetuity.  In both cases, the new unexpected abundance is given by human agency that is propelled by the generosity of God.  It is more than possible that we ourselves might be such agents of abundance propelled by the same God of generosity.

I thought it was worth giving the post following on the one for yesterday because it completes the thought.  

It is instructive how even in places in the world, now, which waste enormous amounts of food, the same mental habits behind the hoarding against fantasies of scarcity hold.   

Yesterday's post got posted with a bit deleted.  The sermon against overly academic theology was given by the current Papal Preacher Cardinal Raniero Cantalamessa.  This account of it is worth reading.  

Western theology risks becoming an abstract and rationalized conversation among academics rather than a tool for nourishing the faith of God's people, the papal preacher said.

"Theology, above all in the West, has increasingly moved away from the power of the Spirit to rely on human wisdom," Cardinal Raniero Cantalamessa, told members of the Roman Curia during a Lenten meditation March 1.

Pope Francis did not attend the meditation, though Cantalmessa told those present that the pope was following his talk remotely. Several other cardinals were in attendance.

Modern rationalism has "demanded that Christianity present its message dialectically," subjecting it to modes of research and discussion that are philosophically acceptable, he said. But "the danger inherent in this approach to theology is that God becomes objectified, he becomes an object which we talk about, not a subject with whom or in whose presence we talk."

A purely rationalistic form of theology makes it become "more and more a dialogue with the academic elite of the moment and less and less nourishment for the faith of God's people," the cardinal said.

"You only get out of this situation by prayer, by talking to God before you even talk about God," he said. Quoting St. Evagrius Ponticus, a fourth-century Christian monk, Cantalamessa said, "If you are a theologian, you will truly pray, and if you truly pray you will be a theologian." He then cited the example of St. Augustine, who he said produced his "most lasting" theology through speaking with God in his Confessions.

Faith, he noted, "does not oppose reason, but supposes reason, just as grace supposes nature."

I think that this tendency is far more true of Catholic theology than it is of much of the mainstream Protestant theology I've been reading.   When Elizabeth A. Johnson wrote a book giving chapters about theology that takes real life and real People into account, the eminent academic theologian, the then Karl Ratzinger, more or less mounted an inquisition against her which saw her having to face, single-handedly, a room full of American bishops, most of them appointed by John Paul II and ready to attack any woman who they figured JPII and his attack shepherd, Ratzinger wanted to dispose of.  She argued her case better than they attacked her but, no doubt, the experience enraged her and anyone who cares about intellectual fairness and honesty and, in the face of those two pastorally disastrous Popes, in favor of theology that addresses Peoples' real lives and souls.   

For his several missteps, such as the very serious one, his recent call for Ukraine to make concessions to the Putin dictatorship,  Francis has been about the complete opposite of his two immediate predecessors.   I pray that the next Pope continues that and is more decisive in dealing with the bishops, cardinals and media priests who serve the billionaires and millionaires.   It should be remarked on that JPII and Benedict XVI had no problems with the billionaires and millionaires even as they did the most terrible things and promoted fascism and inequality.   JPII made Rupert Murdoch a Papal Knight at the urging of some particularly corrupt American hierarchs.   I doubt he'd have cared if he realized what he did.   I have no use for the cannonization of JPII. 

I'm Asked If I've Seen "Maestro"

I absolutely detest that title, it's one of the things that has ruined the profession of conducting.  I detest the style of conducting associated with it.  

OH, SOMEONE made a "bio-pic" about Lenny?  I hadn't known.  Aaron Copland said that whenever a literary man writes two words about music one of them will be wrong.  While I think Aaron was being generous about literary men, when a movie guy writes two words about music, all ten of them will be wrong. And that's before the "auteur" gets hold of it, talking about pretentious titles I detest along with the milieu that led to it. 

I am not interested.   Wasn't a fan while he was alive and he's been dead for almost thirty four years.  I can tell you I don't own a single album he conducted and never did.  Though I have read some of his early work, which was never recorded, was great from musicians who worked under him in the early 40s, he declined into stardom early.   He ended up a spoiled conductor.  There are a handful of his pieces I think were good, the dance sequences from WSS,  a few of the songs,  the second of the Chichester Psalms, . . .  but he wasn't a great composer, either.  His Norton Lectures were embarrassing to listen to.  

 

The Posts From Gift And Task For Today And Tomorrow Are Pretty Good Too

Tuesday After Lent 4

Psalm 97;  Genesis 49:29-50:14; 1 Corinthians 11:17-34; Mark 8:1-10

Giver of enough for all, let us rest our lives in your abundance.  Give us a capacity to wait for our neighbors who also share in your abundance.  In his name.  Amen

Eating is a most elemental activity in which all the great human questions are operative, questions of production, questions of distribution, and questions of consumption.  Food poses questions of scarcity and abundance and creates an environment in which we may act out fearful competitiveness or generous sharing.

In the early church, all questions of food sere evident, setting Christians against each other in greed and selfishness.  The horizon of the Epistle reading, moreover, should not be confined to church behavior, because the same issues are at work in the larger economy.  In an economy of acute individualism, the strong and powerful can, in greedy ways, monopolize food and other resources and take them from the table of the vulnerable; or conversely, policies and practices of the community may generate an equitable distribution of food and other essential life resources so that all may participate together in well-being.  There is no doubt that it is the (most often quite unrealistic) fear of scarcity that propels greed and generates undue surplus at the expense of the other.

Paul Councils:  "Wait for one another."  The ground for such waiting is the assurance that there is enough for all to eat.  That assurance of enough for all is dramatized in the Gospel narrative wherein Jesus feeds four thousand folk and has a surplus of seven baskets of bread.  The narrative attests that where Jesus governs, there is an abundance for all, more than enough.  This gospel claim contradicts the greedy anxiety of economic policies that imagine that we will soon run out and we must get and eat all we can now.  The church may be a practice of alternative eating.

You can contrast this to any number of things, the Republican-fascist Iowa legislature writing drastically restrictive restrictions on what the destitute and poor can use their food assistance to buy (I never thought I'd see that hog killing operation that Iowa is putting restrictions on the buying of fresh meat), the Nazi's years long campaign to get the German public used to thinking of those on the soon to be public death list as "useless eaters" or the most effective modern assertion of that in Malthusian economics in which the entirely artificial scarcity of food in Britain - in no small part to the theft of the commons, the displacement of the agricultural poor, and other agricultural land to feed the far more lucrative  textile industry - which was turned onto its head by Darwinism to impose the British class system on nature.

Or you can go back to the nightmares of Pharaoh and the theft of the cattle and lands, then the very bodies of Egyptians in the managed famine that is reported to have come about.  It wouldn't be hard to imagine it was largely a planned famine such as those created by Stalin to  decimate the Ukrainian population or the inept theoretical famines created by Mao's gangsters or the food inflation that is the cartels rigging the Covid pandemic to their profits.  

A recent sermon given by Pope Francis's warned about the excesses of a purely academic theology that is removed from reality and real life.  I have, before, noted that the late Pope emeritus Benedict XVI was the best credentialed academic theologian in the history of the papacy, and the pastoral disaster his papacy was showed that.   That's that kind of thing Catholic style.  I don't trust a theologian who doesn't regularly come back to the questions of food and clothing, housing and medical care for the destitute, the poor and those who are struggling.  The very issues that are everywhere in the Gospels, in Acts, in the Epistles, for the most part, are so frequently seen as unimportant in the most respectable of so-called Christianity.  That is when the topic that masks that, for the most part, an obsession with sex is the alpha and omega of moral concern.  

Jesus held a last supper, he didn't hold a last lecture or seminar or colloquy or a final edit.  He didn't mention sex once in it in any of the Gospels, he hardly mentioned sex at all in any of the things he said.  And he isn't recorded as saying so much that comes out of the mouths of American bishops, cardinals, media-priests or TV preachers.   

in 2024 America and in much of Europe, if you hear "Christianity" it ain't Christ they're talking about

Jacob Did More Than He Knew - A Mid-Lent post

Fourth Sunday in Lent

Psalm 66; Genesis 48:8-22; Romams 8:11-25; John 6:27-40

Spirit of God, who stirs beyond our safe categories and our usual assumptions, give us attentiveness to your surging newness, that we may receive your stunning emancipation that moves in and through our practiced futility.  In his name. Amen

The aged Jacob transmits the blessing to his grandsons Manasseh and Ephraim.  He does so by laying on hands.  At the last moment, however, he inexplicably crosses his hands so that his right hand (of power) is laid on the head of his younger grandson.  The crossing of his hands to reverse the blessing is unexplained.  We do not know if it was luck or providence or the puckish way of an old man.  When Joseph protests this reversal, father Jacob only affirms the outcome of the blessing for the future.  Jacob's act was revolutionary.  It violated all the old habits that protected the privilege of the firstborn.  This overthrow of conventional privilege by a puckish act offers a harbinger of the acts of freedom that are characteristic of the gospel.

In Paul's wondrous lyric, it is as though the creation is hemmed in in futile ways, but the glorious liberty given by God will prepare creation permit an emancipation of all creation, including our bodies.  In the Gospel narrative, Jesus, in elusive working breaks free of all old "bread routines" to assert that he himself is "the true bread from heaven" that violates all conventional categories.

In the church's run-up to Easter, it is worthwhile to ponder how it is that that the creation - and our daily experience of it -is so much an enterprise of futility in which we regularly make all the conventional moves of coercion, fear, frustration, anxiety, and alienation.  This is the daily truth of our lives that is abruptly and deeply interrupted by the power of God.  Jacob did more than he knew.  He exemplified the opening of the world to new possibility that in the Gospel is termed "eternal life."  

Walter Brueggemann, Gift and Task

I had been doing a series of online Lent "retreats" for 2024 that started out good and then went into a rather pedestrian bunch of daily posts on the series of "mysteries" latterly attached to the rosary, which I found entirely uninspired.  

Instead, and off line most of the past couple of weeks, I've turned to the book by Brueggemann in which he has daily short prayers and sermons for everyday, using the Episcopal lectionary for "year 2".  I don't know where the Episcopalians are in their lectionary cycle this year but I figure that doesn't need to concern me.

This particular one for yesterday really struck a cord for me so I decided to type it out and post it in full.

The idea that the act of putting the last first by the father of the Children of Israel is a precedent for the gospel of Jesus which over and over again turns the expected world upside down, for its time and, when rightly used, today, is something that the world needs Christianity to recover and hold as its most important practice as well as belief.  And, over and over again, in the established churches, it is exactly what is expected, what is set down as the "right" way to do things, what has become embedded in Catholicism or Southern Baptist or "mainline Protestantism" and, especially, the anti-Christ of the television hallelujah peddlers and the Trumpzi-christofascists, the only hope for the Gospel of Jesus, the teaching of Paul and James, etc. is turning the expected world upside down. That is what not only the Gospel and Epistles, Acts and Revelation are about, it is essential to the Hebrew Scriptures.  Over and over again it is the younger as opposed to the older son who is "chosen" it is the upending and disturbing Prophet who criticizes the Temple and the anointed king and gets himself killed.  It is the Commandment to do justice to the destitute, the lower-class, the alien living among you and, in the Gospel and Epistles, to universalize those obligatory acts against personal advantage, the real religion is found and there is nothing more subversive in human literature and history than when that is taught and that is done.  

And contemporary American Christianity As Seen On TV couldn't be anywhere farther from that than it is.  

The old Zen quip that if you see the Buddha you should kill him could be said in 2024 America and in much of Europe, "If you hear "Christianity" it ain't Christ they're talking about."  It's the Christ killers.