The Politics of Cultural Despair

 I don’t usually use texts written by others in this blog, but this article lays out clearly the issues faced by serious Christians in our current toxic religio-political environment. It is both blunt and radical, as is the message of Jesus to his followers.

Below is an excerpt from a talk by Chris Hedges entitled “The Politics of Cultural Despair” transcribed and printed in Scheerpost October 19, 2020.  To read the complete article click <here>.

All fascist movements paper over their squalid belief systems with the veneer of morality. They mouth pieties about restoring law and order, right and wrong, the sanctity of life, civic and family virtues, patriotism and tradition to mask their dismantling of the open society and silencing and persecution of those who dissent. The Christian Right, awash in money from corporations that understand their political intent, will use any tool, no matter how devious, from right-wing armed militias to the invalidation of ballots, to block Biden and Democratic candidates from assuming office.

Capitalism, driven by the obsession to maximizing profit and reduce the cost of production by slashing worker’s rights and wages, is antithetical to the Christian Gospel, as well as the Enlightenment ethic of Immanuel Kant. But capitalism, in the hands of the Christian fascists, has become sacralized in the form of the Prosperity Gospel, the belief that Jesus came to minister to our material needs, blessing believers with wealth and power. The Prosperity Gospel is an ideological cover for the slow-motion corporate coup d’état. This is why large corporations such as Tyson Foods, which places Christian Right chaplains in its plants, Purdue, Wal-Mart, and Sam’s Warehouse, along with many other corporations, pour money into the movement and its institutions such as Liberty University and Patrick Henry Law School. This is why corporations have given millions to groups such as the Judicial Crisis Network and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to campaign for Barrett’s appointment to the court. Barrett has ruled to cheat gig workers out of overtime, green light fossil fuel extraction and pollution, gut Obamacare and strip consumers of protection from corporate fraud. Barrett, as a circuit court judge, heard at least 55 cases in which citizens challenged corporate abuse and fraud. She ruled in favor of corporations 76 percent of the time.

Our corporate masters do not care about abortion, gun rights or the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman. But like the German industrialists who backed the Nazi Party, they know that the Christian Right will give an ideological veneer to ruthless corporate tyranny. These oligarchs view the Christian fascists the same way the German industrialists viewed the Nazis, as buffoons. They are aware that the Christian fascists will trash what is left of our anemic democracy and the natural ecosystem. But they also know they will make huge profits in the process and the rights of workers and citizens will be ruthlessly suppressed.

If you are poor, if you lack proper medical care, if you are paid substandard wages, if you are trapped in the lower class, if you are a victim of police violence, this is because, according to the Prosperity Gospel, you are not a good Christian. In this belief system you deserve what you get. There is nothing wrong, these homegrown fascists preach, with the structures or systems of power. Like all totalitarian movements, followers are seduced into calling for their own enslavement.

As the Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels understood: “The best propaganda is that which, as it were, works invisibly, penetrates the whole of life without the public having any knowledge of the propagandistic initiative.” 

Isn't Everyone Entitled to a Basic Income?

Back in the 1970s, when I was minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church in Meriden, Connecticut, civil unrest was sweeping our country, cities were burning because urban society had become frustrated and restless, black urban youth in particular were unable to find jobs because automation made many low wage jobs in urban areas redundant and manufacturing jobs were moving to where land was abundant and taxes were low, the welfare system was under attack by the conservative politicians of the right as promoting laziness and creating a disincentive to work and giving their money to the undeserving, the unpopular Viet Nam war was raging amidst anti-war protests, and I was foolish and idealistic enough to think that there was a better way. 

It was obvious to me and to others that one of the most disturbing implications of modern society was that workers were becoming less important to industrial development, over time blue collar jobs would be increasingly scarce and become more repetitive and less meaningful, automation would increase and many workers would become redundant, and consequently and inevitably unemployment would increase because fewer workers would be necessary to produce the goods needed by society. [This was long before industries were moving their factories to the under-developed world to save labor costs, thus reducing the need for domestic labor and increasing unemployment.]

Two ideas seemed to flow from this: first, that structural unemployment would become a fixture of modern society to which a better solution than welfare and unemployment insurance would have to be found, and second, income (monetized distribution of goods and services) needed to be separated from wage producing employment.  Providing everyone with a basic income was a radical idea at the time, but I proposed it in a Sunday sermon and a lengthy and vigorous discussion followed.  The issue got some press when the editor of the local paper wrote a front page article on the controversial topic.  The ensuing debate, which continued the discussion at a more heated level in letters to the editor and a call-in talk radio show, went on for some weeks afterward.

That concept, now called universal basic income, is alive and well, has been discussed in policy circles off and on for years, and has been developed and tried in some nations.  The two most often raised objections to giving everyone a guaranteed income are that (a) it disincentivizes work , that without the need to work for an income people would not work, jobs would go unfilled, and economic society would fail; and (b) it is immoral because it gives people something that they have not earned, generates laziness, and creates a society that is unfair because some people work and others do not. 

Both classes of objections are handily vanquished.  The first, that it disincentivizes work, is a factual assertion that has been tested and shown to be false.  While some people may choose not to be engaged in economically productive activity, many others are engaged in humanitarian, artistic or humanistic work.  The pandemic has taught us that people are eager to be productive whether to get back to work or back to the classroom. A guaranteed income eliminates homelessness and food insecurity; they are no longer social welfare problems. 

The philosophic and moral objection is a bit trickier to deal with, particularly for Americans, because our Victorian and Puritan ancestors have instilled in us the idea that work is a moral good and that its opposite, laziness or sloth, is sin.  However true it is that since Adam work has been necessary for our survival as a species, it is a bit of a stretch to the conclusion that work is therefore a moral good. 

The common assumption of society that income should be assigned on the basis of gainful economic employment in the production of goods and services may actually be unhelpful and unwise in our current economic circumstances.  I will oversimplify why that is true for the sake of this discussion and those interested can pursue it in more depth.  In brief our hunter-gathering ancestors were able to domesticate plants and animals, increasing their surplus production sufficiently to support trade, subsidize diversification of occupations to merchants, tool makers, artists of various kinds, soldiers, officials and priests.  Note that the accumulated surplus supported those who were not directly involved in economic production.

The industrial revolution and the accumulating surplus of capital eventually led to our current dilemma which is that there is now a serious imbalance in our economic life caused ultimately by the monetization of labor that can be described on the one hand as the shift in the accumulation of the rewards of labor into the hands of fewer and fewer people (which will ultimately result in the collapse of the economy), and on the other hand, an economic society that does not need everyone working at economically productive jobs to sustain our economy, creating increasing unemployment that unfairly and unreasonably restricts some people from earning a share of that surplus.  That inequitable imbalance has created social problems that society must fix.  If they are not fixed they will result in social instability.

Giving everyone a basic income goes a long way to fixing the problem of structural unemployment in American society.  [There is an additional factor that has to be considered: in the United States health care has most commonly been provided as an employment benefit and that also has to be disconnected from employment and become universally provided.]

This has been a long and not entirely satisfactory introduction both to the concept of universal basic income and to an important article in New Scientist that discusses scientific real world testing of the concept of universal basic income that debunks a basic criticism of universal basic income—that it creates a disincentive to work. 

Finland ran a two-year universal basic income study in 2017 and 2018, during which the government gave 2000 unemployed people aged between 25 and 58 monthly payments with no strings attached.

The payments of €560 per month weren’t means tested and were unconditional, so they weren’t reduced if an individual got a job or later had a pay rise. The study was nationwide and selected recipients weren’t able to opt out, because the test was written into legislation….

The study compared the employment and well-being of basic income recipients against a control group of 173,000 people who were on unemployment benefits.

Click <HERE> to read the entire article.

The concept of Universal Basic Income needs to be fleshed out by Democratic Progressives into a workable Federal program, as a replacement for unemployment insurance, Social Security, housing subsidies, food stamps, school lunch programs,  welfare payments, and other Federal and State income subsidies, and implemented by the United States as a matter of both social and economic policy.

 

 

Discussion of this topic by readers is specifically encouraged.  Until this concept is understood through widespread discussion and debate it will not have enough sufficient acceptance to have any chance of being enacted into law. 

The U. S. Is NOT a Christian Nation

 

A few days ago I received one of those annoying emails that circulate around the internet that encouraged the recipient with some urgency to forward it to everyone she knew.  The focus of that email was an ad by the Biden for President campaign directed toward Muslim Americans that encourages them to vote because that is the way change happens and that their vote matters.  The premise of the email, not specifically stated but implied by its urgent tone, is that our Christian nation is being overwhelmed by Muslims and encouraged by Biden to undermine our Christian values.  There is a link to that Biden ad with a breathless plea to watch all of it to see how far our Christian nation has strayed from its roots by catering to foreigners with different values. 

Usually I ignore these chain emails but this one came from a very conservative religious and lovely elderly lady who is a dear friend and she sent it to a lot of people we know in common.  Because of the urgency of the times and the dangerous spread of disinformation from domestic groups and meddling foreign trolls in advance of the election I concluded that I should respond.  Evangelical Christian assertions to the contrary, the fact is that the Founders consciously and intentionally established this nation to be free of and from religion.  They saw religion as divisive and wanted the new nation to be neutral with respect to religion so that each citizen could worship or not in accordance with his/her beliefs. 

The email in question said that every American needs to watch every second of Biden’s political ad and that it would make the hair stand up on your neck.  So I watched it—twice.  I did not see anything scary.  It was directed to Muslim Americans. It quoted from the Koran.  It urged all Americans to vote in accord with their values.  It seemed a normal political ad, similar to ads directed to specific groups to remind them we are in this struggle together for the soul of the nation—labor union members in the Midwest, or the Jewish community in South Florida, or Hispanics in the Southwest—and that their voice matters.

I replied to her, from which I quote some excerpts below, slightly edited:

As you requested I listened to every word.  What he said was that every vote counts and that EVERY AMERICAN whether they are Muslim, or Jew, or Christian, or Black matters and needs to make their voice heard.  He quoted selected peaceful quotations from the Koran, just as Christians quote selectively from the Bible.  He said that Muslim Americans have a right and duty to vote in a democracy.  Every political presidential campaign, including Trump, sends messages to select groups of voters whose votes it is seeking.  There is nothing that was said in that Biden ad that any American who believes in democracy, the right to vote, and a better and more caring world should disagree with.

I am concerned that there is a conscious and deliberate attempt by Trump and his supporters to fan racial hatred and to claim that Americans should not participate in the Black Lives Matter protests against the injustice of treating poor blacks differently than well off whites.  That is the not very hidden theme of Trump’s law and order movement, to limit and criminalize the right of Americans to protest and why it is so important that all Americans protect our civil liberties from the abuses and fascist tendencies of the current Attorney General, who tried to use military style tactics in the streets of Portland to deny protest and turn it into a war zone.

There are two things that seem to be implied by that forwarded email, that there was something wrong and disturbing about the Biden video because it sought to encourage Muslim Americans to vote in our Presidential election, and that the US is a Christian country endangered by Muslims.  The issue of the U.S. as a Christian nation has been argued before and is a matter clear in our history that has been intentionally distorted by Evangelical Protestant Christians since the 1950s who assert that the US was founded as a Christian nation.  It was NOT.  [I taught US history, back quite a few years ago.]

Many of the original 13 colonies were founded by religious groups, Puritans, ana-Baptists, Calvinists, Catholics, Quakers, etc. ALL WITH THE INTENT of getting away from Europe's oppressive church-state religions and insisting on the freedom to worship (or not) as they chose.  The Founding Fathers were clear--in order for the colonies of the new nation to exist peaceably with each other there could be no establishment of religion.  We would be a new nation established in freedom of and from religion, where the nation was neutral and the people were free to worship as they chose.  That is a fundamental premise of democracy.  [Here is an article I wrote on the U.S. as a Christian nation.] Most of the Founders, including Thomas Jefferson in particular, were not Christians, they were Deists.

These are troubling times and the danger of fascist solutions are tempting.  I hate that the Trump people are trying to sow discord and division and promoting racial hatred and White Nationalism under the guise of a narrow view of Christian religion that is amenable to limiting freedom.  Our country deserves better.  We need new national leadership that is committed to democracy, that has the will and the ability to solve our pandemic problems, and to re-establish our place in the world of free nations—not make things progressively worse.  It will take an election in November to achieve this.

 

Attack On Our Democracy and Our Values

This has been the week from hell in the U.S.  We have faced multiple threats to our security and our peace: a pandemic that has crossed the threshold of 100,00 lives lost; lack of national leadership that will result in many more deaths from Covid-19 in the coming weeks; another black man killed by police using unnecessary and excessive force who has become the latest symbol of racial oppression; massive peaceful protests that have spread from Minneapolis across the U.S. and into countries around the world; looting and troublemaking during the night by white nationalists, anarchists and criminals who have infiltrated and hidden among the protestors making the police response complicated and difficult; and the final absurdity—an out of control would-be emperor launching an attack on unarmed and non-violent protestors by militarized police in full battle gear to clear the street in front of the White House so that he could have a photo op at the historic St. John’s Church.

Our democracy is not threatened by protests against excessive force used by bad cops, but it is threatened by bad cops who use the color of their uniform to treat blacks differently and with greater force than they treat whites under the same circumstance. 

The protestors held up signs and shouted: 

Hands Up, Don’t Shoot  

No Justice, No Peace  

I Can’t Breathe

I’m old enough to experience this protest with a sense of déjà vu.   In the late 1960s I witnessed our cities burned down with the frustration of decades of physical and emotional abuse of blacks.  In those days we marched with the iconic leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr. and while protestors marched during the day, destructive criminal elements used the chaos to torch our cities and loot our stores largely but not entirely during the night.  The looters made it hard to hear the voices of the oppressed demanding freedom, but ultimately the message got through and the Civil Rights Movement was largely successful.

 Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence.

                                                                                          Martin Luther King, Jr   

Washington DC has a tradition of protests.  Our Constitution asserts the right of citizens to assemble peaceably and to petition the Government for redress of grievances. Which is what they were doing—when without warning heavily armed Park Police backed up by Mounted Police fired tear gas and flash grenades and moved against the stunned protestors, pushing them off the street and out of the park.  

Why were nonviolent protestors acting within their Constitutional rights attacked?  Not because they were rioting but because the President wanted a photo opportunity for his campaign!  His staff thought a show of military force would make him appear strong and in charge, apparently to counter the fact that he spent the previous evening cowering in his bunker under the White House because he was afraid of college students protesting in Lafayette Park.

The Rector of St. John’s did not know that Trump was coming to the church for a photo op.  Trump only wanted the church and the bible as props.  He had no interest in entering the church for prayer or opening the bible.  The Episcopal Bishop of Washington was annoyed.  As reported in The Guardian she said: “Let me be clear, the president just used a Bible, the most sacred text of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and one of the churches of my diocese, without permission, as a backdrop for a message antithetical to the teachings of Jesus. We align ourselves with those seeking justice for the death of George Floyd and countless others. And I just can’t believe what my eyes have seen.”

Believe it.  Trump has no values, no principles, no integrity, no consideration for anyone but himself and his reelection.  That is why he is so dangerous and so unpredictable.  That is also why our democracy is in danger.  He is flirting with use of the 1807 Insurrection Act to send the US military to quell lawful protests by considering them a form of “insurrection.”  He got little pushback from his Republican allies.  What might he do if he sees the election slipping through his fingers?

  

"When peaceful protesters are dispersed by the order of the president from the doorstep of the people's house, the White House - using tear gas and flash grenades - in order to stage a photo op at a noble church, we can be forgiven for believing that the president is more interested in power than in principle," Biden said in a speech in Philadelphia on June 2.

We have an alternative.  Let’s use it.

During the Pandemic Does It Make Sense To Decrease Wages of Hospital Personnel?

CBS News reported last week that hospitals have been cutting the pay of physicians and reducing nursing and other staff in their Emergency Rooms in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.  In fact there are many reports from all across our nation of wage cuts for medical staff in hospitals and group medical practices just at the time when they are most needed, the risk is high, the demand is critical, and they are being honored by the public as heroes for their commitment, Herculean efforts and life-saving skills.

In what Alice in Wonderland world does that make any sense?

By way of contrast a news article in today’s Washington Post reported that the African nation of Ghana, where Covid-19 is becoming a serious problem, announced an immediate 50% increase in wages for medical personnel, care for any staff who acquire the disease, and death benefits.

Why do we have this absurd difference in the treatment of essential personnel? 

There is an explanation.  Most hospitals today are owned by corporations and operate as business entities where profitability is the goal even in hospitals that maintain the fiction that they operate as not-for-profit entities.  Some hospitals [including my local hospital in Florida that is owned by Cleveland Clinic] contract the operation of their ER to for-profit management companies that employ physicians the way Walmart hires workers and treats them comparably.  Hospitals are “losing” money because highly profitable elective procedures have been postponed and treating those who need medical care in the ER is unprofitable.

 

Hospitals could choose to incur debt or transfer building or unrestricted funds to cover their increased operating expense, suspend executive pay during the crisis and let them volunteer, postpone the purchase of million dollar pieces of equipment, suspend construction projects temporarily, delay acquisitions for a year and focus on using those funds to increase wages rather than decrease them.

While some will argue that I have oversimplified medical services’ financial problems, which I concede have been exacerbated by Covid-19, I contend that the pandemic has brought the real issue into focus—the profit motive that underlies almost everything in medicine.  Hospitals want to build bigger, better, fancier.  Medical equipment is highly profitable.  Prescription drug prices are more expensive than their real costs warrant.  Personnel management companies want a piece of medical personnel wages.  Hospital managers are driven by profits and high salaries.  Insurance companies pay for some of the direct costs but they want a piece of every service.  Every part of the system is driven by a profit motive that is inappropriate in what--I believe--should be a service industry.

At the end of the day it depends on whether the primary driving purpose behind physician and hospital services is to save lives and serve people or to make a profit for owners and managers.  That will determine the priorities, how the money flows and who benefits from providing medical services.

Trump Golfs While Pandemic Rages

No need for comment [credit Twitter]

Stolen Gilgamesh Tablets Recovered at Bible Museum

Anyone concerned with antiquities, including ancient historians and museum curators in particular, are rightly concerned about the trade in stolen artifacts from the ancient world.  Sites from Egypt to Mesopotamia have been looted regularly in modern times to sell stolen goods to private collectors and major museums, and in ancient times to obtain gold and precious jewels   After the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s government a number of museums in Iraq were looted and some valuable statuary was destroyed by Muslim fundamentalists.

That is why the US government has filed suit against the Hobby Lobby seeking to return stolen tablets containing part of the story of Gilgamesh to the Iraqi government.  [Read the interesting story here.]  The Hobby Lobby’s owners are donors to extreme right-wing causes and political action groups who established the Bible Museum in Washington, DC and have been involved in a number of prior instances of dealing with dealers of ill repute to obtain artifacts for their museum.

Is Trump Challenging Mother Nature To A Duel?

Thomas L Friedman’s brilliant article outlines a dangerous flaw in Trump’s reopen strategy:

I try to ground all my thoughts on how to deal with this pandemic in the logic of Mother Nature and the laws of natural systems. If you don’t — if instead you start your analysis with politics or ideology, or the fact that you’re just tired of being locked down so what the hell, let’s throw back a few with the gang at the local bar and the virus be damned — you’re actually challenging Mother Nature to a duel….

All that registers, all that she rewards, is one thing: adaptation. She doesn’t reward the richest or the strongest or the smartest of the species. She rewards the most adaptive. They get to pass along their DNA….

For all these reasons it’s clear, or should be, that the holy grail every nation needs to be looking for is what Dr. David Katz, a public health expert, argued from the beginning of this crisis: a “sustainable strategy of total harm minimization.” That means a strategy that would save as many lives and as many livelihoods as possible at the same time….

We need to reopen and we need to adapt, but in ways that honor Mother Nature’s logic, not in ways that court a second wave — not in ways that challenge Mother Nature to a duel. That is not smart. Because she hasn’t lost a duel in 4.5 billion years.

Read the whole article in The New York Times [here]

Is Florida Manipulating Covid-19 Data?

CNN reported today that Florida and Georgia, both Republican-controlled states that seem eager to do Trump’s bidding by reopening their states to business before the data indicates that Covid-19 is sufficiently contained, may be manipulating their data to conceal some information from the public.  If true, and reports show that is likely, it is endangering the public by making it seem safer to open than it actually is. [see the report here.]

The most serious claim is that the manager of Florida’s well-respected Covid-19 data reporting website was removed from her job and apparently terminated for insubordination because she refused to change data that conflicted with Governor Ron DeSantis’ positive claims that the State was ready to fully reopen.  [See the story here.]  DeSantis is an altar boy and water carrier for Trump who has shown he is willing to support Trump’s message that the economy should be opened without regard to its consequences to help his reelection campaign.

Opening Up Safely

After being confined to our homes for so long as our economy suffered, our personal finances were devastated, our hopes for graduation and our entry to the world of work were dashed,  our health care workers and our elderly grandparents and occasionally our younger friends were killed, we are now beginning to experience the freedom of leaving our homes and venturing out again into the world of work and fun.  Let us not forget the lessons learned with such patience and endurance and hardship that our safety and the safety of our friends, neighbors and relatives require us to follow diligently the protocols for safety—to wear a mask, wash our hands, keep our hands away from our face, and stay at least six feet away from others. [AGB]