The past two days I have been writing about Hurricane Matthew and the appalling lack of empathy of some people, especially self-proclaimed conservative Christians who support Donald Trump for President in order to supposedly Make America Great Again.
I began to think about what makes people accept the hateful rhetoric of such people, including that of Trump, and even support it. Then I began to think of the classic film, Judgment at Nuremberg. The question of how many Germans, who should have known better abandoned all sense and supported Hitler is quite similar to what is going on with many Trump supporters. They are afraid of the futures, they are frustrated, and their fear of the past, present, and future is such that they are willing to cast aside logic and blindly support a man who can only be called a madman.
In the movie, Burt Lancaster plays a prominent German legal scholar and jurist named Ernst Janning. As the trial dragged on he was content to allow his defense attorney to use whatever means necessary, even re-victimizing the people who were in fact the victims of his own judgments in support of his government’s policy. When he went to the witness stand his conscience finally got the best of him and he explained his guilt and how he and so many people like him abandoned all sense and morality in supporting Hitler.
“There was a fever over the land. A fever of disgrace, of indignity, of hunger. We had a democracy, yes, but it was torn by elements within. Above all, there was fear. Fear of today, fear of tomorrow, fear of our neighbors, and fear of ourselves. Only when you understand that – can you understand what Hitler meant to us. Because he said to us: ‘Lift your heads! Be proud to be German! There are devils among us. Communists, Liberals, Jews, Gypsies! Once these devils will be destroyed, your misery will be destroyed.’ It was the old, old story of the sacrificial lamb. What about those of us who knew better? We who knew the words were lies and worse than lies? Why did we sit silent? Why did we take part? Because we loved our country! What difference does it make if a few political extremists lose their rights? What difference does it make if a few racial minorities lose their rights? It is only a passing phase. It is only a stage we are going through. It will be discarded sooner or later. Hitler himself will be discarded… sooner or later. The country is in danger. We will march out of the shadows. We will go forward. Forward is the great password. And history tells how well we succeeded, your honor. We succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. The very elements of hate and power about Hitler that mesmerized Germany, mesmerized the world! We found ourselves with sudden powerful allies. Things that had been denied to us as a democracy were open to us now. The world said ‘go ahead, take it, take it! Take Sudetenland, take the Rhineland – remilitarize it – take all of Austria, take it! And then one day we looked around and found that we were in an even more terrible danger. The ritual began in this courtroom swept over the land like a raging, roaring disease. What was going to be a passing phase had become the way of life. Your honor, I was content to sit silent during this trial. I was content to tend my roses. I was even content to let counsel try to save my name, until I realized that in order to save it, he would have to raise the specter again. You have seen him do it – he has done it here in this courtroom. He has suggested that the Third Reich worked for the benefit of people. He has suggested that we sterilized men for the welfare of the country. He has suggested that perhaps the old Jew did sleep with the sixteen year old girl, after all. Once more it is being done for love of country. It is not easy to tell the truth; but if there is to be any salvation for Germany, we who know our guilt must admit it… whatever the pain and humiliation.”
I’ll just leave you with that for now. I think that is enough for the day.
Yesterday I wrote about the reactions of some supposedly Christian preachers and pundits who claimed that Hurricane Matthew was a “God’s judgment” on the nation for extending basic rights to Gays rather than killing them and against Hillary Clinton supporters.
Personally I cannot fathom such hate coming from supposed Christians who are claiming to speak for God. It makes no sense to me. It’s like the preachers including the late Jerry Falwell who said that the attacks of September 11th 2001 where “God’s judgment” on the United States. I just don’t get it. How people can have such hate for their neighbors that they can rejoice in disasters that affect so many people makes no sense to me, it is perverse.
But then I realize that such people have no empathy for their fellow human beings, even those who share their faith. I am reminded of the words of the Army Psychologist at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, Gustave Gilbert when he said:
“In my work with the defendants (at the Nuremberg Trails 1945-1949) I was searching for the nature of evil and I now think I have come close to defining it. A lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants, a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”
I have to agree with that. A basic lack of empathy, it is the one thing that connects anyone who can rejoice when disasters strike and claim that it is God doing the work. Such people are sociopaths. Sadly, if by some chance Donald Trump takes power we will have a certifiable sociopath for a President.
I was thinking last night as I watched an episode of the television show The Blacklist, where the lead character, Raymond Reddington, played by James Spader made a comment about Homer’s classic Greek myth The Oddesy where he said, “Odysseus spent a decade at war. But his biggest battle was finding his way home.” I can understand that. Nine years ago I was on my first long distance mission out to the Syrian border in Iraq’s Al Anbar Province. It was the first of many missions in the badlands of that war ravaged province, and seven months later I returned home, but I didn’t. Too much of me was still in Iraq, and in some ways still is, but that being said I think I can finally say that I am home.
Now let me say, there is still a lot of Iraq in me and if I got the chance to go back I would probably jump at it. I still have issues from my tour in Iraq, the dreams, nightmares, and night terrors have caused more physical injuries than my actual time in country. Frankly, I expect that will never change, so I simply adapt to minimize risk, and to enjoy life to the utmost. That is my reality. I can dwell on the bad and hate life, or I can make the adjustments and enjoy life.
After a major emotional crash in the spring I decided that the latter was the better choice and I have not looked back since.
My experiences in Iraq have helped make me the man I am today, and for that I am grateful. I can admit that I am damaged and at the same time realize that I am in the process of becoming whole, maybe for the first time in my life. I have really come to appreciate life and the blessings that I have, especially my wife Judy, my two little dogs, and my friends. Things are not perfect, nor will they ever be, but I am happy and for the first time since I deployed to Iraq in July 2007 can say that I am home. Like the journey of Odysseus, mine has been a long, and for that matter, a strange trip.
Once I get at least one of my three texts dealing with the Civil War era and Gettysburg published, I’ll write my story.
So until tomorrow I wish you peace, and the joy of making it home.
“As long as the prerequisite for that shining paradise is ignorance, bigotry and hate, I say the hell with it.” Henry Drummond (Spencer Tracy) Inherit the Wind
Today has been a very busy day at work but I have been doing some reflection and instead of watching the Olympics tonight I decided to again watch the classic film Inherit the Wind. I really do believe that it is well worth watching, especially when a charlatan with no Christian virtues whatsoever stokes up the hopes of conservative Christians by promising that if he is elected he will make Christianity great again. Of course the Christianity that he refers to is not that of Jesus, but that of Constantine and every other strongman who has used the Christians and the church to achieve earthly power and to crush any opposition. Noted televangelists have come to Trump’s side, many like John Hagee saying that Christians that God will punish Christians, that vote against Trump. That is why this film is still so pertinent.
It is fascinating that a play and film set about an incident that actually occurred in the 1920s remains so timeless. It is hard to believe that 90 years after the trial and over 50 years after the movie that our society would still be debating the issue in the movie and that legislatures and school boards are still attempting to pass religious doctrine off as science.
It is a film about what is commonly called the “Scopes Monkey Trial”which was litigated in July of 1925 and featured an epic battle between populist three time Presidential Candidate and former Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan and famed defense attorney Clarence Darrow.
The trial was brought about after the passage of the Butler Actin Tennessee. It was an act that made it a criminal offense to teach evolution in any publicly funded school. The act stipulated:
“That it shall be unlawful for any teacher in any of the Universities, Normals and all other public schools of the State which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.”
The author of the act was Tennessee State Representative John W. Butler, a farmer and the head of the World Christian Fundamentals Association an interdenominational organization dedicated to a “New Protestantism” based on the Pre-Millennial interpretation of Bible prophecy.
Butler was heavily influenced by William Jennings Bryant who with his followers had gotten legislation banning evolution in 15 states. H.L. Mencken commented that over the years of his public life that Bryan had “transformed himself” into some “sort of Fundamentalist Pope.”
Butler was opposed to the teaching of evolution and the act passed the house by a vote of 75-1. No public hearings had been held on it and no debate proffered.
Butler’s legislation did face some opposition in the State Senate. However it passed there on a vote of 24-6 after the famous Fundamentalist evangelist Billy Sunday preached as series of revival meetings to incite public opinion in favor of the bill. Sunday’s message was clear, he preached that “Education today is chained to the Devil’s throne” and praised Butler and the House for their “action against that God forsaken gang of evolutionary cutthroats.” The bill was signed into law by Governor Austin Peay, but Peay expected little to come of it.
The American Civil Liberties Union put the law to the test using high school biology teacher John Scopes who was charged with breaking the law. The trial ended up becoming less about the guilt or innocence of Scopes or even the constitutionality of the law, but rather as the field where the conflict between religious and social issues and faith versus intellectualism was fought. Butler, the man who legislated the law on religious grounds covered it as a correspondent.
Mencken wrote of the trial:
“The Scopes trial, from the start, has been carried on in a manner exactly fitted to the anti- evolution law and the simian imbecility under it. There hasn’t been the slightest pretense to decorum. The rustic judge, a candidate for re-election, has postured the yokels like a clown in a ten-cent side show, and almost every word he has uttered has been an undisguised appeal to their prejudices and superstitions. The chief prosecuting attorney, beginning like a competent lawyer and a man of self-respect, ended like a convert at a Billy Sunday revival. It fell to him, finally, to make a clear and astounding statement of theory of justice prevailing under fundamentalism. What he said, in brief, was that a man accused of infidelity had no rights whatever under Tennessee law…”
It was an epic event covered by news outlets across the nation and the atmosphere in the town outside the courthouse was circus like, something that the movie depicts very well. The defense was not allowed to produce Scientists as witnesses, even to the chagrin of Butler who despite his opposition to evolutionary theory felt that it was not fair. When all was said and done Scopes had been convicted and a fine of $100 assessed, which was overturned on appeal. Bryan died a week after the trial and of the 15 states with similar legislation to Butler passed them into law.
The film is based on the play of the same name written in 1950 by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee. It was written during the height of the McCarthy Era and opened in 1955. The first film version starring Spencer Tracy as Henry Drummond (Clarence Darrow), Frederic March as Matthew Harrison Brady (William Jennings Bryan), Gene Kelly as E.K. Hornbeck (H.L. Mencken) while Dick York played Bertram Cates (John Scopes). Lawrence and Lee invented some fictional characters including Reverend Brown played by Claude Akins.
The film directed by Stanley Kramer captures the raw emotions of the trial, the participants and the spectators who came from near and far. The depiction of the angry mob of Christians is terrifying to watch. In the film they sing:
“We’ll hang Bertram Cates to a sour apple tree, we’ll hang Bertram Cates to a sour apple tree, we’ll hang Bertram Cates to a sour apple tree. Our God is marching on! Glory Glory Hallelujah! Glory Glory Hallelujah! Glory Gory Hallelujah! His truth is marching on. We’ll hang Henry Drummond to a sour apple tree, we’ll hang Henry Drummond to a sour apple tree, we’ll hang Henry Drummond to a sour apple tree, our God is marching on.”
March’s depiction of Matthew Harrison Brady is riveting. The Brady of the film does not do justice to other parts of Bryan’s life. Bryan, outside his fight against evolution was ahead of his time in many ways. Earlier in his career he had pressed for Universal Suffrage, fought against war and labored against the social Darwinism of the banks, business and the Robber Barons. However the loss of three Presidential elections left him bitter and it is believed that he saw the trial as an opportunity to regain the limelight and perhaps build a base to again run for President. This speech by Brady is a fair characterization of Bryan’s beliefs:
“I have been to their cities and I have seen the altars upon which they sacrifice the futures of their children to the gods of science. And what are their rewards? Confusion and self-destruction. New ways to kill each other in wars. I tell you gentlemen the way of science is the way of darkness.”
The problem with the Bryan of the Scopes Trial was that he was a caricature of his former self, he played to the crowds. The trial played to the worst parts of his character and that shows in the movie depiction. Some Christians find this an unfair portrayal and even call it a lie, however even though March’s portrayal is fictional it does fit the spirit of the trial which is captured in the writings of many of the contemporary commentators of the trial. Mencken wrote of the real Bryan: It is a tragedy, indeed, to begin life as a hero and to end it as a buffoon.
Another of those commentators, Marcet Haldeman-Julius wrote of the real Bryan:
“As he sat there in the court room, day after day, silent, fanning, fanning, his face set I was appalled by the hardness, the malice in it. No one who has watched the fanatical light in those hard, glittering black eyes of Bryan’s can doubt but that he believes both in a heaven and in a hell. At the same time the cruel lines of his thin, tight-pressed mouth proclaim, it seems to me, that he would stop at nothing to attain his own ends. It is anything but a weak face–Bryan’s. But it is a face from which one could expect neither understanding nor pity. My own opinion is that he is sincere enough in his religion. Also that in it is included the doctrine Paul so frankly taught–that a lie told for the glory of God is justified…”
But I think that the real drama and tension in the film comes from Spencer Tracy in his portrayal of Drummond. This speech is taken almost verbatim from the trial:
“Can’t you understand? That if you take a law like evolution and you make it a crime to teach it in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools? And tomorrow you may make it a crime to read about it. And soon you may ban books and newspapers. And then you may turn Catholic against Protestant, and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the mind of man. If you can do one, you can do the other. Because fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy, and needs feeding. And soon, your Honor, with banners flying and with drums beating we’ll be marching backward, BACKWARD, through the glorious ages of that Sixteenth Century when bigots burned the man who dared bring enlightenment and intelligence to the human mind!”
I think that this speech is the real crux of the tension that we face even now. Legislators in a number of States have enacted laws of much the same kind of spirit as Butler and defended them with the same kind of fire as Bryan. Civil libertarians, especially secular ones bring up the same issues as Darrow did. I am a Christian and a Priest and my thinking about this is much like that espoused by Drummond in the movie.
So the film may be a fictional depiction of the Scopes Trial, but it is a film that I think that people would do well to watch. I don’t expect everyone to agree with me or the issues that I agree with brought up by the character of Henry Drummond. However, I think that everyone should watch the film and come to their own conclusions as well as to ask themselves how their particular ethic, whether secular or religious informs them in how they deal with this issue and so many others that divide us today.
I just know when I watched it again this week that it could have been in the news this week, only with a different cast of characters. My concern is that there is a very loud minority that wants to inflict its particular religious view on everyone and use the public treasure to do it. The attitude of many of these people is much like the characters from the actual Scopes Trial including their view that pushes both demonizes those they oppose and their desire to regulate the secular opposition to the sidelines.
I know that the same accusation is made by religious people of secularists, however I have seen the results of religious wars in Iraq and the Balkans, and from history. Those conflicts and the brutality of religious people in them give me great pause when I see religious and political leaders here suggest curtailing the civil liberties and even using the law against those that they oppose. As Drummond asked in the movie: “Must men go to jail because they find themselves at odds with a self-appointed prophet?”
In the final scene of the final episode of the season nine of the X-Files, Fox Mulder tells Dana Scully “I’d like to believe that the dead are not really lost to us. That they speak to us as part of something greater than us…”
Over the past couple of weeks I have experienced the loss of three wonderful people. Two of the were expected. My cousin, Betty Dundas who was in her 80s and had been in declining health for the past year passed away on Wednesday. My friend from high school, Tony Martin passed away two weeks ago after battling cancer for more than a year; and I found out last night that my friend Cara Burke Hartwell, one of the people who helped keep me sane during my tour in Camp LeJeune suffered a massive stroke and was taken off of life support Saturday night. I guess that Cara’s death hit me the hardest because she was my age and it was so totally unexpected.
All three were beautiful people, and all three left the world better off for simply being here. Betty lived a long and full life, until a year effort she died she took an active role in her church choir. Tony and Cara both died far too young, they leave behind many family members and friends.
After chapel today I walked around the grounds of the Staff College and the Naval Support Activity for about an hour. I needed to. I reflected on life, and I prayed for the souls of my friends, and of those that they left behind. The walk was quite peaceful, and I glad that I did it. I am blessed to have had my life touched by all three of these wonderful people, so I do not grieve for myself. I was blessed by all of them, and that is nothing to be sad about, and like Fox Mulder I’d like to believe that Betty, Tony, and Cara are not really lost to us.
I guess that believing that is really important to me, and my faith as a Christian about that is summed up in the final sentence of the Nicene Creed, “We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.”
Three words: Disgusting, disgraceful, dishonorable, is how I have to characterize how Donald Trump and his campaign treats those who serve, those who have served, and the families of military personnel.
Ever since the parents of Army Captain Humayun Khan so eloquently spoke, and criticized Donald Trump at the Democratic National Convention there has been a full court press by Trump, his aides, and his most strident supporters to demonize the Khans in the most cruel, senseless, and even evil ways. What they have done and continue to do is so offensive that it drew the official rebuke of many veterans groups, including the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the Iraq Afghanistan Veterans Association.
Trump is the ultimate bully and crybaby. He went to Twitter to complain of their “vicious attacks,” of course ignoring how has made a career of not only making vicious, and even libelous attacks on people of all walks of life. But then, like I said he is a bully and a crybaby. His assault on military personnel and veterans knows no bounds. He went out of his way to insult, attack, and demonize the Khans, and some of his aides and advisers have insinuated that they are connected to the Islamic Brotherhood, and demanded that they condemn Islamic militants, like losing their son in the battle against them doesn’t count. He mocked John McCain who spent years in a North Vietnamese POW camp, as well as others who have been POWs. He equates his high school years at an elite military prep school as being better than having actually served in the military. He says that he knows more than Generals about how to defeat ISIL. He stated in his acceptance speech that the military was “a disaster.” This list could go on, but even more despicable is the fact that while he claims to “have made sacrifices” he used five deferments to dodge the draft, something that he seems proud of doing.
He claims to have made millions of dollars in donations to military charities but there are no records, he will not name the charities, and he will not reveal his tax returns. He biggest bragging point is his participation as a co-chairman of the New York Vietnam Veterans Memorial Commission, in which he claimed credit for its construction is also full of deceit. In 1984 he was exposed by fellow members for only showing up at two or three of the twenty meetings. When asked by the Washington post about this he played down the military service of the other commissioners saying “They’re very small thinkers. They’re stockbrokers that were in Vietnam and they don’t have it.”
The farcical comments by one of the head of his political action committee, that his sacrifice included losing two marriages because he was so committed to his business, conveniently leaving out the part about his constant affairs that led to the break up of those marriages. Some sacrifice.
Why Trump acts this way might be a mystery to some, but I have a theory. Trump actually feels inferior to the men and women he is insulting because he knows that his avoidance of serving in Vietnam was cowardly. So he has to tear down McCain, he has to say he knows more than the generals, he has to go after the parents of a fallen hero. He is pathological in his need to prove his superiority, but as much as he blusters, Trump knows that he cannot live his own dishonor down, and so he must actively continue to belittle the sacrifices of, and even attempt to destroy the lives and reputations of those who actually did serve.
Truthfully, the man has no honor, and neither do his henchmen in the Christian Right who have been the loudest and most vicious critics of the Khans, simply because they are Muslim, and who have demeaned Captain Khan’s sacrifice to protect his troops from a terrorist car bomber. Some even said that he was not a hero. To see people who claim to be “Christians” act in such a manner defies the imagination and brings to mind the images of the burning of heretics, witch hunts, and more recently in American history the lynching of blacks by the supposed Christians of the Ku Klux Klan, the Red Shirts, and the White Leagues.
But truthfully I am surprised at none of this. Many American Evangelical and Conservative Christians only care about the military and the men and women who serve in it so long as it fits their political and religious agenda, and they ruthlessly attack anyone who dares to criticize that agenda. I know this because it has happened to me on quite a few occasions.
The whole affair has both sickened and angered me as a thirty five year veteran of the Army and Navy, as a combat veteran, and as a Christian. When I see the venomous nature of Trump, his campaign, and many of his supporters I fear for the country. A a Mike Pence speech the mother of a current Air Force member asked Pence about Trump’s attack on the Khans and was booed by the attendees, and he made no attempt to stop it.
The campaign being waged by Trump reminds me of the 1932 campaign of Hitler against Paul Von Hindenburg. In that campaign war veterans of non-Nazi parties were attacked, derided, and sometimes murdered by Nazi Brownshirts. The violence of the Trump campaign language being used against the Khans and others who disagree with Trump could easily lead to physical violence against Trump’s enemies. Don’t say it can’t happen, violence was a central feature of Trump supporters during the primaries and as the election draws closer I would not be surprised to see an uptick in the number of acts of violence against those who oppose Trump.
So anyway. That will be all. Have a great Tuesday.
Last night I watched the entirety of Donald Trump’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. I am not going to go ever all of the details of it, especially the myriad of lies, distortions, and half-truths which the nominee proclaimed, but instead I am going to talk about what has happened to my former political party in its deification of a man who portrayed himself as the savior of the country. He bluntly said as much And proclaimed that he said “nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.” The response from the crowd was “Yes you will!” From the purely visual standpoint one could not help but notice that there were few symbols of the Republican Party in evidence and the supersized TRUMP name over the stage which was shown over a background of gold, as if you were entering the Trump tower in New York. It dwarfed all symbols of the Republican Party, as well as the nation, including the American flag.
His speech was dystopian and apocalyptic; his words fed the real and the imagined fears of people, amplifying them in such a way that catered to the view that without him as the savior the United States would perish. As he talked he railed on enforcing the laws of the country and making people safe immediately, but he ignored the Constitution, made no mention of the role of Congress, or for that matter our state governments; and only referred to the courts as means of enforcing security. Not once did he talk about freedom, except of giving the Unconstitutional freedom for Churches to advance their sectarian beliefs at government expense and with the full backing of the police state. Jefferson, Madison, and Virginia Baptist leader John Leland would be rolling in their graves over a proposal which would destroy the First Amendment.
Enemies, were identified. They included immigrants, Muslims, and American liberals, not to mention dissenters in the GOP. Eric Hoffer wrote, “Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil. Usually the strength of a mass movement is proportionate to the vividness and tangibility of its devil.” Trump mentioned several “Devils” and cast every one of them into the image of Hillary Clinton. Clinton is certainly a flawed candidate and person, but she is not a devil, and to not reign in supporters who openly talk about killing her is unbecoming for the leader of the Republican Party, but this is not the party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Reagan, or either Bush. That party is dead. Its desiccated body died during Trump’s speech last night. Now, what remains is Republican in Name Only. Hoffer wrote,
“It seems that, like the ideal deity, the ideal devil is one. We have it from Hitler—the foremost authority on devils—that the genius of a great leader consists in concentrating all hatred on a single foe, making “even adversaries far removed from one another seem to belong to a single category.” When Hitler picked the Jew as his devil, he peopled practically the whole world outside Germany with Jews or those who worked for them. “Behind England stands Israel, and behind France, and behind the United States.”
Richard Evans in his book The Coming of the Third Reich discussed one of Hitler’s first speeches after coming to power.
“As so often in his career, Hitler, beginning slowly and quietly so as to secure the rapt attention of his enormous audience, went over the history of the Nazi Party and the alleged crimes of the Weimar Republic since 1919—the inflation, the impoverishment of the peasantry, the rise of unemployment, the ruin of the nation. What would his government do to change this parlous situation? His answer avoided any specific commitments at all. He said grandly that he was not going to make any ‘cheap promises’. Instead, he declared that his programme was to rebuild the German nation without foreign aid, ‘according to eternal laws valid for all time’, on the basis of the people and the soil, not according to ideas of class. Once more, he held up the intoxicating vision of a Germany united in a new society that would overcome the divisions of class and creed that had racked it over the past fourteen years. The workers, he declared, would be freed from the alien ideology of Marxism and led back to the national community of the entire German race. This was a ‘programme of national resurrection in all areas of life.'”
If those words seem somewhat familiar, compare the basic message to that of Trump. Blame your opponents and proclaim a new era without saying how you will actually implement your program, except to build a wall, demonize opponents, threaten allies, praise dictators, and promise that all the problems will be solved by you quickly, without regard to economic, military, diplomatic reality, and people in the hall loved it, “Yes you will! Yes you will! Yes you will!” It was the worship of a would be dictator, and it was most noticeable among supposedly conservative Christians. I wonder how many of them, like German pastor Martin Niemoller who came to regret his support of Hitler, will regret theirs. Niemoller wrote, “I hated the growing atheistic movement, which was fostered by the Social Democrats and the Communists. Their hostility toward the Church made me pin my hopes on Hitler for a while. I am paying for that mistake now; and not me alone, but thousands of other persons like me.”
German pastor and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer had words for the kind of “truth” that Trump and his supporters are proclaiming. He called it Satanic Truth. Bonhoeffer wrote of it, “It’s essence is that under the semblance of truth it denies everything that is real. It lives upon the hatred of the real and the world that which is created and loved by God. It pretends to be executing the judgment of God…”
Trump’s overwhelming message was that he and he alone could save the country, there was no reference to how the constitutional system of our nation’s government is to work; the checks and balances of the executive branch working with the legislature to pass laws, and the courts to ensure that those laws are enforced fairly, but also to make sure that they are constitutional. Trump’s words show a contempt for that system of government, a system which is not perfect, but which regardless of its flaws is still the last best hope for enlightened civil government, of the people, by the people, and for the people on the face of the earth.
While watching the Trump speech, and and his claim that he alone can make us safe, I was reminded of these words of Abraham Lincoln wh9o sounded a warning about the real defense against tyranny, that is the love of liberty and the preservation of its spirit, for all people, in all lands.
“These [the armed forces] are not our reliance against a resumption of tyranny in our fair land. All of them may be turned against our liberties, without making us stronger or weaker for the struggle. Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in our bosoms. Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, every where…. Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage, and you are preparing your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of those around you, you have lost the genius of your own independence, and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises.”
I was frightened last night, not by Trump’s distortion of reality in his dystopian and apocalyptic picture of the United States, I have much more faith and hope in our country and its resiliency than fear mongers like Trump and scare out of me. Instead I was frightened by the fact that a man like him has now captured a major American political party, whose most loyal “Christian” adherents are ready to overthrow our republic and remake it as a dictatorship, and in which all opponents are to be silenced or swept off the streets.
The convention was like watching Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will without her artistry or the Hitlerian charm.
Last night was nice, I took a break and watched the MLB All Star Game. Baseball has always been a big part of my life but recently I have been so busy that I have been scarcely doing more than checking the box scores. But then there is nothing wrong with that, as Fox Mulder told Dana Scully in the X-Files episode The Unnatural when Scully told him that she couldn’t believe that he had been reading about baseball: “Reading the box scores, Scully. You’d like it. It’s like the Pythogorean Theorem for jocks. It distills all the chaos and action of any game in the history of all of baseball games into one tiny, perfect, rectangular sequence of numbers. I can look at this box and I can recreate exactly what happened on some sunny summer day back in 1947. It’s like the numbers talk to be, the comfort me. They tell me that even though lots of things change some things remain the same….”
Baseball has always been a part of my life, I have recounted that many times on this site. It is something that has grounded me throughout life ever since I could remember, and like it does the fictional Fox Mulder, baseball reminds me that in an era of massive change that some things, some really good things, remain the same, and it is reassuring as Sharon Olds wrote, “Baseball is reassuring. It makes me feel as if the world is not going to blow up.”
I know that some people find baseball boring, it isn’t fast enough, or violent enough for their taste. It’s not played on a standard sized gridiron or court, it’s not bound by the same rules of space and time as other sports. Theoretically a baseball game could last for eternity, just as the foul lines that angle out from home plate theoretically exetend to infinity, while any statistic in the game can be plotted to the most accurate decimal. It is a curious blend of sport, life, mathematics, philosophy, metaphysics, and faith, and it is a part of who we are as Americans. It is woven in to the fabric of the country, soldiers in Blue and Gray broke up the monotony of camp life during the Civil War, it helped people get through world wars and the Great Depression, and when Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier it signaled the beginning of the end for Jim Crow. Kids played it in farm fields, on sandlots, and in big city neighborhoods with makeshift balls, sticks and whatever they could use as gloves. There were times when it captivated the nation even when cities were burning and wars were raging. There is something magical about a pennant race, a perfect game, the crack of a bat and a ball that travels into the center field seats.
On a visit to Capital Hill during a contentious legislative session, the legendary Negro League player and manager stopped to talk about what it would be like if instead of preaching virulent hatred and division, the television was showing the great catch made by Willie Mays in the 1954 World Series. O’Neil grew up in the Jim Crow era, in segreation, and played his best ball when he was not allowed to play in the Major Leagues, or even enter certain restaurants, movie theaters, hotels, or public rest rooms simply because he was black. But he never became bitter, and he never stopped working for full equality nor continued to work for peace, he told the people watching a television which had the news on: “If Willie Mays was up there, people would stop making laws. They would stop running. They would stop arguing about big things, little things. No Democrat or Republican, no black or white, no North or South. Everybody just stop, watch the TV, watch Willie Mays make that catch. That’s baseball man.”
Me with California Angels Manager Lefty Phillips in 1970
When I watch the All Star Game I am reminded for playing catch with my dad, playing in little league and going to ball games to see my heroes play in those, lush, green, and beautiful diamonds, well except for the Astro Turf ones. We can thank whatever deity convinced baseball executive to go back to grass that most of those are gone. In the movie Field of Dreams, James Earl Jones, playing the reclusive writer Terrence Mann, modeled on J.D. Salinger said to Ray Kinsella, a character played by Kevin Costner, “The one constant through all the years has been baseball. America has been rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It’s been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past. It reminds us of all that was once good, and what could be again.”
Well last night the American League beat the National League 4-2. Zach Britton, the closer for the Baltimore Orioles who I got to know a bit when he pitched in Norfolk got the save. My favorite teams, the San Francisco Giants and the Orioles lead their divisions going into the second half of the season. It was, despite all the chaos, violence, political division, and uncertainty in the world, a perfect misdsummer night.
Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of my ordination to the Priesthood. July 7th 1996, it really is hard to believe that it has been that long, and this year it kind of snuck up on me. I had pretty much forgotten until I noticed an old friend from Camp LeJeune was wishing me well on it. If you are reading this Ray, thank you.
Since Being ordained I have served in a lot of places as an Army and now Navy Chaplain, and I have served some of the most wonderful people ever, and in turn they have done more for me than I can ever imagine or repay. One of the things that a lot of people don’t understand is that the true joy in the priestly ministry is people, all kinds of people, regardless of who they are or what they believe.
Over the years I have come to value that more than anything else. For me this is not about any kind of ecclesiastical power or desire for advancement. I do not desire to be a bishop, nor for that matter be in charge of anything. I prefer just to serve and care as I can, be with real people, and try as I might to show people God’s love by being real and caring for them. Now that doesn’t mean that I always do it well, I can be so stupid and insensitive sometimes, even when I am not trying to be. Judy tells me that it is because the male hormone causes brain damage. I won’t argue.
Over the past twenty years I’ve have times of extreme faith, actually bordering on pious certitude bordering on arrogance. But I have also had doubts, very real doubts. In fact for almost two years after my tour in Iraq I can honestly say that at best I was an agnostic just praying that God existed. Eventually faith returned, and it has to be called faith, because it is not based on how much I think I know, but how little I do know. St. Anselm of Canterbury, the great Scholastic theologian described his task as “faith seeking understanding.” I used to think that way, but I don’t think that understanding the great mystery that is God is really possible, and that’s not a bad thing. I have faith in Jesus the Christ, I believe, and as one of the men Jesus encounters exclaimed, “I believe, help my unbelief.”
I guess that is all part of the journey. When I look back at all of my time as a priest was my high point, it was my time in Iraq. In the midst of all chaos that I felt closest to God, even when I was struggling. As T.E. Lawrence wrote, “We were fond together because of the sweep of open places, the taste of the wide winds, the sunlight, and the hopes in which we worked. The morning freshness of the world-to-be intoxicated us. We were wrought up with ideas inexpressible and vaporous, but to be fought for…” It was the richest time of my life, but also the most disappointing, personally and professionally. I found like Lawrence, that most people really don’t care about the Iraqis, and that most of my fellow clergy really didn’t care about me. No wonder Lawrence said, “the fringes of their deserts were strewn with broken faiths.”
But all of that aside, despite everything, I have rediscovered faith, life, and joy in ministry. So at twenty years I am good, and hopefully I’ve got at last twenty more good years to serve God and the people of God, wherever they are and no matter what their faith or lack of faith is, and interestingly enough my idea of ministry has broadened. So I don’t think that the form of my future ministry will be in the traditional parish setting. That too is okay as I am still fond of the sweep of open places, and the ideas, often inexpressible and vaporous are still there to be fought for.
So until tomorrow, have a great day, and as the wonderful and grace filled conclusion off the rite of penance says, “pray for me a sinner.”
Yesterday I had the chance to speak at the Staff College’s LGBT Pride ceremony. I asked to speak because I felt it was important for people to get a historical and personal account from a heterosexual who has served continuously since 1981. I have recounted my story of how as a white, heterosexual, Christian, military officer and chaplain my journey to support the rights of LGBTQ people.
Though I have written about this subject many times, today was the first time that I spoke in front of peers and colleagues. I was able to recount how things have changed since I entered the army in 1981. That was a time when it was easy to demean and even persecute LGBTQ people. The amount of anti-gay prejudice then was pervasive and so normal that it didn’t even seem wrong. Likewise, it was not permitted for Gays to serve in the military, and even if they were exemplary soldiers, sailors, Marines, or airman even an unprovable allegation by someone was enough to ensure that they were punished and discharged from the military under other than honorable conditions.
After I was commissioned and sent to Germany to serve in a Medical company, I had soldiers in my platoon who were either Gay or Lesbian. They were exceptionally discreet and were some of the best soldiers in the company. These men and women were exceptional, they volunteered for duties beyond what was needed, and when others fell down on the job, the stepped in, doing extra work and taking field assignments. They were solid, dependable, and always ready to do more that required to get the mission done. At that moment I realized that Gays and Lesbians should be allowed to serve.
When I became the company commander dealing far too many other real disciplinary issues ranging from sexual assault, drug use, robbery, vandalism, DUI, and other assorted issues, I realized that it would be stupid to punish some of my best soldiers, and to create a lot more work for me, so I began my own policy of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell over seven years before that policy went into effect.
My next assignment was at the Academy of Health Sciences at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. There I served as the Adjutant for the Academy Brigade. I was a newly promoted Captain and recent graduate of the army’s Military Personnel Officer course. It was about that time that HIV and AIDS became a national concern, and military physicians and researchers, realizing that this was a threat to military health and readiness were in the forefront of the efforts to find out about this disease. Likewise, the military needed personnel policies that would allow servicemen and women infect with HIV to be able to continue their service.
As a result, being that I was the junior medical personnel officer present, and senior officers wanted nothing to do with HIV or those infected I was assigned to work with Department of the Army personnel on developing personnel policies for those infected, and to be the point of contact for every soldier in our command who had tested positive for HIV. Those experiences with men infected with HIV gave me a compassion for their suffering, and made me question things that many of my Christian friends said about Gays. Instead of people to be scorned and consigned to hell, I realized that they were deserving of empathy and compassion. After I left active duty and went to seminary and became a chaplain I did a pastoral care residency at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, Texas, where I was immersed in the life and death struggles of men and women dying of AIDS related infections and cancers. I saw men who were dying who were treated shamefully by their “Christian” family members and had their partners forbidden to be with them in their dying hours. At the same time I saw other Christian families care for and love the partners of their dying sons.
I was in the National Guard when the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy went into effect. It was a step in the right direction, but not enough. I knew Gays and Lesbians who served, but still lived in fear that something might lead to their removal from the service for simply being Gay. I remember one of my friends, now retired, who spent the first 18 years of her career in fear and on more than one occasion during the DADT era being investigated by her command due to allegations made against her. I cannot imagine what that would be like.
Since returning to active duty in the navy in 1999 I have served with sailors and Marines, officers and enlisted who were Gay, Lesbian, or Bisexual. Most were exemplary Sailors and Marines. Some are still serving, but now after the repeal of DADT are able to do so openly. Likewise, with ruling in favor of Marriage Equality in the Obergfell v. Hodges case, these men and women can now marry, and their spouses are considered military spouses.
I a proud to serve alongside these men and women, people who swear the same oath that I have to support and defend the Constitution of the United Staates, and our nation in a time of war when under one percent of the American population serves in the military. They are part of my military family, my brothers and sisters who go into harm’s way to defend our way of life.
So yesterday I was proud to speak out, not just giving my story in a nutshell, but recounting examples from history and connecting the most important thing for me; that being the radical proposition that is the heart of the Declaration of Independence, “we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. – That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men…”
For me that is the most important thing, and it is something that I am always reminded of when I visit Gettysburg and read Abraham Lincoln’s univeralization of those rights in his Gettysburg Address. In that short speech, Lincoln noted that our founders created a new nation, “conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Lincoln’s words were as revolutionary, and perhaps even more than those contained in the Declaration of Independence, because he was now fighting a war against fellow Americans who had seceded from the Union based on the proposition that blacks were not citizens, and for that matter were less human than whites, something specified in the Confederate Constitution and declared in each declaration of secession voted on by the states that made up the Confederacy.
The truth that all men are created equal and that this nation is dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal is the basis of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, the 19th Amendment, the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, as well as the decision to repeal DADT and the recent Supreme Court Rulings which gave LGBTQ people the right to marry. For me, this is the extension of Liberty, and finally I was able to speak publicly to affirm that I stand by my LGBTQ friends, realizing, like Lincoln, that this is still an “unfinished work” and I dedicate myself to continue to stand alongside them in an era where many still would attempt to restrict those rights, or even kill them simply because of who they are.
Because of this I will continue to speak out and right in support of my LGBTQ brothers and sisters who serve our country, as well as all people.
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