Nov.
6, 2016 Community Christian Church of
Springfield, MO
Roger
Ray, pastor “The Face of the Modern
Revolutionary”
The 2006 Wachowski brothers film, V for
Vendetta, like many sci-fi movies, is set in a dystopian future in which the
British government has managed to take totalitarian control of the population,
keeping all opposition in check in part through indiscriminate violence but
largely by just feeding the population on a steady diet of propaganda. The very
clever superhero turned anti-establishment anarchist seeks to break the power
of the government and restore self-determination of the population.
V, as you saw in the brief clip from the movie,
is disguised in a Guy Fawkes mask, and, not to give the movie away, but he does
succeed where the original Guy Fawkes failed 400 years ago, in blowing up the
Parliament building.
Though inspiring in the sense of encouraging
people to see through media propaganda and to reject the excesses of
government, the film is very violent and entirely preposterous. Still, the mask
has become a favorite trademark of libertarians and protestors. It was seen in
the protests of the Arab Spring in 2011 and was prominent in the Occupy Wall
Street movement later that year.
We have since seen it used in videos released by
the famous hacker group, Anonymous, which has sought to disrupt governments,
news media, and even the Church of Scientology and the Westboro Baptist Church.
They are also associated with the theft of some
materials later exposed by Wikileaks.
Wikileaks has been back in the news in the build
up to this Tuesday’s presidential election as emails pertaining to Hillary
Clinton and the Democratic Party have evidently been hacked by the Russian
government, leaked through Julian Assange’s Wikileaks, and then used by our own
FBI in partnership with the Trump campaign…. It has been a weird fall in the
world of election politics.
In the movie, the British government calls V a
terrorist, the propaganda laden media calls him a coward, and the secret police
are seen putting a black bag over people’s heads who dare to question the
government’s authority and those people disappear to be interrogated, tortured
and killed.
In real life, our most noted whistleblowers of
recent years have been Edward Snowden, who worked for the US government in
secret and evidently illegal data mining until he leaked information about the
program. And Chelsea Manning, the military whistleblower who revealed
classified information about American war crimes. And Julian Assange, an
Austrailian, who runs Wikileaks.
Presently, Snowden is hiding in Russia, avoiding being black bagged by
our CIA. Manning is in prison. And Julian Assange has been virtually imprisoned
in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since August of 2012.
Snowden saw that the government was ignoring the
4th amendment, ignoring probable cause, ignoring the due process of
obtaining a warrant based on evidence and they were, instead, gathering what is
called “big data” on absolutely everyone in the nation.
Snowden grabbed electronic copies of that data,
headed for China and then began leaking the data to reporters to show that our
nation’s federal government had lost its way, was in the moral ditch, off the
rails.
John Kerry tells us that Snowden is a
traitor. He says that he has hurt our nation’s ability to conduct
intelligence gathering… that he has endangered operatives, shown terrorists our
play book and has aided America’s enemies.
Euphemistically, Kerry demands that Snowden come
and stand trial but then he also pronounces his guilt in the same
sentence. Now, to be fair, Snowden took a lot more data than he could have
looked at in a lifetime. He has, no doubt, leaked materials that he
should not have leaked. He has handed useful information about our
intelligence agencies, staff and procedures to the people who we really don’t
want to have that information.
But is he a villain or a whistleblower?
Which was the greater treason, elected officials ignoring the constitution and
invading the privacy of the citizens, or a citizen who exposed the massive
government abuse of authority?
And Secretary of State, John Kerry, thinks he
should stop hiding in Russia but even though Snowden is a young man with little
education and not much international spy savvy, he does know what our government
did to Private Chelsea Manning after he leaked documents to Wikileaks regarding
war crimes committed by American soldiers. Manning was locked into solitary
confinement, naked in a cold cell without bedding for a year before he was
sentenced to 35 years in prison.
We get bent out of shape about the torture of
captured enemy soldiers who are suspected of having information about future
terrorist attacks. Manning was tortured and he was one of us…. He was
tortured for revenge.
And John Kerry thinks that Snowden should come
back to the US and stand trial here…. When he already knows that the
constitution and the Bill of Rights mean nothing to this government when they
want to torture you in revenge for making them look bad…. And that is under the
administration of a liberal Democrat.
John Kerry is not calling on the people who lied
to the congress about Weapons of Mass Destruction, or aluminum centrifuge tubes
that were part of making a nuclear weapon, or the secret trafficking of refined
uranium… all of which led to more than 4000 American soldier’s needless deaths
and incalculable carnage in Iraq for the past 14 years and now, apparently,
into the foreseeable future.
Dick Cheney is appearing on talk shows defending
his record and George Bush is painting portraits of world leaders and his own
toes in the bathtub.
If Kerry wants to put someone on trial, why the
whistleblower and not the war criminals? Taxpayer employed guards escort
Bush wherever he wants to go…. Though you will note that he does not travel
abroad where most governments would arrest him and put him on trial for war
crimes…. He is free, rich and protected…. But Kerry wants Snowden in a cell
next to Manning.
I’m not saying that either Manning or Snowden
are innocent of all wrongdoing. Both of them broke oaths and leaked
materials that they had sworn to defend. I’m just saying that their
crimes look small in comparison to the crimes they were trying to reveal.
I will defer to my favorite historian, Howard
Zinn, who said it best:
“…you are saying our problem is civil
disobedience. That is not our problem.... Our problem is civil obedience. Our
problem is the numbers of people all over the world who have obeyed the
dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions
have been killed because of this obedience. …Our problem is that people are
obedient all over the world, in the face of poverty and starvation and
stupidity, and war and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while
the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are
running the country. That's our problem.”
There are people in the American government who
want to arrest Assange and bring him here to put him on trial for treason… such
is the imaginative reach of some of our Tea Party supported elected officials….
They are literally so stupid that they do not know that you can’t put an
Australian on trial for treason against the American government. You may
think that I am exaggerating but Senator Joe Liberberman said on Fox News that
he didn’t understand why the Justice Department had not charged him yet.
It was December 7, 2010…. Look it up. (http://www.nysun.com/editorials/wikileaks-and-treason/87163/)
He is not hiding in the Ecuadorian embassy because
of treason charges. We did what we normally do when we can’t find a real
reason for arresting someone. He has been charged with having unprotected
sex…. Not nearly as serious as the president’s own married Secret Service
agents having drunken sex with prostitutes while on duty…. No one mentioned
arresting and imprisoning those bad boys…
But Assange is hiding because he knows that if
he comes out this will not end as a simple civil matter…. He is in the cross
hairs of a government that has shown it has no problems with torturing people
for a long long time to get even with anyone who dares to defy their
monarchical authority. The media has long forgotten Private Manning who
will now spend his adult life in prison while those who committed the war crimes
of murdering civilians and the commanding officers to whom Manning reported the
incidents who hid them, have all escaped any prosecution or even being named in
the press.
So though Snowden clearly did our nation a great
service, he knows that if he showed his face in the USA that he would be
whisked away for years of torture, deprivations, and limitless imprisonment.
Assange has been both a truth teller and a stupid pawn in the distribution of
doctored Russian propaganda but after four years holed up in an embassy
building, who can blame him for wanting to poke Uncle Sam in the eye?
I cannot condone what he has done but I am
asking you to feel how complicated it is to know in the present moment who the
noble revolutionary is and who is really a terrorist, or who is guilty of
treason.
We should remember that Jesus was executed
legally by the state. Gandhi was repeatedly imprisoned and tortured. Martin
Luther King, Jr. was imprisoned and was the subject of FBI wiretappings and
there were secret microphones and cameras in his hotel rooms. A lone assassin
probably killed him but you have to know there were government plans to do the
same if the president had ever given the FBI permission.
During their lifetimes, people didn’t know if
King, Gandhi, or, for that matter, Jesus, were traitors, or terrorists, or
heroes. You have to carefully filter the propaganda of the media. You have to
learn to look for how the government serves its own ends first when they ignore
war crimes but prosecute whistleblowers. You have to be aware of the money
trail, knowing who profits from wars, who profits from destroying the
environment, and who profits from employing illegal immigrants.
The present moment situation that I have been
urging you to pay attention to is the battle between Energy Transfer Partners,
the multi-billion dollar corporation now building the 1100 mile long Dakota
Access pipeline, and the Sioux Indian tribe that is trying to stop them from
building the pipeline under the Missouri River.
Though thousands have gathered to protest the
construction, representing not just more than 100 Native American Tribes, but
also concerned citizens of all sorts, the media was virtually silent about it
for months.
A coalition of the corporations, the North
Dakota state government, and the media have said almost nothing and most of the
time when they have said something, it was an attempt at misinformation. There have been news reports that the
pipeline construction was ended when in fact they have brought in huge stadium
lights and construction goes on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, including
holidays.
There have been reports that President Obama put
a stop on construction of the section that goes under the Missouri River but
the truth is that he has simply asked the core of engineers to look for other
possible routes. Obama said that he
wanted to let the matter play out for a few more weeks…. And if you are
extremely naive, you might believe that he isn’t just waiting until after the
election this Tuesday.
And folks, here is a hard word. You know I
normally don’t wear religious vestments. I don’t like them. They are an attempt
at setting ministers apart from the rest of the world and I think that is, at
its root, a load of excrement. But I am wearing vestments today because I need
to talk about sin in the most clear and ecclesial way that I can.
The original route of the Dakota Access pipeline
had it going over the Missouri River at Bismarck, North Dakota. Bismarck is
about 50 miles north of the Standing Rock Sioux reservation.
It is a small city, a little smaller even than
Springfield and like Springfield, it is more than 90% white.
The residents of Bismarck objected to the
pipeline going over the river in their community because…. Wait for it,… they
were fearful that it might leak into their water source. Their objections got
the pipeline moved out of Bismarck onto the Sioux reservation. If you have a
hard time believing in white privilege, here is a good object lesson for you.
I don’t blame the residents of Bismarck
protesting the pipeline. I think the whole project is a bad idea. I think
taking more dirty oil out of the ground is stupid on the level of being nearly
suicidal. But for 50,000 white folks to say “no not here” and then to sit back
and watch the pipeline shoved down the throats of their brown neighbors…. You
know, the word “damn” was not originally a dirty word… it was a religious word,
a literal curse reserved for egregious sin.
There is a lot of guilt to go around in this
event. The Energy Transfer Corporation should not be building this pipeline.
The state of North Dakota should not be using their militarized police to
arrest journalists and Native Americans who are trying to protect the water and
responsibly report the news. But the
white folks who pushed this toxic mess out of their own neighborhood into the
poverty stricken Indian reservation south of town, let me say this to you: Damn you.
Now you may think that I am out of line. You may
think that I am going too far. And if you say that I am crazy, let me tell you,
you are not the first to say as much. But let me try this… there are about a
half a dozen retired and former pastors here in the room…. Assuming that we
have internet listeners in Bismarck… what would you like to say to the good white
folks of Bismarck?
And, as I said before, I really dislike the
division between clergy and laity so let me give everyone a chance, what would
you like to say to those who pushed this pipeline onto the reservation?
I’m coming up there next month with supplies for
those who plan to camp out over the winter. I’m no V, I’m not even a Manning,
Snowden, or Assange. I’m not going to tell you that I am not afraid of the attack
dogs you have loosed on protestors. I’m not going to tell you that I’m not
afraid of being tasered, or beaten with your police batons, or being caged in
an outdoor dog kennel like you have done to hundreds of Indian protestors… I’m
just telling you that it is worth it and I’m coming to do what the people of
Bismarck should already be doing. You can scare me but I have a passion that is
bigger than my fear and here is what you need to know. I am not alone.
