“America Will Be Great When…” July 2, 2017
Community Christian Church of Springfield, MO
Roger Ray, pastor
(This sermon is accompanied by a Power Point presentation that cannot be show in this platform. I suggest that you watch the video)
Aristotle’s Politics,
Book III, Chapter 8
The real difference
between democracy and oligarchy is between poverty and wealth. Whenever the
rulers, whether they be a minority or a majority, owe their power to wealth,
that is an oligarchy. Whenever the poor rule, that is a democracy. Usually,
where the rulers hold power by wealth, they are few, but where the poor rule,
they are many, because few men are rich but all are free.
Stephanie Ruhle, one of MSNBC’s
news hosts, fines guests on her show $2 every time they say the word
“unprecedented.”
In the moment by moment
coverage of Donald Trump’s gaffs, tweets, lies, and decisions that have turned
the office of the President into a marketing platform for Trump family brands,
hotels, and golf courses, words like “shocking,” “unprecedented,” “incomprehensible,”
and even “crazy,” have come up too often. Stephanie just got to a point where
it didn’t make any sense to keep saying “unprecedented” every single day when
there has, in fact, been a precedent set now…. A precedent for low-brow,
greedy, misogynist, xenophobic, and dangerously unhinged person who is
currently occupying the oval office.
With this week’s petty and
embarrassing tweet attacking Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski,
the outrage has become less
divided along party lines as both Republicans and Democrats are just sick of
the way that Trump is daily disgracing the office of the President and eroding
America’s place in the world.
This week the New York Times
printed a full page account of Trump’s public lies since he took office in
January.
I tried to reprint the list on
the cover and back of your bulletin today but even using the smallest print
choice available, I couldn’t even get half way through April.
I love Stephanie, but this
level of tyrannical dishonesty is, in a word, unprecedented!
On this Independence Day
weekend, it is inescapable that along with our celebrations replete with
fireworks, cookouts, and time spent with family and friends, we must also
acknowledge that our nation is in big trouble and because we are the only
remaining world super power and our economy is, by and large, the economic
engine of the world, when we have a cold the world gets the flu.
A very wonderful, kind, and
intelligent woman in our congregation, Holly Ketchum, turned her concern for
what was happening in our country into a meaningful response by writing a book
for children.
Donald Trump had campaigned
last year under the banner of “Make America Great Again,” but the sub-text to
his speeches included fear mongering of immigrants and illegal aliens, derision
of the women, the handicapped, and often of other races and religions.
Trump blew all of the
dog-whistles for prejudice, implying that greatness would be restored to our
nation by, and I don’t think it is a stretch to sum it up this way, by putting
rich, white, men back in charge of the world.
Holly’s children’s book claimed
the larger theme, titling her book, “America Will Be Great,” and on a dozen
beautifully illustrated topic pages,
talked about our nation’s greatness in terms of unity, of caring for the earth
and for each other. She addresses delicately and lovingly issues related to
war, poverty, racism, religious prejudice, access to health care, housing, and
education, as well as mental health and care for the disabled.
There is so much love and
kindness in Holly’s book that I’m not even sure that the most hardened,
right-wing, FoxNews consumer would see it as being controversial or
confrontational. And Holly is to be applauded for this spontaneous gift of
healing to the world.
This is the voice in which we
should speak to children, but I have not been able to shake the belief that
there needs to be an adult version of this book that speaks in a more “gloves
off” fashion to adults. With Holly’s permission to piggy back on her title, I
have started working on a new book with which I am collaborating with other
authors to talk seriously about what needs to happen to make America great.
The stakes are very high. In
Noam Chomsky’s most recent book, Requiem
for the American Dream,
he warns that we are in the
most dangerous moment of human history. Our very existence is threatened by the
dual challenges of the threat of nuclear war and destruction of the planet. Our
massive military budget is not only bankrupting our ability to accomplish other
important goals but the deployment of forces and hardware all over the globe is
like, to quote Bonnie Tyler’s 1980’s pop song, “we’re living in a powder keg
and giving off sparks.”
You don’t have to have a
Hollywood imagination to see several potential scenarios of conflicts with
nuclear armed, unstable states that could lead to a globally lethal nuclear
war. And it is no exaggeration to list the United States of America, the most nuclear-armed
nation, as being rather more unstable than ever before. John Kennedy managed to
thread the needle during the Cuban missile crisis and
prevented nuclear war fifty
years ago but is there anyone, Republican, Democrat, or Independent who
believes that if Donald Trump had been president on that day
that there would still be a
human civilization on earth?
We have been lucky for 50 years
of the nuclear age but a whole lot of luck involves having had educated,
experienced, and qualified people in charge of the nuclear football. That,
sadly, is no longer the case in America.
As to the environment, folks,
we are already passed the tipping point for massive sea level rises. I may be
able to safely retire in Florida someday. Maybe even my daughter could too. But
if she has children, by the time they reach retirement age,
most of Florida will be under
water, no matter what we do to stem the tide of global climate change. Horrible
things are going to happen over the next century. The only question is whether
we can arrest the speed and the degree of the damage.
Our current president seems
determined to race to the edge of the cliff of
environmental failure like
Thelma and Louise in the final frames of the movie that is American history.
But even if we can through
science and statesmanship avoid global destruction through war or environmental
collapse, our nation has a laundry list of ills, most of which are traceable to
the conflict between democracy and capitalism. Now, democracy, as a form of
government, and capitalism, as an economic system, can and often have, work
together with each strengthening the other. However, what we have seen in our
lifetimes is what Naomi Klein calls in her new book, No is Not
Enough, (p.
4) “It’s a naked corporate takeover, one many decades in the making.”
Capitalist interests are no longer simply trying to influence the government,
they have taken charge and are sitting in the seats of government power,
turning our democracy into an oligarchy just as Aristotle warned could happen
in his 2500 year old book on politics.
It is not the sanity and
concern for the welfare of the public that has prevented the United States from
joining the rest of the western world in offering universal health care to all
of our citizens, or from becoming one of the growing number of western
democracies that offer tuition-free higher education to their entire
population, it is the control of corporate profit-motivated over our
government.
We have 2.5 million people in
prison and more than 9 million on parole, many times more than any other nation
in the world per capita, not because we are more evil people and have a much
more dangerous criminal element but because our prison system is controlled by
for-profit interest that reduce the employment pool by creating virtual slave
labor camps, while funding jobs, construction, and supply contracts to
corporations. We have a million human beings living in cages for no rational
reason other than the transfer of wealth from the tax payers to corporations, a
moral travesty that should keep all of us awake at night though it never seems
to come to the front of our awareness until one of our own family members gets
sacrificed to the system.
Our nation is cursed with a
paucity of jobs that pay a living wage and our crumbling middle class is
sending economic shockwaves around the globe. Our low wages pour gasoline on
the chronic fires of poverty everywhere which
combines our corporate exploitation
of poor nations with our militarily enforced stability and that, my friends, is
the cause of terrorism in Europe, Africa, America, the Middle East, and
Australia. Regional wars create the refugee crisis and strain the tolerance of
stable nations for welcoming strangers into their midst.
We are now facing an epidemic
of opioid overdose deaths, more than 60,000 per
year, more than gun deaths and
car fatalities combined, which is a symptom of the despair, poverty, and
hopelessness that is especially noticeable in the rural parts of our country.
The irony of Trump’s campaign
slogan, wanting to “make America great again,” presumes that there was a time
when America was uniquely great.
Well, there have been many
times when it has been great if you were rich, and usually it has been better
for white people than it has been for everyone else, and men have and do get
first pick of top careers with the highest salaries.
Trump’s vision of American
greatness is sort of like an episode of Andy of Mayberry, a tiny town in North
Carolina in the 1950’s where, as if by magic, there were only white people even
though the state is nearly half black, and they were all blissfully happy and
where there was only one alcoholic and he just provided comic relief.
We tend to romanticize our past
as if the failings of our nation are only a recent aberration. At every
baseball game, Americans stand and sing parts of our national anthem in the
lofty words of Francis Scott Key, inspired by our victory in battle
during the War of 1812. But we
only sing the first verse about old glory still waving over Ft. McHenry after a
night of bombardment.
The third verse boldly
proclaims that indentured servants and African slaves will go to their graves
before they can successfully revolt against their free-white masters:
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
We never have quite made it to
that goal of being the shining city on the hill, the truly great society that
our patriotic songs and movies portray.
Though America has been a
beacon of freedom and opportunity for hundreds of millions of people through
our brief history, we have never achieved the greatness that we are capable of.
Through the ingenuity of science we could, if we could harness the united will
of our diverse nation, bring an end to poverty, open the doors of our
universities, and transform our military might into a renewable energy rescue
mission to save the planet, making the part that remains above sea level, safe
for human habitation. We could care for our sick, give equal wages to men and
women, pay everyone a living wage, and reduce our imprisoned population to a
fraction of what it is now. Many of these ideals wouldn’t even be hard to
accomplish if we could swing the pendulum of power from capitalism to
democracy, to shift from creating a super-rich ruling class to creating a
civilized world.
All governments rule by the
consent of the governed. We have a long history of having our consent
manipulated out of us through fear and propaganda so that we consented to
slavery, we have consented to unjust wars, economic and racial segregation,
exploitation of the poor, and gender and sexual oppression. Well, let me just
say this: that government doesn’t get my consent anymore.
I’m not giving my consent to
any government that doesn’t promote liberty and justice for all. I have not
seen that government yet but I have faith that it is out there. Right now it
exists only in our hearts and in our imaginations but together we can make
America great and because it is a possibility, we really must do it.
