The Dangers of Incrementalism

The Dangers of Incrementalism (Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic)

October 30, 2022    Dr. Roger Ray

Click here to see the video

BY PAUL KAHN AND KIEL BRENNAN MARQUEZ - THE HILL  4-24-20

In ordinary times, politics trends toward incrementalism. In extraordinary times, however, incrementalism can be ineffective. The economy prior to the pandemic will not return. If we try to recreate it through gradual steps, we will fail financially and politically. Instead, we need to brace ourselves for the only realistic end point, which is full employment underwritten by the government. We must think imaginatively about what that might take and move there as quickly as possible before the economy turns worse.

 

A successful program to address climate change must be international. We will have to send an army of green workers overseas to assist others address our shared climate problem. Federal support should also flow to state and local governments. We should invest heavily in our schools and education to make up for the lost pandemic years. We have also learned we need to do a much better job of caring for our elderly and vulnerable populations. There is no other time to take up these tasks than right now.

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/494582-the-perils-of-incrementalism/

 

I’ve been single for a long time. In fact, I’ve been single ever since the mid 90’s when Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks pretended to be single and made meeting the perfect person to seem to be almost inevitable and easy. . . which, by the way, it is not. 

But I have noticed a certain sociological evolution in my decades of occasional soirees into the world of dating, especially using those dreaded internet dating profiles, as we have all changed the parameters of what sort of person we are looking for to cure our isolation and to watch one another grow old. 

 

People try to get their best foot forward, often by using 10- or 20-year-old photos of themselves from 50 or 60 pounds ago, to the implausible offerings I have seen women put in their self-description about how much they enjoy fishing and watching NASCAR. Which always struck me as being a bit desperate but at least I knew that they were not looking for me. 

 

But lately it seems that most profiles include things like, “If you voted for Trump, swipe left,” or “if you got the vaccine, you are not for me!” I used to mostly look for single women who had scuba diving pictures in their profile, but, at this age, I can stand a land lover a whole not more than I can tolerate someone who believes in conspiracy theories or who thinks that the 2020 election was stolen. I used to assess a first dates intelligence by checking to see if they read People Magazine or believed in astrology but now that IQ test is a lot easier to administer. You don’t usually have to ask how they voted in the last election; it usually comes out before the salads are brought to the table. 

 

Even though most of us participate in the social divide around politics and the pandemic, we still hate it. We don’t have as many friends as we used to have. Family gatherings are smaller than they used to be, and God forbid that distant relatives might be sitting in the family room together in the evening and decide to turn on the TV news. Having DNA in common is not enough to get me to quietly sit in the room with Fox News on. 

 

We are sick of the partisan divides in our government, and we wish that we could find it easier to make pleasant conversation with strangers about venial things without feeling a sudden need to run from the room like the building was on fire. Honestly, I was on a scuba boat in Honduras earlier this year with a dozen Americans and I was silently staring at the horizon wondering if I could swim to shore without drowning. You can only tolerate someone singing the praises of horse de-worming medication for so long.

 

But our divisions have become seriously toxic, undoubtably fueling the whole “work from home” movement as people just can’t stand the company of their co-workers anymore and most politicians are elected now, not because of their diplomacy skills or statesmanship, but because of their fanatical devotion to guns, conspiracy theories, and barely disguised fascism. 

 

How do we heal this great divide that makes so many people speculate about a looming Civil War, a war that is not so geographically identified as the north and the south were a hundred and fifty years ago, now the divide runs, not along a Mason Dixon line but it runs through neighborhoods, offices, churches and families. 

 

We all know that national unity doesn’t have to mean uniformity. We can disagree, we can find common ground, we can compromise. There are political movements like the Problem Solvers and No Labels that seek to rise above partisan rhetoric to find a way to genuinely put country before party and to return to actually governing rather than rejoicing in what you can stop the other party from doing. 

 

And folks, I know that there are times when a half a loaf is better than nothing. For example, it seems like a lot of the pandemic related relief efforts that were distributed in 2020 were always so much less than what was needed or what was proposed, but still, stimulus checks, child income tax credits, and PPP money resulted in a nearly 50% reduction of the number of children living in poverty in the United States between 2020 and 2021. 

 

It galls me that there are children who are hungry and homeless in the richest country in the world, the richest country in all of human history, but we cut that number nearly in half in a year and, hell yeah, I’ll take it! Could we do better? Of course we could, but this is one place where we really can’t rationally let the perfect become the enemy of the good. 

 

Getting a compromise that allows conservatives and liberals to work together to get much needed resources into the homes of impoverished children is something to crow about. But, and I have friends who really push the No Labels movement on me, but I keep asking them to tell me, “How will the No Labels politicians get us to universal health care? How will they close the income gap in America? Do they have a plan to reduce gun violence, and to reduce the burning of fossil fuels, because, if they don’t their bi-partisan ice cream socials just might not be enough to matter.

 

For example, we have seen the number of deaths from gun violence go way up during the pandemic. 

Now more than 40,000 Americans die every year from gunshot wounds, more than die from car accidents. Mass shootings regularly involved the use assault military style rifles and most domestic shootings, including suicides, use handguns. Both of these weapons are designed for shooting people. These are not hunting guns or even practical home defense guns. These are guns designed to shoot people and clearly, most developed nations have banned the private ownership of either one of these kinds of guns. 

 

This summer President Biden signed the first gun control legislation passed in more than 30 years. Did they outlaw assault rifles? Did they outlaw handguns? No, nothing even close. They didn’t limit the type or even the number of weapons private citizens can buy or even how much ammunition they can buy. They expanded background checks a little bit. They restricted certain domestic violence offenders from being able to buy a gun at a gun shop, although nothing would stop them from buying a gun at a gun show. We didn’t even limit the age at which a kid can buy a military style weapon. This wasn’t a half a loaf; this wasn’t even a slice of bread. This was a symbolic gesture that is not likely to reduce gun deaths by even 1%. Better than nothing, we have been told, but, seriously, is it? Is the gun lobby so strong that this is the best our over-paid congress and Senate can be expected to do?

In August, headlines jubilantly announced that legislation would finally allow Medicare, the largest purchaser of prescription drugs in the world, to negotiate for competitive pricing of medications that have been driving senior citizens into bankruptcy or forcing them to choose to just not buy lifesaving medications. But was it a “Massive victory” as the papers described? 

 

What could be more obvious than the fact that Medicare should have been able to negotiate for drug purchases all along? How much power do the pharmaceutical companies have anyway? Why was this so hard to implement? But even worse, look at how it is rolled out…. This “massive victory” doesn’t do anything for 4 years. It isn’t until 2026 that Medicare can begin to take bids and even then, it isn’t on all of the thousands of different meds Medicare pays for. In 2026, they can take bids on 10 medications. They can add 15 more to the list in 2027, and 15 more in 2028, and 20 more in 2029 . . . if there is not a change in who is holding the reins of power over the next 6 years that might see all of this gutted. The very best we can hope for is a list of 60 medications, seven years from now, that might be cheaper. And this passes for a “massive victory”? 

 

Vladimir Putin is crazy and power hungry and he has a nuclear arsenal but our government can stand up to him so much more than they can stand up to the pharmaceutical industry! Folks, do you realize that this one for-profit industry has more power than our whole government and all of America’s senior citizens whose very lives depend on proper medical care? I get that it was a fight to get even this little bit of progress passed by the Congress, but is this really a compromise? Is this good for America? Am I wrong to say that this is too little and that it is coming way too late? 

 

But there is nowhere that such a compromise is more telling than when it comes to the environment. We have known, for more than 50 years, that our burning of fossil fuels was negatively affecting the global climate. We have known for half of that time that if we don’t stop it, the planet will become largely uninhabitable by humans. 

 

It is as if we had set out to sea in a small wooden boat and one person had taken up the hobby of drilling holes in the bottom of the boat. Everyone could see that they were going to cause the boat to sink but oil and coal liked drilling holes in the bottom of the boat, and they didn’t want to stop. 

 

The Inflation Reduction Act, just passed in August, will invest about $360 billion in a move away from fossil fuels towards renewable energy. This will result in a 40% reduction in green house gas emissions over the next ten years. Which is to say, that coal and oil will have to drill 40% fewer holes in the bottom of the boat over the next decade. 

 

We know that we are killing the planet. We know how we are killing the planet. We not only know how to stop killing the planet, but we also know that renewable energy sources will be less expensive than burning coal and oil. But we are going to make this transition very slowly, because we are protecting the profits of the oil and coal industries. We know that we are killing the planet. We know how to fix the problem. We just aren’t going to do it because it would negatively affect the profits of the corporations that are drilling holes in the bottom of our boat. 

Yes, it is the first real climate legislation passed in 32 years. That’s at least half a loaf, right? But it won’t stop the total collapse of the world’s climate. This is not a compromise. This is a suicide pact. 

 

We want to end the partisan divide. We want Americans to work together for the common good. We religious people speak the language of reconciliation, community, harmony, forgiveness, and hope. We should be facilitating a reunion of the left and the right, the progressives and the conservatives, but that reconciliation needs to take place on higher ground than a place of certain death.

 

For years now I have been trying to get Café Press to use my idea for a t-shirt. I would like to share this observation with the world; as much as we want to get along, as much as we want peace, we have to realize that:

Peace without justice is just surrender. I feel like those groups that just want us to stop squabbling and to peacefully get along with those who don’t want to give healthcare to everyone, who don’t want to pay unskilled workers a living wage, who don’t want the children of the poor to get an education, I just feel that they are asking me to surrender, to give up my values, to place peace above compassion. And, guys, I’m not ready to surrender. I’m not a radical. I’m not an extremist. I can be a moderate . . . as long as we save the planet, get to universal healthcare, and bring an end to the ravages of poverty. I don’t care if your plan is capitalist, socialist, or something you read in People Magazine. Just be sure you have a plan, otherwise, you are the radical who is willing to kill off millions of people to maintain your profits and that, I submit, is just crazy. 

Transforming Contempt into Compassion

Transforming Contempt into Compassion

David Ketchum
October 23, 2022

Watch the video HERE

When Roger and I were working on the October sermon schedule, I peeked at the lectionary and saw the parable of the pharisee and tax collector assigned for this Sunday, and I thought, “Oh, that will be great!” It’s been a meaningful story to me throughout my life, and it would give me a chance to think aloud about how people have related to, and might relate to, the concept of sin. I might not have thought that one through all the way, because I definitely have a long and complicated history with this topic; and preparing this talk has been even more of a winding road than usual. We find the story in Luke 18: 

“[Jesus] also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other, for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.” (Luke 18:9-14, NRSVUE)

I realize that sermon planning is not a topic of great interest to the general public, but I would like to share this one instance of what I was guessing I would talk about today:

“I’d like to reflect on some of the harmful ways the concepts of sin, sinfulness, and sinners have been used to control and hurt people, and then explore whether these concepts can have any meaning for us now, as people committed to justice and peace. This is still taking shape in my mind, but my thinking is to look at this parable from the perspective of how enmeshed we are all in harmful and destructive systems. Can sin, in this context, help us understand our own complicity in the injustice around us in ways that help us move forward toward a healthy society? I don’t know, but I think it’s worth a conversation.” 

So I took that as my starting point. On a personal level, I began by reconnecting with my experiences growing up, and how it felt like the concept of sin was weaponized against those who were outside of the dominant culture, because of who they were, what they believed, or how they behaved. You might have heard my story, for example, of how our pastor took us kids aside and had us pass around square cut nails and a crown of thorns (from locust tree branches), letting us poke our fingers and hands while he solemnly described how each of us murdered Jesus. “Even if everyone else had been perfect, Jesus still would have had to die this horrible death because of your sins. You put Jesus on the cross.” It didn’t seem to make much of a difference to some of the kids, but it rather terrified me. I felt horrible for just being alive. As I grew up, anything I did that was outside of our religious community’s expectations could then be used to prove to me how sinful I was and how much I deserved to suffer for it.

        Like many of you, I have a whole collection of experiences and teachings like this.  So, it’s not surprising to me that research has demonstrated that “the belief in Hell has reliably negative effects on well-being,” or that “people with more malevolent views of God tend to report lower self-esteem, psychological coping and health resiliency.” Jesus’ parable points out the inverse can also happen. When you do all the things that you’ve been promised will reward you with divine approval, it’s easy to slip into an inflated view of yourself and contempt for others. This matches my own experiences, both as a child who lived through it and as someone who has spent thousands of hours with others processing their religious trauma. Part of the difficulty of coming to terms with these experiences is that, whether people meant to harm us or not, they were willing to use the impacts of that harm to influence or control us. This continues to happen in many religious institutions today, where members are still encouraged to stoke feelings of inadequacy and fear, because they believe that is the only way for them to understand how great God is, and how their sinfulness is evil and deserves terrible punishment. (I decided not to provide direct quotes, because I don’t want to give these messages a platform. But they were easy for me to find.) In all these ways, the harm remains an open wound. 

This is one of the reasons why I resonated so strongly with this parable. I saw in the tax collector that Jesus thought it was possible for someone to be at the edges of community and still have goodness in their heart. I didn’t relate to the tax collecting business, but there were plenty of other sinners in Jesus’ world that I did relate to, and he still sat down and had dinner with them. I didn’t have the same words for this as a teenager, but his openness to people who were willing to honestly wrestle with complicated social issues, including their place in those brutal cycles of oppression, was the reason I was most drawn to following Jesus. It was an important part of my own healing journey. 

Having understood this in a religious context, though, it also became easier to view it all around me, observing this dynamic in non-religious contexts. There might not be many people in your social circles who would brag about religious fasting or tithing 10% of all their income these days, but we have found plenty of other reasons to hold one another in contempt, or to get stuck in self-loathing. It might be hard to remember, but this was even an issue before social media, though social media has greased the wheels of contempt in a way that has made hating each other easier than ever. 

To cite just one example, a 2020 study, “Media of Contempt,” found that people who frequently used social media “expressed higher levels of Islamoprejudice and perceived higher normativity of anti-Muslim hate speech” than those who relied more on traditional mass media. 

To be clear, it is not just social media;  this fits the overall trends in our society, such as the continued rise of hate crimes (which increased about 30% in 2021) and the persistence of bullying (about 20% of 12-18 year olds are bullied). On the flip side of this hatred for others, the literature overflows with psychological studies and models for addressing self-hatred, self-loathing, self-disgust, and other ways we have discovered to have a very antagonistic relationship with our own bodies and minds.

        Both of these habits – contempt for others and self-loathing - turn out to be very unhelpful if we actually want to grow into being more healthy, as human beings or as a society. It is a self-perpetuating cycle. Unhealthy societies are more prone to produce contempt, and this kind of contempt makes it difficult to get momentum for lasting change. (If you’ve struggled at all with feelings of self-loathing and hatred, you know probably know what I’m talking about, especially when your self-criticism is reinforced by social messages everywhere you turn!) Jesus’ story is an invitation to break down some of these habits; after all, he “told this parable to some to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.” Jesus was intentionally putting his finger on something that can be tender to the touch, asking the question: what gives us permission to regard others (or ourselves) with contempt? 

This is question for practice and reflection. It’s wonderful that psychosocial research has been uncovering many aspects of this, but we must still work with those insights in a way that brings about change. It’s not enough to simply know. One such reflective tool comes from Thich Nhat Hanh, who taught there are three complexes when it comes to self-view. The first two are the easiest for most of us to recognize. Superiority assumes, and often drives us to prove, that we are better than others. Inferiority assumes, and often drives us to accept, that we are less worthy than others. These are tragic but familiar concepts.

        But he also taught that we can be caught in an equality complex, “I am as good as you are. I will prove it.” This isn’t a criticism of the value of equality, but a reflection on how we can get caught in comparisons. It springs from the delusion that we exist as separate, permanent selves. All three complexes exist in this misunderstanding. The solution to a superiority complex is not to cultivate an inferiority complex. The solution to an inferiority complex is not to cultivate a superiority complex. We are not trying to come to some right mixture of superiority and inferiority and call it equality. Thich Nhat Hanh was encouraging us to step outside of that paradigm entirely, to go beyond the notion of self and understand both how our attachment to self-views drives so much suffering and how our wellbeing and suffering is bound up together.

        This insight wasn’t hypothetical; it was born out of his own experience of real-life hatred, injustice, and violence. He had worked tirelessly to advocate for social change to avoid war in Vietnam, and then helped found a school and programming in social work to relieve suffering during the war. He was eventually forced into exile because both communists and nationalists viewed him and his teachings as a threat to their cause, because he expressed his convictions (recognizing the harm) and because he refused to demonize either side (recognizing their humanity). After the Vietnam War, from his exile in France, the work continued in support of refugees. He later said about this time that: 

 “We received hundreds of letters each week from the refugee camps in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines, hundreds each week. It was very painful to read them, but we had to be in contact. We tried our best to help, but the suffering was enormous, and sometimes we were discouraged. It is said that half the boat people fleeing Vietnam died in the ocean; only half arrived at the shores of Southeast Asia.” 

One of those letters described a young girl who died in this way; she had jumped into ocean in order to escape a pirate that had sexually assaulted her. Confronting that suffering, Thich Nhat Hanh meditated for a long time, and his poem, “Please Call Me by My True Names” was a result. It is an ode to interbeing, both its beauty and its terror, and the insight that our wellbeing cannot be separated, because none of us are separate. My hatred of you would undermine my own well-being; your hatred of me would undermine your well-being. In contrast, our goodwill and compassion benefit all beings. 

“Look deeply: every second I am arriving

to be a bud on a Spring branch,

to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings,

learning to sing in my new nest,

to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,

to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,

to fear and to hope.

“The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death

of all that is alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing

on the surface of the river.

And I am the bird
that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.”

In this understanding, he places the terror of the letter he read about the young girl, transforming it into his resolve to practice well, to be part of the transformation of our collective suffering, the healing of our collective trauma, the blooming of our collective Awakening:

“I am the twelve-year-old girl,

refugee on a small boat,

who throws herself into the ocean

after being raped by a sea pirate.

And I am the pirate,

my heart not yet capable

of seeing and loving. …

My joy is like Spring, so warm

it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth.
My pain is like a river of tears,

so vast it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,

so I can hear all my cries and my laughter at once,

so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,

so I can wake up,

and so the door of my heart

can be left open,

the door of compassion.” 

You don’t have to agree with this, but you can still reflect on it. Observe how the assumptions about how we relate to one another are related to contempt and conflict, how our unskillful ways of carrying these feelings fuel suffering. See if there is space in your heart for both the joy and the pain, for both the friend and the enemy, for both the grief and the compassion. See if the door of your heart “can be left open.”

        This takes us back to Jesus’ parable. He wasn’t saying that complicity is okay, that harming others is okay. His story points toward the value of honestly reflecting on how that harm arises in the context of all our needs and actions. When that harm includes our complicity, then recognizing it is a doorway to change. The Pharisee couldn’t step through that doorway; he couldn’t be in solidarity with the transformation his society needed, because he was so convinced of his own righteousness. But the tax collector was closer to that transformation - because he understood the pain and the need. 

It would be easy to fall into the same trap that Jesus’ parable aimed to expose. It’s simplistic to look at those you view as enemies and interpret them through the lens of the self-righteous Pharisee. It’s easy to think of your friends and allies through the lens of the tax collector. But this is only a trick of time. Jesus chose these personalities for his story because they turned the easy assumptions of the day upside down. It was easy to think of the tax collector with contempt because his role, and his complicity with a violent, occupying empire, was contemptuous. The tax collector was exactly the type of person that most listeners would not want to identify with. And that awareness, that criticism of the harm caused by the tax system, is important to understand and to act upon. It’s good for us to remember that criticism is not the same as contempt. Being open to criticism, and changing our minds and our habits when we are wrong, are both essential to our personal and social well-being. At the same time, we cannot use legitimate criticism to disguise or excuse contempt. Again, Jesus’ parable makes this point: the Pharisee’s contempt was an obstacle to his ability to be part of the change. The tax collector’s humility was the open door to transformation.

In terms of reflective or spiritual practice, it is better to avoid siding with one or the other archetypes in Jesus’ story. Our lives are complex and complicated, reflecting the complex and complicated world in which we live. So, we can reflect: when am I more like the Pharisee? When am I more like the tax collector? Can I observe where contempt has taken root in my heart? Can I observe how that contempt has become a barrier to well-being and to change? Can I loosen those knots and see what new possibilities open up? 

There are many places we can go with reflections like this. From deconstructing our privilege to healing our internalized oppression, there is a rich place of inner transformation that is available to us. Hopefully, we can work together to link this to our outer transformation, bringing about real and lasting change in our communities. And when we do, it will be a community where no one has to hate themselves or others in order to fit. It will be a community with room for us all, where every voice is heard and every need is met. To use Jesus’ words, in a society where we all care for ourselves and each other with this kind of humility, everyone can be exalted. 

Stepping Out of Line (Without Losing Heart)

Stepping Out of Line (Without Losing Heart)
David Ketchum
October 16, 2022

Watch the Video HERE

In one of Jesus’ parables, he begins by telling us about a judge “who neither feared God nor had respect for people.” It is not a very hopeful beginning and, sure enough, it doesn’t take long for us to learn that, in the same city, there was a widow who sought the protection of the Law. (J.B. Philips translated her cry as: “Please protect me from the man who is trying to ruin me.”) As we would expect, the judge refuses. That much all feels predictable. What else could happen? The decision is already made. And there isn’t much room for hope, because we already know what the judge is like. In the set up, this is sad, but unsurprising. So we listen a little longer: 

“In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my accuser.’ For a while he refused, but later he said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.’” (Luke 18, NRSVUE)

It’s the kind of story that can both amuse and haunt you. I can imagine the hearers chuckling at the image of the self-important judge being followed and harassed by the persistent widow, until he finally gives in to her demands. But after a little reflection, the story lingers, touching our own memories and unfulfilled hopes. We realize that this is a story of desperation, driving a woman to defy social conventions and expectations. What would cause a person to take such a risk? It’s likely that she was trying to secure her financial future after the death of her husband. Especially if there was not a written agreement, other family members could have made a claim on what was owed to her. Losing that claim would mean certain poverty, and probably starvation and death. 

        The Torah provides protections for just such situations. Rav Binyamin Zimmerman explained that the Torah singles out people who are particularly vulnerable, such as orphans and widows, explicitly because “their unfortunate circumstances” often leave them “unable to demand or defend their rights” -  

“The Torah prohibits afflicting them while simultaneously requiring that they receive preferential kindness.  The Torah doesn’t stop with a prohibition; it goes on to express the utter disdain that God has for those who violate it and the harshness which will be displayed against perpetrators of this conduct.  This message is clear: not only is it forbidden, but it will not be tolerated in any manner.” 

This is not an understatement. In Exodus 22, for example, we read: 

“You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. You shall not abuse any widow or orphan.  If you do abuse them, when they cry out to me, I will surely heed their cry; my wrath will burn, and I will kill you with the sword, and your wives shall become widows and your children orphans.” (NRSVUE)

So, we have a tradition that explicitly sets out to protect vulnerable people. Moreover, it promises that, if they are not protected, their cries against injustice will be heard and divine wrath will find the abusers. The threat is stark: if you abuse the orphan and the widow, then you’re inviting your own death. Your own children and wives will become orphans and widows. To abandon and abuse the vulnerable was to abandon and abuse the covenant, and to make the community itself vulnerable to the violence of powerful enemies and empires, killed with the sword.

Jesus’ story holds all these familiar elements, except that the judge is unjust. The judge can’t be motivated or persuaded by a fear of God (not even the threat of that burning wrath) or by a concern for humans (not even a vulnerable one). He’s a bad man, to be sure, but we know a situation like this requires more than just a single, greedy judge. The law was supposed to prevent just this kind of thing. It’s not easy to get people to go along with blatantly rejecting something central to their culture. A more subtle touch is required. In this case, you needed to rely on the hard work of scribal retainers who could help massage those troublesome laws into a more exploitable shape. As William Herzog describes it:

  “The task of scribal retainers was to recodify laws in such a way that they seemed to support justice while actually protecting and expanding the prerogatives of the ruling elites. In other words, law codes were part of the cover story, the pursuit of justice, that masked the real story, the extension of power and control.”

The setting of Jesus’ story, then, didn’t happen by accident. The kind of injustice the widow experienced was by design. That a judge could come to power who didn’t care about justice or compassion was by design. That someone was ready and willing to expose a human being to poverty, in order to expand their wealth or extend their power was by design. And that was the heart of the injustice: someone was willing to use the widow’s vulnerable position as an opportunity for their own gain, and the judge was inclined to let them get away with it. There is some probability that this was also how the judge made his own living, taking a cut when those with more power used the court to rob the vulnerable. The ideals of justice are turned on their head; instead of protecting the marginalized, the system is used to further exploit them. 

The widow faces an impossible dilemma. The judge has such a reputation that a quiet appeal to either the Torah or their common humanity is likely to fail. But to give up on her claim is likely the same as giving up on life, cast aside into a desperate economic situation. So, she decided to go public. She wouldn’t leave the judge alone. Herzog points out that her persistence is also in her focus. She doesn’t denounce him, and she doesn’t try to appeal to either his honor or compassion. Instead, she is unrelenting in her demand for justice. Turning the tables on a system that wore down the vulnerable, she wears out the unjust judge: “later he said to himself, `Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out … .'" 

It’s a situation we can recognize, from the protestor marching in the streets to the whistleblower handing over evidence. Unjust systems don’t usually celebrate their injustice. No, they like to keep the oppression hidden and often even publicly champion the ideals that they privately undermine. As Walter Wink expressed it: 

  “When anyone steps out of the system and tells the truth, lives the truth, that enables everyone else to peer behind the curtain, too. . . . Anyone who steps out of line therefore denies it in principle and threatens it in its entirety. . . . If the main pillar of the system is living a lie, then it is not surprising that the fundamental threat to it is living the truth.” 

It’s possible that the judge gave into the widow in a calculated move. The case could have become too risky, and the financial loss of siding with the widow cost less than what could have become a public outcry. Besides, giving in to her demands could then be used to prop up the court’s reputation for justice, providing the unjust judge better cover for future injustices. The story doesn’t include any heartfelt, happy anecdotes about how the judge, or the widow’s adversary, had a change of heart. There is no indication that the system has been changed. Doubtless, a similar situation would happen again soon enough. Doubtless, different strategies would need to be used in the future. But in at least this moment, the widow was heard, her needs were met, and there was a little more justice in the world. 

That’s a glimmer of hope for everyone who, like the widow, is pushing back against injustice. We know something of what it feels like to exist in a world where oppression is so commonplace that it is just normal. We know something of what it feels like to accommodate injustice by all the little necessities of everyday life, with a guilty wave of the hand – “I don’t like it, but this is just the way things are.” There are just so many things to protest, so many issues that are important and urgent, so many ways to become overwhelmed. 

        This, too, is part of the point. Luke prefaces the parable with his own explanation for the tale: Jesus shared this story in order to remind us “to pray always and not to lose heart.” Today, we might talk about activist burnout, compassion fatigue, climate anxiety, and racial equity fatigue. Across centuries and cultures, we can recognize one another. We know what it means to look honestly at all the urgent issues of the day and feel ourselves quiver under the weight. We know what it means to lose heart. 

        I thought a long time about all the connections this story has with both humanity’s long history of injustice and our current headlines. In the end, I decided to just let the parable stand as it is. It’s likely your heart has already made those connections. We can recognize a world where those in need are ignored by those in power, where those in power are unjust, and where the marginalized and oppressed must wear themselves out just to be heard. There is a feeling of justice being delayed; more than this, justice is delayed so long that justice-seekers lose heart and give up. 

        In Jesus’ story, faith is depicted as persistence in the face of that long delay. Readers and scholars have often concluded that the story was especially included to encourage the early church to persevere during times of persecution. Luke extends the story with a brief commentary, comparing an unjust judge with a just God, who promises that long delayed justice will be real, and very soon. Behind this is a confidence that the unjust judge is an aberration, the thing that doesn’t fit - that, as Martin Luther King, Jr., taught us, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” This is a matter of faith, though not a “believe this or else” kind of mental assent. Instead, it is a kind of confidence that what we are doing is worthwhile, even when the results seem far off. 

        If Jesus’ parable is meant to encourage us to “not lose heart,” it includes this reminder to recognize and celebrate the small moments. Was the judge or adversary transformed? No. Was the standard of protecting the vulnerable restored in the court? No. Did the public show up in solidarity with a fellow human being in need? No. There was not risk that this victory would be confused with the just, compassionate kingdom that Jesus’ followers were waiting for. But did a widow win her claim and avoid getting crushed under the economic and patriarchal violence of her city? Yes. And did her story help keep alive a vision that things could be different, and that those differences are worth working together to make into something real? Yes. 

        There are all sorts of way to lose heart, whatever name we give it.  In a chapter on “Non-Attachment to Outcome,” Donald Rothberg points out some of the ways that we may “shy away from committed action,” including: 

• “Losing sight of our deeper intentions”; 
• “Fear of acting authentically”;
• “Despair, burnout, and a sense of powerlessness”; and
• “‘Spiritual’ suspicions about committed action.” 

        If our compassion and wisdom are dependent on getting the perfect outcome, then they will inevitably fail. What is required is training our heart-minds to know and practice compassion and wisdom, even in the face of limited success, and even in failure. Because the less attached to outcomes we are, the freer we are to honestly understand and respond to our ever-changing circumstances, and we are more able to relax into the compassion and wisdom that we’ve developed. This is also why we emphasize cultivating a reflective or spiritual practice, as individuals and in community, as a key part of working for social change. 

        With this in mind, it is useful to remember that even small practices can make a big difference. We are aiming for creating habits that strengthen the heart. For example, for decades now, every time I sit down to meditate, I set a simple intention: “In these next moments, may I be present with my experience with openness, kindness, and gratitude, so that wisdom may arise.” That simple aspiration soon worked itself into more and more moments of my life, so that now I catch myself resolving to be present with openness, kindness, and gratitude whenever I start a task or find myself in a difficult or stressful situation. 

        When we practice in this way, those qualities become a resource to us, even when conditions are not ideal, and even when the conditions would otherwise overwhelm us. To not lose heart, we must train the heart. 

From Coercion to Connection (Nonviolence and Hope)

From Coercion to Connection (Nonviolence and Hope) by David Ketchum October 9, 2022 Watch the Video HERE

Several times in the last months, I have been unexpectedly called upon to discuss my commitment to nonviolence. This used to be a regular occurrence, but it hadn’t happened in some time. Still, I wasn’t exactly caught off guard; it turns out that sharing my experiences and aspirations regarding nonviolence and non-harming are a bit like remembering how to ride a bike. What did surprise me was the realization of how I had become accustomed to not talking about nonviolence. A few weeks ago, I sat in a park with a good friend, someone who has shared similar convictions and experiences, and we reflected together on how our own relationship with nonviolence has grown and changed over the years, and what the role of nonviolence might be now, in a world that is both the same and different from the one we grew up embracing nonviolence. 

I grew up living in the tension between care and coercion, love and threat. I got those mixed messages all around me, from extended family to school to television, but especially my conservative religious community. Love was freely given, but the fear of that love being withdrawn hummed like fluorescent lights in the background. The threats were not empty, either. As I grew up, I learned that there were certain people that were expendable. When bad things happened to them, they deserved what they got. Violence against them was usually understandable, if not justified. And if we knew what was good for us, we would make sure we didn’t turn out like them – or we would end up like them. 

Growing up at the end of the Cold War added another layer to this, with a steady diet of cultural artifacts that reinforced the idea that the USA’s violence was always good, bringing freedom to all, while our enemies’ violence was always bad, trying to rob us of our freedom in a fit of jealous rage. This worked itself down to even stories of personal redemption, where I learned that violence can even heal. (NOTE: While researchers continue to investigate how media violence does (and does not) directly impact behavior, that’s a complicated issue and that is not what I am referring to here. Instead, I am referring to the ways that popular (or, increasingly, corporate-driven) culture both reflects and, in turn, shapes society. At the most obvious level, just think about advertising. It’s a multi-billion dollar industry, expected to reach $1 trillion by 2025, that operates on the premise that a consumer can be influenced to change their behavior - to buy or support something - based on how they respond to an ad. But a good ad must connect to the consumer in order to have that influence. So there is a feedback loop of reflecting and shaping society.) 

Violence as a Solution (Lessons from Die Hard)

        With that in mind, let’s go back in time to 1988.  The first R-rated movie I remember seeing in a theater was the eternally celebrated Die Hard, with its two redemption arcs. (Spoilers ahead!) The hero, John McClane, was flawed and relatable. He had trouble balancing his career and family life, a failure that was also the movie’s premise. John had traveled to California to try to make things better with his estranged wife, a successful businesswoman. And it worked! At the movie’s end, his marriage was saved – but not through the hard work of developing a healthy relationship. No, John McClane proved how much he loved his wife by single-handedly defeating the thieves-posing-as-terrorists in an exciting and dramatic exhibition of heroic violence. 

  The supporting storyline featured LAPD Sergeant Al Powell. He also found healing, but of a different kind of wound. He was a cop, like McClane. But while Al seemingly had a healthy family life, he had lost his capacity for lethal force. He had spent his career on desk duty because he had shot and killed a thirteen-year-old child after mistaking a toy gun for a real one. At the movie’s end, Al (and his masculinity) is also saved – but not through the hard work of healing trauma and perhaps even working for social change. No, Al Powell resolves the tragedy of killing a child and proves he is still a man by fatally shooting the last remaining terrorist, saving McClane’s life. 

That shooting carried another meaning, too: we can never rest, can never trust that things are okay, and must always be ready to act violently.  The man that Al shot, Karl, was presumably killed earlier in the movie. We had forgotten him, as had John McClane. The movie was wrapping up, and we were getting our happy endings. John and wife Holly had already emerged from the chaos, locked eyes with Al, and were making grateful introductions. The music swelled as we enjoyed this very human connection between people who endured something terrible. (This was also the moment when we knew John’s marriage was saved, because, after John introduced Holly by her maiden name, she corrected him, reclaiming her identity as Holly McClane and assuring the audience that all is right in the world.) This peace was interrupted by an FBI bureaucrat’s attempt to confront McClane on his actions and, as if to prove that such accountability is also a threat to our safety, Karl erupted from the building, pointing a gun at our heroes. That’s when Al saved John, their redemptions both complete. 

At least, these are the lessons I learned from Die Hard. I’m not asking you to agree or disagree that they exist in the movie, or with the points about life that they made. And I’m not trying to make any point about whether you should like or dislike the film, which remains incredibly popular and inspired a whole generation of kids to go around yelling “Yippie-ki-yay, m*f*er!” Instead, I mention these lessons because they formed part of the context for my own understanding of violence and nonviolence. Seeing that film helped me understand how I was expected to understand the world and the meaning and role of violence. Yet the more I experienced, the more unsatisfied I felt. And the more unsatisfied I felt, the more the world seemed to insist that violence and coercion were the answers, and that I better stop questioning the way things are and had to be. 

Opening Another Path

        A few years after I first watched Die Hard, that teen-aged version of myself came to something of a breaking point. I had lots of unresolved traumas, a deep pain that desperately wanted some place to go. I don’t know how I would have described it then, but I can try to put words now to the feelings I remember from that tumultuous time. The pain wanted to become something - something I could better understand and manage. The pain, by itself, was both inscrutable and overwhelming. I was afraid to look at it directly. For me, the pain wanted to become rage. And if it couldn’t become rage, it wanted to become despair. I was torn between those two poles. But I could sense that this becoming could hide the pain, but it could not heal it. My life could not be an action movie. I could not find answers in super-heroics or blazing guns, like John McClane. I could not silently set the pain aside by taking a desk job, like Al Powell. I would need to do something less exciting but more difficult. To heal, I needed to return to the pain and open to it. 

I’ve specifically chosen “open” instead of “accept,” although they are often used interchangeably. I agree that either is fine, but I personally prefer reflecting on openness rather than acceptance. For me, acceptance carries the connotation of resignation; not only is this how things are, this is how things must be. It carries a feeling of giving up, being passive, and standing aside while the world burns. But openness is active. The easier paths are those well-worn ruts of rage and despair. To open to the pain is to open a path, to be a trailblazer of my own wellbeing. To open is to tend to the heart; it is the most active response I can imagine. And my own healing opens new possibilities around me, too, which were not possible before. Openness is creativity and hope. What kind of possibilities could we open? What beautiful world might we create together, if we traded coercion for connection, threat for goodwill, and violence for generosity, kindness, and justice? 

Nurturing a Commitment

The first tools available to me were the religious ones hidden under the dominant teachings in my community. I found a deep connection with Jesus and the prophets, and I found my home among mystics and mendicants, especially in the Quaker and Franciscan traditions. After spending many years in community programming, especially related to family conflict and violence, I eventually spent time as a peace advisor through the Mennonite Central Committee. These religious roots were enriched by studies in the social sciences, community development, conflict transformation, and transformative justice. As a teen, I understood nonviolence as mainly relating to my own personal response to the world. Over time, I came to understand nonviolence as part of a greater movement, such as the one Riane Eisler has described as moving from domination to partnership. 

        Since 2005, I also increasingly relied on the teachings of the Buddha to open this path. Instead of being a basis for reward and punishment, practicing with the Five Precepts, developing virtue, is a foundation for finding well-being within ourselves and as a society. These precepts begin with a commitment to refrain from taking life, and the Buddha taught that “skillful virtues lead step-by-step” to Awakening, beginning with the gift of being free from remorse. He understood that, in harming others, we harm ourselves. And our willingness to use violence and coercion – through taking life, stealing, engaging in sexual misconduct, uttering harmful speech, and using intoxicants – undermines our wellbeing. The Buddha explained: 

 “That's the way it is! Those who engage in bodily misconduct, verbal misconduct, & mental misconduct are not dear to themselves. Even though they may say, 'We are dear to ourselves,' still they aren't dear to themselves. Why is that? Of their own accord, they act toward themselves as an enemy would act toward an enemy; thus they aren't dear to themselves. But those who engage in good bodily conduct, good verbal conduct, & good mental conduct are dear to themselves. … for happiness isn't easily gained by one who commits a wrong-doing.” 

        Nurturing this commitment is a practice; it is not easy to cultivate a commitment to not taking life, the aspiration to not harm yourself, others, or the earth, in a society that is convinced that violence is inevitable, if not virtuous. Commenting on the endless cycle of the powers-that-be calling on violence, such as war, as the answer, Thanissaro Bhikkhu recently taught that: 

“The only way to keep yourself from getting sucked into this pattern is to have strong principles against killing, principles you hold to no matter what. … That’s as clear-cut and absolute as you can get, and it’s clear-cut for a reason: Clear-cut rules are easy to remember even when your emotional level is high—and that’s precisely when you need them most.”

        This is key: nurturing nonviolence requires ongoing energy, resources, and effort. Those clear-cut rules act as guard rails, reminding us of our commitments and aspirations. They call us back when we make mistakes and encourage us to learn: why some strategies are helpful and others are not, when they are helpful, and how to adapt them to complex, changing circumstances. This isn’t a casual commitment, but a dedicated path. It is a difficult, but also joyful, path. My commitment to nonviolence has carried me through so many desperate situations, as I worked with others to open up new avenues free from violence and coercion. I have experienced many of the hypothetical situations people propose to prove that nonviolence is impractical and dangerous, and worked with others who have navigated some of the most impossible-sounding scenarios with their wisdom and compassion intact. While there are always risks, and nonviolence does not come with guarantees, the tools and skills have shown that they are up to the challenge of each moment, and worth giving a chance.  

“Where Your Treasure is …”

But we have never collectively succeeded in giving nonviolence that opportunity. The world has changed a lot in the decades since I watched Die Hard, but the lessons I heard then are still alive and well.  

You can see it in the share that military expenditures take up in the federal budget, a mountain of money over time and currently ~37% of the budget ($1.665 trillion).   

The Costs of War project at Brown University estimates that the post-9/11 wars alone carry an $8 trillion price tag. You can also see it in the rapid expansion of police budgets, which grew from $44 billion to $123 billion between 1977 and 2019. These increases did not translate into a feeling of safety, however, as civilians continued to hoard guns at record-breaking rates. 

Today, there are 120 guns for every 100 people in the USA, and manufacturers have not produced less than 6 million guns a year in the US since 2010, “peaking at 11 million in 2016.” 

         These patterns connect with the ongoing militarization of society. The National Priorities Project estimates that the USA “has spent $21 trillion on foreign and domestic militarization” since 9/11. They also point out where we have not invested our money and effort: 

• “$4.5 trillion could fully decarbonize the U.S. electric grid. 
• “$2.3 trillion could create 5 million jobs at $15 per hour with benefits and cost-of-living adjustments for 10 years.
• “$1.7 trillion could erase student debt. 
• “$449 billion could continue the extended Child Tax Credit for another 10 years. 
• “$200 billion could guarantee free preschool for every 3-and-4-year old for 10 years, and raise teacher pay. 
• “$25 billion could provide COVID vaccines for the populations of low-income countries.” 
  
  

        Those are decisions we have not made but could have done so, even while maintaining a large military.   (The USA continues to spend “more on defense than the next 9 countries combined,” as noted by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation.) This reflects our faith in coercion and violence as the most trustworthy solution, in contrast to other actions we could take. As Jesus observed, “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” 

        The world is complicated, and there are plenty of reasons to be afraid. I understand that our systems that rely on violence and coercion are not going anywhere any time soon, and that many people dismiss the possibility of nonviolence as impractical and even dangerous. But surely we can temper our investments in violence with investments in human and social wellbeing. John McClane and Al Powell are not healthy role models for healing marriages or PTSD. In the real world, we need to invest in healthcare, childcare, education, social infrastructure, and other policies and programs that reduce social and economic disparities, that heal trauma, and support healthy communities where we can be and feel safe. Violence is not the answer; violence is a symptom of our society’s disease, and our faith in violence has undermined our ability to create a society where we can thrive. Even if you believe that violence is sometimes necessary, or inevitable, we all benefit from moving as much as possible from harming to healing, and from coercion to connection. 

        One of the gifts of nonviolence is that we are allowed to learn and grow, to open to the pain and find healing and health. I hope we increasingly open to at least the possibility that we can learn better ways to parent, teach, practice religion, do business, organize society, and treat one another that rely less on violence and coercion, and more on equity and goodwill. What kind of possibilities could blossom? What beautiful world might we create together, if we traded coercion for connection, threat for goodwill, and violence for generosity, kindness, and justice? If we truly care about ourselves, we will dare to find out. 

“It’s not a conspiracy theory if it is true!”

“It’s not a conspiracy theory if it is true!”  Oct. 2, 2022      Dr.  Roger Ray  

click here to see the video

In general, the mainstream media all make certain basic assumptions, like the necessity of maintaining a welfare state for the rich. Within that framework, there's some room for differences of opinion, and it's entirely possible that the major media are toward the liberal end of that range. In fact, in a well-designed propaganda system, that's exactly where they should be. The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum—even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate. ~Noam Chomsky in How the World Works

Almost a month ago now, on September 8, Queen Elizabeth II passed away at the age of 96. Though her death has obviously been anticipated, and not only by her eldest son, Charles, for a few years, still, the actual event was, to a certain extent, newsworthy. But the media was anything but content to report on the passing of a very sweet lady who had already lived for nearly a century. They kept talking about it, 24 hours a day, day after day. 

The homage shown by the media could almost make you forget that America fought a bloody Revolutionary War to break free of the Empire and its monarchy. Broadcasters were grasping at straws for something else to say about the queen’s passing, drilling deep down into sordid personal details of the skeletons in the family closet and the sibling conflicts that go on among her grandchildren. 

They finally got down to speculating about what would become of her two corgis. Flags flew at half-mast all over Springfield from the day of her death until she was buried, nearly two weeks later. Was there nothing going on in the news during all of this time? Was talking about an admittedly nice lady who had lived her life in the public’s eye, albeit, in unspeakable wealth, but, still, keeping a stiff upper lip in all circumstances even though she did not actually have any governing power or responsibility. . . was this really news?  

It was no different 25 years ago when, in a single week, Princess Diana, Viktor Frankl, and Mother Teresa of Calcutta all died. Viktor Frankl, holocaust survivor and founder of logo therapy, was undoubtably the most consequential of the three, and Mother Teresa had certainly made a profound mark through her charity work, but Princess Diana took up all of the time in the media. Mother Teresa was mentioned, in passing, but I don’t recall a single news story about Frankl and only those of us who had been profoundly affected by his books spoke to one another in reverential respect about his death. 

 

Diana’s death in a tragic car crash was horrible. I am not being dismissive about that or Queen Elizabeth’s death, I’m just saying that a 24 hour news cycle should be able to tell us about the deaths of prominent, or at least famous people, and still find lots of time to keep us informed about the news. But, they don’t.

 

When TV and radio were in their infancy, the government realized that the airways, the frequencies for broadcasting, had to be regulated and that the airwaves belonged to the people and not to corporations. So they put laws in place that required a certain amount of air time to be devoted to informing the public. There was a “Fairness Doctrine” that required that an honest effort be made to represent both sides of controversial issues. In the 1980’s Ronald Regan had the Fairness Doctrine removed because it impeded him from using the media to spread lies and propaganda. I see no reason to sugar coat that fact. There have been some efforts at restoring the Fairness Doctrine’s values but they have failed in light of how profitable propaganda has become for Fox News and other completely irresponsible and dishonest news outlets. 

 

You might thing that the public would not tolerate an irresponsible use of the media to misinform and keep people in the dark about facts but you would be wrong. As Simone de Beauvoir, the French existentialist philosopher and sometimes girlfriend of Jean Paul Satre’ (who was not nearly as smart as de Beauvoir) said, “The oppressor would not be so strong if he did not have accomplices among the oppressed.” Sadly, people generally would rather be entertained than informed. 

 

And what passes for news in social media is even worse. I realize that FaceBook tends to feed you more of what you clicked on last, but I can’t be the only guy whose news feed has a lot more reports on scantily clad movie stars and models than it does on either the war in Ukraine or the current state of our melting polar ice caps. And while it may be more interesting to see Elizabeth Banks in a wet white shirt or Sommer Ray in a see-through black bodysuit, there has been no mention of some of the things I have brought up recently in sermons about current events, like the Supreme Court giving Arizona permission to execute a prisoner even after he was found innocent, or that we kept and tortured prisoners in Guantanamo Bay for 14 years after we knew that they were innocent victims of sloppy arrests made in Afghanistan. Why do you get more news from a 20-minute sermon once a week than you get in a week’s worth of 24/7 news reporting?

 

I am not alleging some grand “mind control” conspiracy behind the major news networks. But the networks are all owned by corporations that are doing their best to make a profit and so the difference between Fox, MSNBC, or CNN and FaceBook is just a matter of their audience evaluations. There are things they will tell you to keep you entertained, and there are things they will not tell you that might affect their bottom line. 

 

I have a great deal of personal experience with this. For more than 20 years I had a column in our local city newspaper and at least once a year, I got called in for a “come to Jesus” meeting with the publisher and the editor. I was not on their paid staff. I wrote to raise important issues to inform my readers. They were paid and they kept their jobs by selling advertising and subscriptions. 

 

We had entirely different motivations. Gannet moves editors and publishers around pretty often and eventually I had to point out to each one of them that my column was the most read column in their paper, usually ten to twenty times as many readers as any of their full-time staff writers. Of course, I am also sure that they got more complaints from advertisers about me than they did any other writer.

One memorable conflict was when they had asked me to more columns on matters of local interest. I put a lot of time and energy into a piece about how the board members of our largest regional hospital did millions of dollars of business with the hospital every year on contracts that were never let out for competitive bids. 

 

While those board members who were becoming nasty rich off of their hospital contracts returned the favor by giving the administrator bonuses that also added up into the millions of dollars. They could do this by charging patients exorbitant prices and even sending many into bankruptcy, losing their homes and retirement savings to pay inflated medical bills. That’s good investigative reporting, right?

 

Still, I thought my red-faced editor was going to come across the board room table and choke me. They didn’t publish my article, even though I had copies of the IRS 990 non-profit documents from the hospital to prove what I said was true. But, the hospitals provided about 25% of the advertising dollars paid to the newspaper and the newspaper knew that they didn’t take out that many ads just to get new patients. After all, who among us goes for cancer surgery because we saw an ad in the paper for a local oncology group? The hospitals bought ads to prevent any negative coverage in the media. And it works.

 

The universities are the largest employers in the city, the hospitals are second, and even though I served on boards where I saw a lot of the really corrupt dealings of both, I never succeeded in getting an article that was critical of either into print. I could write about national and international events without any problems, but there are sacred cows here in town that I was not allowed to touch. 

I did get some very angry phone calls from the Polish embassy after my piece on Nazi sympathizers in Poland but let’s not rehash that now. 

The point is, as Noam Chomsky says so clearly in his book, How the World Works, the media will cover certain allowed topics in a very narrow way, but they allow for vigorous debate within that narrow corridor which gives the impression that the public is really being invited to speak to matters of great importance, while the most important issues are never illuminated. I have often observed that MSNBC’s Moring Joe program often invites some of the world’s most intelligent people onto their set every morning and then they don’t let them talk. Strict guidelines are given to the staff and the guests about what they can and what they cannot say. Just ask some of the people they have fired over the past decade. 

 

While we are treated to days of watching lines of slow moving cars carrying the late monarch’s casket, did you know only about 10 corporations own nearly 80% of the food production in our country? That only 15 cents on the dollar spent in the grocery store goes to the people who grow our food? That Pepsi doesn’t just make a soft drink, but they also own almost all of the chips and dips you will consume with it? You don’t read newspaper articles about food additives, preservatives, fillers, or the fact that one of the main ingredients in Taco Bell meat is actually sand, (Taco Bell calls it a “binder” but it is sand) but you do know which members of the royal family like little girls and which ones carry the deepest racial prejudices.

 

Reporting on Prince Andrew’s sex crimes seems like bold reporting. It seems to have a certain amount of courage even though it is just salacious and attention getting. 

 

They will not tell you why the number of beds for homeless people in this city has been cut by about 80% over the past decade and even I don’t know why; and I have been trying to find out for years. Somehow, city leaders have been able to reduce our homeless services to a tiny symbol of what we used to do and there has never been an explanation. 

You virtually never read any investigative reporting about any city’s poverty programs because the poor are powerless and the powerful don’t want you to question what the root causes of poverty are because the root causes of poverty is exactly what makes the rich and powerful so rich and powerful. As Fyodor Dostoyevsky said, “The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he’s in prison.” In other western democracies, it is generally illegal to lie to the public with the intent to misinform or mislead. In the United States it is not only legal, it is highly profitable. 

 

While the media looked for something else to say about the late monarch, you did not hear them even bringing up the connection of the British monarchy to a long history of empire and cruel economic colonialism. 

 

How did the monarchy come to own billions in property and the late queen’s personal holdings were worth $20 billion dollars . . . and her heirs pay no inheritance taxes on royal estates? Can we even mention that there is a direct line from poverty in India and Pakistan and Honduras and Belize and Jamaica to the estate of the late queen? Do you even want to know? 

 

I am not opposed to saying a lot of nice things about the queen on the week of her death. But in their endless coverage, can they not find a moment to mention some of the hard reality of the abuses of the British monarchy? I realize that a lot of comfortable white people don’t want to hear anything about the down side of the British monarchy but I have some friends in Central America who would be willing to explain it to you in detail.

 

And could there be a relationship between the fact that I bring these things up and the fact that I no longer have a local weekly column? I will tell you what I said to my editor in our last heated meeting: journalism happens when you write something that someone doesn’t want you to write. Everything else is advertising and entertainment. 

 

If the news media won’t do it, shouldn’t the church at least try to be a reliable voice of reliable truth? Shouldn’t prophetic preaching speak truth to power? If not, then what’s the church for?

 

Oh, and just so you won’t worry about them, Prince Andrew has agreed to take the corgis. I hope they bite him.