May 5, 2024 Dr. Roger Ray
President John Kennedy once referenced what he called “an ancient Chinese curse,” in a speech delivered in 1966, saying that the Chinese often cursed their enemies saying, “May you live in interesting times.” The proverb is neither Chinese nor is it ancient, but it is ironically true, isn’t it? Cursed or not, we are living in interesting times. With hot wars in Ukraine and Palestine, an almost inevitable invasion of Taiwan by China, a horrifying presidential election which could bring an end to democracy and free elections as fascism seems to be gaining an ever stronger footing in the Republican party. Technological advances in artificial intelligence and renewable energy hold both promise and dread as huge cultural changes are now on the near horizon. We didn’t choose to be born into such a volatile world but here we are. We are living in a time when moral leadership is needed more than ever.
As former Attorney General, Eric Holder, recently prophetically said, “There is no cavalry coming. No miracle solution. No saviors. In the end, we, the American people - not any of our institutions - have to save our democracy by voting in defense of that democracy this fall. We are the cavalry. The responsibility is ours.”
In these interesting times, institutions we once trusted, seem now to be compromised beyond redemption. One need only pay attention to the past two years of the evolution of the Supreme Court into a partisan dumpster fire to realize there is no cavalry about to ride over the hill to save democracy. The Supreme Court has sacrificed their moral credibility in service to a moronic Clementine Caligula in exchange for enthroning 16th century Roman Catholic misogyny into law. It is difficult to believe that the highest court in the world’s oldest democracy could have fallen into such corruption, incompetence, and freedom hating ideology. But when you elect someone like Donald Trump as president, you can’t expect him to appoint great legal minds to the bench.
I like the Turkish proverb that says, “When a clown moves into a palace, the clown doesn’t become a king. The palace becomes a circus.” In 2016 we put a lying, misogynist, con artist in the white house and now, even though he is gone, our justice system and our legislative branch are still reeling with the circus he created. I shudder to think how much more damage he could do if we screw up and give him another bite of the apple.
Thankfully he was out of office when Russia invaded the Ukraine two years ago, because now the world is standing on the precipice of a nuclear war, more so, perhaps, than even the early cold war days when I and my elementary school classmates were taught to hide under our desks in case of a nuclear war.
Most of us initially feared that Ukraine would fall to the Russian armies in a matter of weeks if not days, but their fierce and courageous defense of their homeland has, over the passage of time, expanded the membership of NATO and made most western nations willing to inch ever closer to nuclear war by increasing the types and amounts of military aid to Ukraine.
You may remember that we initially would not give them aircraft or long-range missiles because we didn’t want to escalate the war. And Putin even mentioned the possibility of using nuclear weapons to discourage strategic support of Ukraine. Repeated Russian war crimes and huge death tolls among Ukrainian civilians has emboldened the USA and NATO to step up our support of Ukraine, accepting the increased risk of what desperate moves Putin might take if he feels trapped.
The media, which can rarely walk and chew gum at the same time, virtually forgot about Ukraine last fall after the Hamas terrorist attack against Israel.
This attack that included the most barbaric elements of rape, torture, and murder of babies caught the conservative government of Israel off guard. The failure of Netanyahu’s government has caused him to try to look bold and decisive by responding to Hamas in what looks like a genocidal war against the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip. Six months later, this shocking attack on a civilian population has provoked outrage around the world, seen most recently boiling over on American college campuses.
Two things can be true at once, especially in such complicated times as these. I am glad that university students are now increasingly aware of world events, and they are willing to take drastic measures to express their views. I am sorry, however, that they seem to be so opposed to Netanyahu’s tactics that they have forgotten what Hamas did to start this conflict and they are allowing Anti-Semitic fringe elements to shape their protests in a way that threatens the safety of Jewish students on their own campuses, many of whom actually sympathize with their protests against Netanyahu’s excesses. You can support Israel and not support Netanyahu. You can advocate for Palestinians without threatening to start another genocide against the Jews.
Students across America have been heard to repeat the chant, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” without a sincere understanding of what that chant really means. Look, there is no way to polish this turd. This is the Jordan River and this is the Mediterranean Sea, the east and west boundaries of Israel. This chant is an antisemitic threat from Palestine that they will literally push the Jews into the sea. Attempts at insisting that it does not mean what it clearly means shouldn’t fool anyone.
I am a reluctant supporter of Israel. The theft of Palestinian territory to create a Jewish homeland at the end of World War II was stupid, illegal, and based on little more than British and American Sunday School geopolitics that wanted to give Jews the Holy Land as they romantically imagined that God had given it to them three thousand years ago.
In what started out as a casual conversation in a local coffee shop, got heated when an older man insisted to me that the Jews own that land because God gave it to them. Checking off another coffee shop from Vero Beach’s options where I am no longer welcome, I pointed out that it is no great wonder that the Jews wrote a book in which they say that God gave them the land but that would hardly stand up in a real estate title claim, especially since the Muslims have written a book that says that God gave that land to them.
Honestly, the book of Exodus describes God as being a violent, pathological land thief. How could anyone defend that absurd claim in the 21st century? . . . However, I could take you to a nearby coffee shop and introduce you to some people who do defend it . . . but I’ll have to wait in the car.
I hate that I have to go back a full century to find a member of the Supreme Court that I am willing to quote in a sermon but I want to tip my hat to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes who said:
“I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I will give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.”
I realize that the news in these interesting times is draining, it is stressful, and, admittedly, it is complicated. I’m afraid that many of our college students are taking a far too simplistic view of the Palestinian crisis but you can’t really fault them when senior members of the Republican led house are daily repeating Russian propaganda, endangering the world and destroying American credibility.
I expect more of our university students but I am at a loss for what to say about how ignorant, unAmerican, and dangerously misinformed these Republican members of congress are.
Some have even repeated, on the floor of Congress, Russian misinformation like insisting that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine was using our aid money to buy two yachts. This is obviously Russian slander but who would have believed than people who are holding elected seats in the Congress could be dumb enough to believe it? I think someone has been skipping important briefings.
As many of you surely know by now, I have not been a great fan of President Joe Biden but when it comes to managing foreign affairs, we have a lot of reasons to stand up and applaud his steady hand on the wheel in the midst of complicated events to which there is no easy answer and all of the simple answers are more dangerous than the more measured approach he has taken. Everyone in the world, save only a small group of radicals in Israel, is mad about how the response to the Hamas terror attack in October has been handled but I just have not heard many people offer a workable solution to removing Hamas from power in Palestine and if you believe that Hamas should be allowed to continue to exist in Gaza then I submit that you have not studied the events closely enough.
Long time listeners will recall the many times that I have said that I am so opposed to war that I am already against the next war. Honestly, that has not been much of an over statement. We never should have invaded Afghanistan, there were better ways to respond to the 9-11 attack on the US. We had little to no reason to invade Iraq and, in fact, we took away the one military check that Iran had, allowing them to become a regional exporter of terrorism and possibly a nuclear threat. That war was ignorant on every meaningful level.
One of my professors at Harvard was fond of saying that if all you have is a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail. The United States has been so invested in military power that we have often acted like all we had was a hammer and I have advocated for more than 40 years that we invest more in diplomacy and less in military might. I am not a pacifist but I always kind of wanted to be one.
Still, I often look at military action in much the same way that I look at a parent spanking a child. Many parents argue that spanking is the only thing that works on their kids, but I tend to think that use of violence against kids is not parenting but evidence of having failed at parenting. If beating your kids is how you hope to teach them good behavior, I think that you have already missed the point.
War is almost always a sign of a failure or a gross neglect of diplomacy. There were a thousand things that Israel should have been doing to improve the lot of Palestinians before the October terrorist attack, but once Hamas had done what they did, a military response was necessary.
I think that the west has been disingenuous about the security of Ukraine and that we had sent a lot of the wrong signals to Russia about NATO, but once Russian armies poured over the border into Ukraine, a military response was necessary. I hate it, but without a time machine, there are not many options.
Hamas can only do what they do because of funding and supplies from Iran. Iran would love to attack Israel and the United States directly for both historical and ideological reasons but they know that they can’t win in that confrontation so they resort to proxies; of which, Hamas is only one.
The United States now finds itself engaged in two undeclared wars. It may sound horrible to say it, but we are using Israel as a proxy to fight Iran and we are using Ukraine as a proxy to fight Russia. The world cannot afford for us to ignore the danger posed by both Iran and Russia and, selfishly, I am glad that we have found ways to do it without deploying American troops even though we must not look lightly on the sacrifices made by combatants made on both sides of these wars.
When I was in Thailand last winter, the beaches were full of draft age Russians who were avoiding be sent to fight in Ukraine. Many Russians who have died in the war were prisoners who Putin sends into battle, il-equipped, and sometimes even unarmed, to smoke out the positions of Ukrainian forces and to deplete their ammunition. Putin is heartless even though people like the Georgia congresswoman, Marjory Taylor Greene keeps insisting that Putin is “not that bad.” I don’t know how many listeners that I have in Georgia but I beg you, do something to get this woman out of Congress.
There was a horrifying block of aid by Moscow Marj and other Republican right wingers in the Congress until mid-April. House Speaker, Mike Johnson, who had previously voted against aid to Ukraine, was preventing any future aid from even being voted on until Ukraine was nearly out of ammunition and was being forced to plan a retreat. Somehow he experienced a sudden conversion.
I’ll side with MSNBC news host, Joe Scarborough, who says of deathbed conversions, “I’ll take it.” Johnson was playing a very dangerous political game with much needed aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. I have been horrified by his willingness to put world stability at risk so that a few Republican right wingers could feel like they were “owning the libs,” but it looks like some rational thought has penetrated his lust for power. A lot of damage has been done to our reputation and the coalition of western nations was in danger of falling apart but, as I said, better late than never, so I’ll take it.
We have been concerned that if Russia is successful in annexing Ukraine that Putin would not stop there. But I think that the longer we keep Ukraine supplied to stay in the fight, the less able Russia will be able to invade a vacant shopping mall.
May I remind you that we won the Cold War, not by deploying troops and fighting but buy building up our military resources in a way that provoked the Soviet Union to do the same until they ran themselves broke and the Soviet Union fell apart without our ever firing a shot.
In the same way, Putin thought he would take Ukraine quickly. He was not supplied for a sustained war and the more he runs his assets down, the less capable he will be to threaten Poland or other former Soviet states. Bloomberg estimates that Russia has spent more than half of its capital on this war in the past two years. Possibly half of their armored vehicles have been destroyed.
What is more, the BBC estimates that more than 50,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in this war. Uncounted thousands have been seriously injured. These losses come straight out of the demographic sector, those 20 and 30 year olds, who would have shaped Russia future.
Their future scientists, inventors, business, and government leaders are now buried in Ukraine. I hate this for the Russian people but the world will be safer if this war leaves Russia incapable to menacing its neighbors again. Think of the roles played by Germany and Japan in the lead up to WWII and look what happened when those devastated nations moved past their war era madness and started to build a technological and advanced society rooted in education and business.
Less than a century ago, Germany, Japan, and Italy were what Russia, Iran, and North Korea are to us today. Could we imagine a world in which Russia, Iran, and North Korea could become some of our best friends? Is it too much to hope for?
Please don’t become jaded by the current state of affairs. We have been in darker places in modern memory, and I believe that with the right heart, the right moral vision, a new and better world is waiting to be born. But remember, you are the cavalry that has to make it happen.
