It Isn't About Newtown

I should be honest enough to say that title is a lie.  Because, as everyone knows, it is about Newtown.  Or, perhaps better - With the events yesterday in Newtown, I realized that silence equaled consent.  Not just in the bloody massacres at which we all stop and ask, "What have we become?" and everyone says they'll pray, and whoever is President will say a word or two, and then . . . the next one happens.  According to The Washington Post today, there have been thirteen such events just this year.  In fact, by the criteria of this report, there was yet another just today in Alabama.  Catch our breath?  Why even bother breathing?

But it isn't mass shootings.  They're the blockbuster of gun violence, big and gaudy, attracting all sorts of attention, enough to blind us to the steady drip of blood that is gun violence in America.  According to the CDC, in 2009 there were 11,493 gun-related deaths in the United States.  About 31 per day.  That's one and one-half Newtowns every single day.

Every.

Single.

Day.

Why don't we hear about it?  We do, though.  It's on the news, isn't it?  Just this summer, the city of Chicago saw a spike in homicides, with the city's four hundredth coming in late October.

If we faced a disease that killed an average of 31 Americans every day, we would be investing tens of millions if not billions of dollars searching for a cure, or at least effective treatment.  Facing the violent, gun-related deaths of 31 Americans every day we are told all sorts of things.  "Who could have known this would happen?", "This isn't the time to talk about gun control", "If a crazy person wants to kill people, that person will find a way to do it", on and on.  And on.

Why?  I think this article from The New Inquiry  gets at part of it:

I feel like sometimes it’s the bigness of the problem that scares us the most, and so a solution that feels practical becomes the only response we can imagine. But when people have guns to protect them from black people and the government, a black president is not going to have much luck trying to repeal the 2nd Amendment.  Especially when our response to a white guy shooting up a school is to tell people to be on the watch for “suspicious characters.” If there’s a solution, the law might be part of it, and the people who were demonstrating in front of the White House yesterday, good for them. I’d have joined them; I’m all for taxing the living shit out of anyone who wants to own a gun in a big city, for example. I’ll sign that petition, why the hell not. But as long as there’s a loophole, as long as some people are more animal, more killable than white kids in Connecticut, there will still be people killing people, and people who are crazy enough to want to do it are crazy enough to find a way. And we should be aghast about every single one of the dead kids, and adults, not just the white ones who were killed by automatic weapons in a school.

The frustrating thing about this is it is both right and wrong.  It is right because it makes clear the enormity of the problem.  It is wrong because if you say, "Wow, that's just too big," then no one does anything and we all cross our fingers and hope and pray the daily body count doesn't include people we love.

Taking any single event and saying, "Who could have known this would happen?" certainly makes sense. Except, of course, these aren't single, or singular, events.  Think Progress has a list of the 29 mass shootings since the Columbine High School shooting in 1999*, and states there have been 61 in the past 30 years.

But just as it isn't about Newtown, it isn't about mass shootings, either.  It's the mass shooting that happens each and every day, whether it's a street corner on the southwest side of Chicago, or the Lower East Side of Manhattan, or the destitute streets of New Orleans or Detroit.  These are American lives lost, a body count that we have allowed to get every larger because we both refuse to accept that these deaths are American deaths, and because we refuse to accept that bearing responsibility means doing something.

There are more things to say, such as pointing out other cultures are just as violent as ours - anyone even passing familiar with Japanese popular culture understands it is a sinkhole of violence and misogyny, for example - so American exceptionalism doesn't extend to our vices any more than it does our virtues.  There are more things to say, such as pointing out that the insistence on moments of silence are insulting to the memory of the dead.  It is silence that keeps the bodies piling up, makes that butcher's bill ever longer.

Only the dead are silent.  It is up to us, the living, to be the voice they have lost.  Because it isn't just Newtown.  It's about America.

*Their criteria for "mass shootings" appear to be slightly different from those that led to the article in the Washington Post, linked above.

Doing Something

Twenty six dead.  Twenty of them children.

According to the Uniform Crime Reports for 2010 (the last year complete data is available), 67.5% of homicides were committed using firearms.  Two-thirds.

Every time something like this happens, there are folks who scream, "But, they could use knives!  Cars kill people!  Law-abiding citizens!"  Except, of course, guns are the weapon of choice.  Why?  Because they're readily available, there are simply no constraints either on purchasing the weapons themselves or ammunition for them, and, frankly, all the folks shouting "Second Amendment!" in effect have the back of the killer.

That may sound harsh, but bite me.

When I heard the news, I wanted to rush to my kids' schools and take them home.  Of course, then the loon wins, right?  In a world filled with guns, I have to remember I put my kids' lives on the line just by sending them to school.

I'm saddened by the events.  I'm also enraged.  I'm tired, too.  I'm tired of hearing about how guns don't kill people, because there are 26 corpses, 20 of them quite small, that are giving mute testimony to the contrary. I'm tired of people offering prayers without doing much of anything else.  Because, what?  Is God a magician who will just magically make everything better?  The Church is called the Body of Christ for a reason.  We are the hands and feet and mouths and heart of the Living God.  We want God to do something without risking anything ourselves.

So, um, no.

I started a petition at Change.org.  It's really simple to understand.  It calls for repeal of the Second Amendment to the Constitution.  Under current Constitutional law, there is nothing any legislature can do to interfere with anyone's desire to own a firearm.  We want change?  We want the killings to stop?  Then sign the petition.  We get 100 signatures, it can be featured on Change.org.  Once that happens, we can get more people to link to it, more people to sign it.

Then, maybe - just maybe - we can start the real work of getting in touch with our elected representatives to start the long slog.  Fighting to make America a safe, sane place in which to live and work and shop and live with another person and go to school will take a long time.  It will take dealing with people who are quite willing to disagree with us in violent ways.  It will take being yelled at a whole lot by people who, for all intents and purposes, would sacrifice a few thousand lives each year so some hunter somewhere isn't afraid black helicopters will zoom in and take his shotgun away.

Oh, and yes, I am politicizing this.  You're goddamn right.  I'm going to politicize the shit out of this, because that's the only way to get people moving.

I know I'm not going to win any popularity contests by doing this.  That's OK.  Because this isn't about me, and, frankly, it isn't about you, either.  It's about all of us, every single American.  We are long past the time when we should have realized it was time to put away our childish joy in guns.

The Aristocrats

A little known part of the on-going nonsense in Washington is the fact that cuts in the Estate Tax will expire at the end of the year.  Back when they were cut, there was all sorts of carrying on, calling them "Death Taxes", acting as if they were some break on economic growth and a blight upon the entire American ethos.

Except, of course, what they are is an expression of a basic American principle - we aren't going to have a hereditary aristocracy in this Republic of ours.

I heard a report on NPR the other evening in which an estate planner was saying that people with estates that would fall within the lowered limit/higher tax rate were "worried".  I'm sorry, but I would have thought that if an individual managed to amass a million dollars and more of wealth, that person would have provided well for his or her family members; perhaps even provided an example, say, for their children to follow such as hard work, thrift, and sound investment so the children could prosper without help from dead Daddy and Mommy.

When primogeniture was eliminated from the Constitution, it was done to prevent the creation of an aristocracy, seen at the time of the founding as a parasitic class, contributing nothing but maintaining power and authority through no reason other than birth.  If you read Barbara Tuchman's The March of Folly, there's a description of the kinds of feasts the Lords and Ladies of 18th Century Britain would enjoy.  At a time when industrialization was just beginning to stir and penury and want were spreading, the aristocracy took it as a matter of course, indeed of right, to gorge themselves while the peasantry starved.  Having fought and won a revolt against this kind of thing, the Founders had no desire to start it up again.

All the hugger-mugger about small businesses and what hard working people who earn a lot of money deserve is nonsense.  With the Gilded Age and the rise of American billionaires, very often amassing their fortunes through illegality, violence, repression, and manipulation of the political process, the levying of a confiscatory Estate Tax (the original tax was 100%; it was aimed at one person, John D. Rockefeller) was seen as ensuring that the accidents of history and the purposeful greed of industrialists didn't create that most despised of British institutions: a hereditary aristocracy.  While sold to the public with this argument, it was also offered as a way of promoting charity, and it worked quite well.  After all, rather than face the state taking one's wealth, many wealthy benefactors spent a great deal of time and energy giving their money away.  Andrew Carnegie built libraries all over the country; Rockefeller invested in colleges and universities, including helping to create the University of Chicago and supporting historically black colleges and institutes in the south (one can say many things about Rockefeller, but he was no bigot, at least not by the standards of his time; he also provided massive amounts of money to eliminate ringworm across the South, in both black and white populations).

While this latter is a worthy goal, and has provided ample opportunity for the wealthy to do some good, the fact remains that defense of the Estate Tax is more than a little un-American.  The idea that family members, having done nothing more than being born in a family that was successful, "deserve" an estate runs against the very idea that we in the United States will not have the growth of a class of hereditary wealth, amassing power and public influence.  I find it more than a little funny that the most adamant defenders of the elimination of the Estate Tax are in a political party with the name "Republican".  Last time I checked, small "r" republicans weren't huge fans of aristocrats.

Except, alas, in early 21st century America.

The Unkindest Cut

Of all the ridiculous things in this season overflowing with the ridiculous, from Nick Kristof suggesting we reduce support for children with disabilities to round-about discussions over a 5% tax hike that seem to signal the end of the world, the most ridiculous has been near silence on the massive across-the-board budget cuts known as sequestration.  While we should all be a bit inured to squabbles over cuts in discretionary spending, that Congress set up the Department of Defense to be cut both deep and broad is not only amazing; that no one seems to be shouting about it is shocking.

Now, most on the Left carry on about the Pentagon budget without actually looking at the numbers.  I have actually skimmed a couple different years' budgets (it's impossible to read it thoroughly unless that's your job), and taking in to account several factors, it is actually surprising how economical the Pentagon is.  The first factor to consider before getting in to high dudgeon about defense spending is the previous question: Do we, as a nation, have either commitments or broad national goals that require a large military infrastructure?  In fact, we have both.  The second factor flows from the first: Do we wish to continue these commitments, i.e., do we wish to continue to exercise global power and influence?  It has always seemed to me that we need to talk about this question before any, Left, Right, or the Very Serious Center, start talking about how we spend money for guns and planes and things that go boom.

Despite having an election - you remember the election, right?  It was all over the news - most of our upper echelon press and far too much of the commentariat carry on as if nothing of note has occurred.  I mention this in passing not because it impacts any thoughts on defense sequestration, but because it's important to remember that we cannot have any kind of honest, robust discussion in our current climate.  All one need do is consider that much of the hoopla over Ambassador Susan Rice and Benghazi had to do with what the Ambassador said on a Sunday talk show.  Like any talk of defense sequestration, we should have a serious investigation of the events in Libya on September 11, find out what went wrong, if someone dropped the ball security-wise, they need to be held accountable, and put mechanisms in place to prevent another such event. Carrying on about what someone said on television, however, drained any serious criticism of real power; any time anyone says, "Benghazi," it sounds just the same as John McCain yelling at the clouds.

The facts are that, despite the enormity of our defense budget, both front-line and support personnel are operating at what can politely be called below optimum capacity.  That's a nice way to say that for all we have the weaponry and platforms for delivery, our force levels are far smaller than twenty years ago, even after a decade of war.  Indeed, even with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, there was no movement to enlarge the actual numbers of troops; that's why there are service members and veterans with multiple tours, under combat conditions, in both theaters.  The mental and emotional toll this decision not to increase the size of the various branches is also in all the papers; the obscene and scandalous suicide and crime rates among both active duty and veteran service members due in no small part to PTSD and related phenomena can be laid at the feet of policy planners who insisted on doing these wars not just on credit cards, but even then, doing them on the cheap.  Because we didn't increase the size of any of the branches of the military, we were forced, as a nation, to dip again and again in the same pool both of reserve personnel and those who had already done time overseas in combat.

At the same time, support staff and others who do vital work, from security to logistics, are forced to do more with less.  Many tasks that were once part and parcel of the armed forces are being outsourced to contractors and subcontractors, whether it's janitorial services or "private security firms", a polite way of describing mercenaries.  With sequestration looming, the ability of the huge array of services the Pentagon provides will be drastically reduced; all the while, the needs for which they've been tasked will continue.  Whether that includes figuring out what threats our nation faces from yesterday's North Korean missile launch, or making sure enough food gets to our troops in Afghanistan, or getting needed medical supplies to troops doing covert ops in central Africa - these things still need to get done.  Fewer people will be available to do them, however, which means more work for those left behind.

A Pentagon spokesperson quote in a recent article at Defense.gov puts the matter quite plainly: 

“If this is triggered, even in light of this absurd mechanism that was created to avoid absurdities, our intent is to not implement sequestration in an absurd way … inside the Department of Defense,” Little said.  

While the post-Cold War defense draw down was needed, it became apparent fairly quickly that the United States continued to see itself as a superpower, with global commitments and therefore the need for a fairly large military infrastructure.  We have, I think, not faced the central question: Do we wish to continue to be a global power?  If so, then we should bite the bullet (so to speak) and be willing not only to pay for it, but to provide enough people to get the job done, and done well.  If we aren't willing to pay for it, then we shouldn't be a global power, and the assigned tasks to front line and support personnel grow fewer, and so we don't need as many people.  It seems to me, in other words, we have gone about the whole matter of defense spending half-assed; as the Pentagon spokesman said, we are now piling absurdities upon absurdities, and we have yet even to mention this in our public discussions.  It's all about a small tax hike on a very small percentage of the American public.

It would be nice if we could talk about these things without getting all hot and bothered.  It would be nice if we could actually consider these matters as they really are, rather than as we believe them to be.  It would be nice if "going over the fiscal cliff" didn't mean something horrible for our ability to defend ourselves, breaking faith with the men and women who have volunteered to protect us.

A Most Dangerous Gift

Christmas is the moment of recognition, the moment when what we have always secretly known is set out in plain and freshly terms. And at the same time, “Woe unto you who desire the day of the Lord” and “Who may abide the day of his coming? For he is like a refiner’s fire” … Christmas is a beauty that is the beginning of terror: the Burning Babe, who has come to cast fire upon the earth, Before his presence, the idols fall and shatter. - Archbishop Rowan Williams, Advent: A University Sermon, Open to Judgement: Sermons and Addresses

In a time of year our late capitalist culture transforms from from verbose longing for something new to silent nostalgia for an irretrievable past, it is sometimes a good thing to consider what, precisely, is this new thing God is doing in the Babe of Bethlehem over which we coo and weep in joy.  Far from the schmaltzy Hallmark nonsense that swamps us like a tide of stupid and ugly, in the Incarnation God is doing something that should bring about both praise and fear.  As we wait and watch, counting down the days on our Advent calendars and watching other shoppers at the nearest Big Box store with their worried looks and creased brows, we should recall to what end this baby is born.

I sometimes think we have forgotten that the broken corpse of Calvary should lie in the manger, rather than a swaddled baby.  Not to revel in blood and death.  Rather, because the New Thing that God is doing, coming to earth in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, is nothing more or less than God demonstrating that love is not a feeling, faith is not thought, and freedom is most assuredly casting our lot in with others, submitting ourselves to the strictest discipline, to the point of offering up our very lives for others.

There is nothing cute or cuddly about the life Jesus will live.  There is no peace or goodwill that follows in his wake.  He knew that.  He told his disciples that the world would hate them for his sake.  He told his disciples they needed to be prepared to surrender their families, their fortunes, all the things they thought God considered valuable, if they wanted to follow him.  When Maundy Thursday came around and they discovered he wasn't kidding, they ran off.  Peter, like Judas, betrayed his master at a point when confessing solidarity with Jesus might well have cost him his life.

This time of year, as we gather our loved ones around us in our various family rituals, I think we numb ourselves to the reality that the birth for which we wait, the Coming for which we wait and watch is not some silent blessing, the still small voice that whispered to the prophet Jeremiah.  The Gospels are clear enough that Jesus' birth brought terror and death to a world already overflowing with terror and death; consider the Slaughter of the Innocents in St. Matthew's Gospel (the first feast day after Christmas is just that; the second is the Martyrdom of St. Stephen, recounted in Acts).  Jesus was born in a world filled with violence and hatred, terrorism and war, economic and social exploitation.  He became a victim of these forces, winding up on a Roman crosstree the innocent scapegoat of a socio-political and religious establishment terrified of the promise he offered a people under Roman thumb.  Jesus' Revolution was not what anyone in a position of authority wanted, so he ended up dead on trumped up charges.

That he had the last laugh, rising on the third day, confirming that the Kingdom he offered is not one of this world, yet is visible for us and with us, does not remove the blood and horror from the story.  As we move through the weeks of Advent, we should prepare ourselves to look in the feeding trough and see not a pink cheeked baby sleeping peacefully; we should look and see the bloody, broken face of the man Jesus would become.  Only then will we be waiting for the Jesus promised us in the Hebrew Scriptures; only then will we be ready to hear what the man Jesus will say to us; only then will we begin to understand what the baby whose birth we celebrate offers a hurting and broken world.

Peace?  Only if we are willing to risk everything for it.  Justice?  Only if we are willing to suffer injustice in pursuit of it.  Life?  Only if we are willing to risk death for it.  As Archbishop Williams states, over and over again, not only Jesus but the Hebrew prophets before him insist that it is only through a refiner's fire that we who hear and answer God's call and promise in Jesus become what God wants us to be.  If we are not filled with fear this Advent that the new thing God in Christ is doing in our midst may well be what God always said it would be, then we aren't really waiting and watching for the coming of the Christ child promised by the prophets and attested in the Gospels.

Advent II, Part 2

But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.-2 Peter 3:13 

‘To what then will I compare the people of this generation, and what are they like? They are like children sitting in the market-place and calling to one another,“We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;   we wailed, and you did not weep.” For John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine, and you say, “He has a demon”; the Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, “Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax-collectors and sinners!” Nevertheless, wisdom is vindicated by all her children.’-Luke 7:31-35

Few things in Christian teaching are as confounding, easily misunderstood, abused by those who don't understand it, and mocked by those outside the faith than the promised return of Christ and the fulfillment of the work of the Kingdom begun with Jesus' resurrection from the dead.  I am alternately amused and frustrated by the ways it is either denied or stretched to incoherence either by those who would prefer it no longer be part of Christian teaching, or those who, knowing little to nothing, make of it an enormous landscape filled with horrors for their pet hates all the while promising rescue for like-minded fellows.

I think I may well be one of the few self-professed liberal Christians who actually buys in to the whole idea.  I don't know, maybe not.  Yet, we Christians affirm that, Christ being raised from the dead inaugurates a new era, the time when the Kingdom of God both is and is not, Christ will return to make all things new, bringing the Kingdom of God to the new creation.  When we United Methodists say, in our mission statement, that we are making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world, it is this new reality of which we speak.  We live between the times, in a well-worn phrase; between the resurrection and the final consummation when, as the reading from Peter's epistle tells us, creation will dissolve to be replaced by a new Kingdom of righteousness.

In between, however, far too many of us are like those described by Jesus.  Recognizing that you can't lose for winning, Jesus makes clear that, like John the Baptist before him, he faces nonsensical criticism from those who, apparently, are far more interested in getting these same folks they publicly despise to endorse them and their work.  Why do they say John the Baptist has a demon and Jesus is a drunkard and whore-monger?  "We played the flute and you did not dance."  In other words, the religious and political and social elites wanted some kind of endorsement for their efforts at piety.  What they received was contempt or worse, apathy.  So, they turned on John the Baptist and on Jesus.

We want some kind of endorsement, don't we?  We want the stuff in our faith to make some kind of sense, after all.  I make fun of creationists without ever once denying that all that is exists because of the Word of God.  I confess the centrality of this ridiculous idea that Jesus died on that Roman cross, yet not only came back to life - not just resuscitated but raised! - but is still, even now, alive and with us.  Most contemporary Christians repeat this, give some kind of more-than-lip-service to it, all the while refusing to confront how ridiculous a claim it really is.

The Second Coming, though?  Isn't that the stuff of The Omen movies and Hal Lindsay?  Do we really need to confess belief in such insanity?

First of all, that the doctrine of the New Creation has been hijacked by popular culture on the one hand and an idiot like Lindsay on the other only makes it all the more important we affirm the reality of Christ's promised return as part and parcel not only of our faith, but also of our hope.  Second, as the Scriptures tell us, these folks, whether movie makers wanting to make a quick buck on our fears of "Satan" or fools like Lindsay who see in human history the key to understanding what God is doing in the world, are little more than flute players and wailers, wanting some kind of attention for all their efforts.

Jesus reminds us that Wisdom - that part of God celebrated in the book of Proverbs - will vindicate her children.  Which means, quite simply, that holding fast to our hope in the promised return of the risen and living Christ we shall see that God's promises are not the promises of human beings.  Waiting and watching, as the writer of St. Peter's Epistle reminds readers, is something we are called to do in faith because it is in the new heaven and new earth that righteousness will have a home.  It is indeed, breaking forth even now around us, to be sure.  Yet here, as we know all too well, it is homeless, an orphan, outcast by those very flute-players and wailers who want some recognition for all the work they've put in, some reward for their efforts.

So, I confess with a light heart and a loud voice this Advent season, in the words of what the United Methodist liturgy for the Eucharist calls "the mystery of faith": "Christ has died.  Christ is risen.  Christ will come again."  I have neither the time nor energy to "prove" a promise that has yet to be fulfilled.  I do, however, invite anyone who would join with me to praise a God who has not left us, a God who will not abandon us, a God who offers us the promised fulfillment of God's creative love and joy.  Confessing hope in the coming again of Christ and all that offers for all creation is not a silly or odd idea.  It is nothing more or less than continuing our confession of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.  I'll let the flute players demand attention, and wailers demand that others rend their garments in sympathy.  Me, I'll take St. Peter's advice, and wait and watch in faith and hope.

Advent II, Part 1

Praise the Lord!
Sing to the Lord a new song,
   his praise in the assembly of the faithful.-Psalm 149:1

Let me sing for my beloved   my love-song concerning his vineyard:My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill -Isaiah 5:1

Without music, life would be a mistake.- Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight Of The Idols

More than language, more than reason, more than our ability to use our hands and minds to create tools to make our lives better, the greatest single thing we human beings can do is create beauty.  If there is, as we profess, still some spark of the Creator within our sinful, broken lives, it is just this.  Whether a painting - perhaps the chiaroscuro of Rembrandt, or the abstract expressionism of Pollock - or the architecture of joy one sees whether looking at the magnificent mosques of Muslim Spain, the grand Buddhist temples of ancient Khmer in Cambodia or the cathedrals of France, or perhaps the simple beauty of homespun craftsmanship in mundane pieces of workaday art like Shaker chairs, we human beings have this gift not only to make something out of nothing, but to give what's made the ability to rip us out of time, to stand and experience something majestic, profound, and eternal.  In the arts, as perhaps in no other sphere of human activity, we have the opportunity to experience transcendence without needing to understand what is happening to us.

While I enjoy the physical and visual and plastic arts, it is hearing music that lifts me out of whatever moment I might occupy and drops me before the throne of God, giving me the experience of the Divine "Yes!" that can be otherwise obscured.  The Scriptures quoted above, part of the readings for this second Sunday in Advent, celebrate the power and possibility of song.  We are called to sing songs.  Psalm 149 celebrates a "new song" that is sung not just by we human beings, but all creation in praise of God.  Isaiah 5 sings of song of a parable of a landowner who creates a magnificent vineyard that is overrun by wild grapes.  Despite the landowners tender love and care, at the end the only thing the landowner can do is tear it all down, destroy the weeds that choke the life out of any chance for good wine.  Will the landowner build anew?  The parable, alas, leaves us hanging, although we do know that the prophet Isaiah is the great prophet of the LORD's promise to renew the people.   The song of the destruction of the vineyard is not the only song to be sung.

The Psalms are filled with admonitions to "Sing a new song".  The prophets are filled with the promise that the judgment for injustice and unrighteousness will not be a death sentence, but already pregnant with the promise for new life, a new hope, and, yes, new songs.  Morton Lauritsen's setting for O Magnum Mysterium, certainly among those musical moments that ring out with God's affirmation for all creation, includes the celebration of the presence of the animals at the moment of Christ's birth.  All creation takes part in praising God for the wondrous gift of God in Christ; for that, we are called to sing a new song.  All creation is called to sing praises to God because, in the birth of the Christ Child, we encounter the new thing that God always promises.

These new things call for new songs of Praise.