gracchusdixit

In the wake of last week’s dreadful murders in Charleston, South Carolina, the Republican governor of that state, Nikki Haley, stood before the microphones and television cameras to make this tearful and emotional statement:  “We have some grieving to do,” she intoned, “and we’ve got some pain to go through.  We are a strong and faithful state.  We love our state, we love our country, and most importantly, we love each other.”

If only these words were true.

Nikki Haley, like so many Republican politicians who rushed to condemn the slaughter of nine innocent black citizens as they were reading scripture in Charleston’s historic Emanuel Church, is at best a hypocrite and at worst a de facto accomplice to the hateful murders she purports to condemn.  If Nikki Haley truly loved our country, if she honestly wanted all the citizens of her state to love each other, then she would confess her guilt and repent of her ways.  That is unlikely.

For nearly 40 years, the Republican Party has preyed on the fears, resentments, and prejudices of white Americans in general and Southern whites in particular.  Instead of denouncing those prejudices, they have perpetuated them, refusing to acknowledge, let alone take responsibility for, their own role in inflaming the stubborn racism that continues to bedevil our country.

Nikki Haley, and others like her, have excused the ongoing display of the Confederate battle flag in South Carolina’s capitol and elsewhere throughout the Old South, rationalizing this display as an expression of “cultural heritage,” when it is nothing less than an open and deliberate affront, not only to African-Americans, but to every decent person in the land.  Her decision to remove that flag, in the face of mounting pressure, came too late to save the lives of the worshippers gunned down in Charleston.  Even then, she failed to acknowledge what that flag really stands for: racism, secession, and treason.

Symbolism aside, Republicans like Halley have defended, indeed expanded, the unfettered ownership of guns, allowing them to be used, as they have for generations, to terrorize and kill helpless and law-abiding citizens of color.  They have justified the worst abuses of minorities by the police, demonizing those protesting those abuses as “thugs” who deserve to be rounded up and jailed.  They have insisted on the continued imposition of the death penalty in the face of overwhelming evidence that it not only fails to deter crime but kills countless innocent people, most of them black or brown.  And finally, they have maligned the President of the United States as an illegitimate alien, not because that is even remotely true but, rather, because he is black. From the day Barack Obama was elected, Republicans like Nikki Haley vowed to bring him down even if that meant tearing the country apart.

Since that January day 152 years ago on which Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, we have made undoubted progress toward racial equality.  But not nearly enough.  The 13th Amendment may have abolished the institution of slavery, but it has not ended the subjugation of those whose forebears were slaves.  The 14th Amendment may have given all Americans equal protection under the law, but it has not prevented officers of the law from ignoring the very laws they are sworn to uphold.  The Civil Rights Act of 1964 may have ended legalized discrimination, but it has not ended de facto discrimination in housing, education, the workplace, and the courts.

And thanks to Republicans like Nikki Haley, even the fitful and partial progress we have made in the last 152 years is now in jeopardy.  Affirmative action has been dismantled.  Minority voting rights are being suppressed.  Police officers continue to go free after committing even the most egregious crimes.  Murderers like 21-year-old Dylan Roof are dismissed as deviant exceptions instead of being acknowledged as the all-too-typical racists they actually are.

It was the Great Emancipator who addressed these words to the nation as the carnage of the Civil War was coming to an end:

Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgements of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

It is deeply ironic, and even more deeply tragic, that today’s Republicans are so determined to ignore the greatest Republican President in our history.  They are hateful hypocrites one and all, and we can only hope that they too will someday face the righteous judgment of the Lord.

Pope Francis the First, the spiritual leader of the world’s more than one billion Roman Catholics, just took the unprecedented step of issuing an encyclical, which he called, after the words of Saint Francis of Assisi, “Laudato Si,” or ”Praised Be”.  In this letter of guidance to the faithful, he proclaimed climate change to be a fundamental threat to all living creatures and to “our common home,” the earth itself.

The Pope went further.  He dared to say what every thinking person knows down deep but few have been brave enough to put into words:  the root of the problem is a “sinful” economic system that encourages so much wasteful consumption by the wealthy few that the earth on which we all depend may soon be poisoned and sucked dry.  Urging us to recognize not only the limits of the natural world but the desperate needs of the poor, Pope Francis quoted Leviticus: “And you shall not strip your vineyard bare, neither shall you gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner.”

It scarcely needs saying that the Pope’s words did not sit well with the defenders of  the global economic order or with Republican pundits and politicians in the United States.  That professional gas-bag, Rush Limbaugh, did his usual huffing and puffing, accusing the Pope, as he has done several times in the past, of being a Marxist.  That unrepentant idiot, Senator Jim Inofe of Oklahoma, asserted, once again, that no scientific evidence exists to support the “theory” of climate change.  And that preposterous demagogue, Ted Cruz, gave us this more than usually preposterous comment:

He clearly doesn’t understand the true meaning of Christianity.  I’m not sure what kind of socialist upbringing he’s had, but true Christian principles are found in taking from the poor—not giving to them.  How will the poor ever better themselves if we don’t make them work for it, at a very low paying wage?  We can’t continue to let Obamacare corrupt the Pope, which it clearly has.

Whatever else you may think of Ted Cruz, you have to give credit where credit is due.  Never has so much utter nonsense been squeezed into a single paragraph of English prose.

Comments such as these are in no way surprising, since they come from the usual ranters and ravers, who can be relied upon to deny any moral, historical, or factual truth that conflicts with their prejudices and preconceptions.  It is easy for these buffoons to denounce the Pope, because they are under no spiritual obligation to pay attention.  Inofe and Cruz are evangelical Protestants, and  Limbaugh’s only religion is the almighty dollar.

However, things are more complicated for Republicans who also happen to be Catholics, for people like Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and Rick Santorum.  In reacting to the words of Pope Francis, all three have twisted themselves into such intellectual knots that it would be tempting to laugh if the subject were not so urgent and serious.

Of the three, Marco Rubio was the wiliest:

I have no problem with what the Pope did.  He is a moral authority and as a moral authority is reminding us of our obligation to be good caretakers of the planet.  I’m a political leader and my job as a policymaker is to act in the common good.  And I do believe it’s in the common good to protect our environment.  But I also believe it’s in the common good to protect our economy.

That sounds reasonable enough until you consider the problem that Rubio chooses to ignore:  you can’t have your cake and eat it too; you can’t protect the environment if you continue to perpetuate the economic system that is destroying the environment; sooner or later, you have to make a choice.

Jeb Bush was characteristically clumsier and even less logical:

I think religion ought to be about making us better as people, less about things that end up getting into the political realm…I don’t get my economic policy from my Bishops or my Cardinals or my Pope.

To state the obvious: personal and political behavior cannot be separated; you cannot be a “better person” in private all the while you pursue public policies that make life worse for society at large.  Since the policies Mr. Bush espouses have made life worse for millions of ordinary people here and elsewhere, perhaps he could learn a thing or two from his Bishops, his Cardinals, and his Pope.

Rick Santorum’s reaction was, as you might expect, just plain stupid:

We are probably better off leaving science to the scientists, and focusing on what we are really good at, which is theology and morality.

It appears to have escaped Santorum’s notice that the “theology and morality” of his church, the Roman Catholic Church, have for centuries concerned themselves with economic and social justice, with disparities of wealth and the plight of the poor, with the mutual obligations all human beings have to one another.  For the most sanctimonious candidate in the Republican field to ignore this long and venerable tradition is worse than stupid; it is absurd.

In the end, it has to be asked: what kind of Christians do these people imagine themselves to be when they ignore the Gospels and the teachings of their own church?   If they will not heed the Vicar of Christ, exactly what kind of Catholics are they?