American Hubris

Blaming the United States for the emergence of ISIS following American troop withdrawal buys into the policing mindset that pervaded U.S. foreign policy before Vietnam. Vietnam was portrayed as the first domino of a Communist take-over, and the United States was the only military power capable of preventing it. We should have learned from Vietnam that this was American hubris, inflated thinking about our role in international accord.

Jeb Bush and the Republican contenders find it convenient to link every increment in terror or hostility in the Middle East to be the consequence of U.S. withdrawal from the region. They portray the U.S. as the international peace-keeper, as if every battle front is the beat of the our police force and every act of terror a sign of our weakness.

This is nothing but hubris, assuming the god-like function of controlling all human events. The cancer-like spread of ISIS internationally should be evidence enough that terror is not controlled, as long as young men will risk their lives against perceived aggression against Muslim or Arab sovereignty. Believing that the U.S. military can bring calm to a cauldron of discontent not only distorts the effectiveness of military might, it squanders the lives of young men and women on old men’s delusions. The U.S., alone, can not contain the anger of repressed people.

It is shameful that those aspiring to political office are willing to sacrifice the lives of the next generation on a geo-political myth. They say: Walk back diplomacy and threaten Iran with extended sanctions and implied attack. Put U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq to uni-laterally whip ISIS. Bring U.S. firepower to the Ukraine to push back the Soviet influence in the revolution there. As the saying goes, When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

It is clear from the polling that favors Donald Trump that a sturdy minority think the United States should return to the role of international gun-slinger. If world domination is the name of the game, then you have no choice but to go after the bullies. However, the less vocal majority has consistently favored withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan and a more modest role for their country in the international struggle for power.

Now we see international economic sanctions and military alliances curtailing the lawless and setting boundaries in Iran and the Ukraine. The power to contain rebellion lies in the fragile consensus of nations working together. We have seen how difficult it is manage such sanctions, and the hawks among politicians scorn this kind of negotiation, feeling the impotence that unwieldy alliances spawn.

But the impotence of alliances is a sign of humility in foreign policy. The U.S. is no longer the policeman of world affairs, but a willing participant. The game of world domination ended with the Cold War. Iraq was our failed attempt to win that game. ISIS is a sign that the game has changed.

To the hammer we will have to add other tools, measuring tools, joining tools, digging and posting tools. Every world conflict is not a nail. Every coalition is not a hammer. We are merely participants in a world struggling for balance and justice.

Heeding Different Drummers

The House Republicans broke ranks on Wednesday in a vote to roll back the President’s immigrations reforms, including the legalization of children of illegal immigrants, the so-called “dreamers.” Twenty-six Republicans could not reconcile this attack on the dreamers with the majority’s intent to stand against the overreach of Presidential authority that allowed these young people to remain in the country legally.

When Republicans act without compassion, they always claim there is a higher cause at stake, such as Constitutional limitations on the President’s power. “Higher causes” have a way of disrupting millions of lives, but the principle is what matters to the Republican majority.

But the good news is that some Republicans are willing to separate themselves from the party in order to vote their conscience or at least to vote the way their constituents would want them to. Acts of conscience did not distinguish the previous Congress, in which Republicans voted as a mindless block to prevent the Democrats from having their way on critical issues.

Partisan voting has always seemed undemocratic to me. Even voting a straight ticket at the polls often seems like a mindless exercise in power-grabbing. The united stand takes precedence over the candidate or the issue at stake. Unified partisans have even lately been roused to keep things from getting done.

The same group-think has been deplored by Republicans in the context of organized labor. To most Republicans unions represent a coercive power, capturing the minds of laborers without respect for their individual voices. And Big Labor could be accused of bullying its membership into unity. They have nothing on the Republican Caucus, however. They don’t call their leaders “whips” for nothing.

There are unified stands for principle, and there are unified stands for obstinacy, but the difference has vaporized in Congress. Standing together against the rights of immigrant children seems obstinate to me, regardless of the “higher causes” invoked, and 26 Republicans agreed with me.

Those twenty-six are a sign of “hearing a different drummer,” as Henry David Thoreau eloquently declared. The drummer is not the Majority Leader or the Party Chairman, but the drummer of sincere conviction. We would have a different Congress if all listened to that drummer, both Republican and Democrat.

What would Jesus cut?

For a year I’ve worn this yellow bracelet on my right wrist, a bracelet sent to every member of Congress by Sojourners, a Christian advocacy group. It says “What would Jesus cut?”

I sincerely doubt that Sojourners has a complete list of programs endorsed by Jesus, because they are smarter than that. Rather the bracelet is a reminder that people in power are accountable for the decisions they make, not just to the voters but to their conscience and their God.

Jesus, himself,  was pretty cagey about politics. He dodged every effort to make him a king, he refused to align himself with the religious or political establishment, and, confronted with the dilemma of paying or refusing to pay taxes to the Roman government, he said,

Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.       (Mt 22:21)

I love that about Jesus: he refused to be manipulated for political gain. He did not covet power, and he spoke truth to power.  And that is what he expected of his followers.

So when I read the words, “What would Jesus cut?” I think of Jesus or God or your conscience standing by your shoulder to keep you from coveting influence or sucking up to power.  Pardon the coarse expression, but certain behavior is best described coarsely.

In my case, this admonition often means don’t join others who put down popular scapegoats, such as school administrators, apathetic  students, or Tea Party Republicans. They are easy targets, yet many of them try to heed their conscience against all odds.  I’ll admit to giving in to political diatribe now and then, but I believe that Jesus expects better of me.

In the case of Washington’s elite, it means don’t vote against your conscience just because the power brokers tell you to, whether they be Mitch McConnell or Harry Reid, John Boehner or Nancy Pelosi.  No one can presume to judge another’s conscience, but I think it is safe to say that we would not have gridlock in the Congress if everyone were voting his or her conscience.  Conscience is not that well-organized.

Imagine Jesus on the floor of Congress. Jesus, what about abortion? What about amnesty for illegals? What about trimming Medicare? What about reducing defense spending?  I don’t see Jesus asking how the party is voting or whether he will lose votes in the next election.  I don’t see him bargaining his vote to get on a committee he favors. I don’t see him intimidated by political heavyweights. And he expects the same of those who follow him.

If Jesus is not your exemplar, then your political conscience should speak to you.  Your conscience should have a voice at every vote, at every caucus, at every back room conversation where political bribes are offered.  You should not leap to compromise, if it involves your personal gain.

The politicos are shaking their heads and calling me naive, but plenty of Congressional icons have taken the high road through their careers. I’m not sure who voted their conscience in the recent vote on the nomination of Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense, but I know of four Senators who voted against their personal interests: Thad Cochran (Missisippi), Susan Collins (Maine), Mike Johanns (Nebraska) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska).  It’s a safe bet that these Senators will not be rewarded for voting against their party .

I smile when I see representatives crossing party lines to vote or standing strong on an issue they believe in, regardless of lobbyists or Congressional Whips. John McCain stood up for amnesty for undocumented residents. Chuck Hagel opposed the war in Iraq.  Kathleen Sibelius spoke out for women’s reproductive rights at the risk of excommunication from Church and Party.

I would be proud to be represented by such legislators and cabinet secretaries.  While I might disagree with them on other issues, I would respect their courage to vote their convictions and to buck the political tide. Party loyalty is very low on my hierarchy of values.  Jesus did not adhere to the tattered coalitions of power.

Jesus was not a Zealot nor an apologist for Rome. He visited with Pharisees and with tax collectors. He touched lepers and healed a Roman Centurion’s daughter.  He was almost murdered in his home village, and he was executed in Jerusalem, once holy, today a political pie. No one was less wedded to political power than Jesus.

And he expects the same of those who follow him.

Cheaters!

When I first read about gerrymandering in eleventh grade U.S. History, my sense of injustice was inflamed.  What could this be called but “cheating,” pretending to give everyone a vote, but fixing the outcome? Mr. Smith calmed me down by explaining the practice had been controlled in the present era, which would have been the 1960’s.

Yet in the past year the re-drawing of voting districts for political advantage has again emerged under the guise of representing shifting populations following the 2010 census.  At the end of the current election cycle we can see the skullduggery active again: Republicans dominate state and Congressional elections despite being a distinct minority in the popular vote.

The gerrymandering of voting districts is a subtle form of voter fraud. The party currently in power in each state gets to draw the lines of the voting districts, pushing voters into districts that will be lopsided for one party, so that more of the other districts can be commanded by the other party. In a February 2 article in the N.Y. Times Sam Wang reported how he used statistical probability to show how re-drawn districts compared to those created by an unbiased computer simulation of the voting map. He particularly noticed gerrymandering in swing states controlled by Republican legislatures:

Confounding conventional wisdom, partisan redistricting is not symmetrical between the political parties. By my seat-discrepancy criterion, 10 states are out of whack: the five I have mentioned, plus Virginia, Ohio, Florida, Illinois and Texas. Arizona was redistricted by an independent commission, Texas was a combination of Republican and federal court efforts, and Illinois was controlled by Democrats. Republicans designed the other seven maps. Both sides may do it, but one side does it more often.

Wang accused the state legislatures of changing the distribution of Republican voters in Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. In North Carolina Republicans changed a 7-6 disadvantage to a 9-4 advantage. In other words they gained three seats in the legislature merely by changing the district boundaries.

CHEATERS! my high school id cried out. While savvy politicians smiled and shook their heads, my heart churned with indignation. How can this be anything but manipulation of an ethical voting system, one that promises government “of the people, by the people, and for the people”? Why should cheaters prevail?

Yet many politicians of the Republican persuasion believe if you aren’t cheating, you aren’t trying,

The N.Y. Times (February 5) documented how inequities in the voting process are achieved in outrageously long waits to vote and overly complex ballots, which slow the voting process to a crawl.  A study by the Orlando Sentinel and an Ohio State professor estimated that 200,000 Floridians were denied their right to vote by the length of lines at the polls.  The Florida legislature had previously reduced the days for early voting from fourteen to eight, and the ballot was a jungle of initiatives that would make a lawyer blink.  No one can tell me that this was not a premeditated strategy to keep less privileged voters from exercising their Constitutional rights. Florida’s problems with voter irregularities have been documented in 2000 and 2008, as well as in the past election year.

In contrast the Times article cited California as a paragon of enabling voting with smaller voting districts resulting in average wait times of six minutes. Florida’s average wait was 45 minutes.  Is it a coincidence that California has a  Democratic legislature, while Florida, a perennial swing state, has a Republican legislature? Even suffering the humiliation of questionable election practices in the 2000 presidential election has not humbled the Florida legislature to facilitate voting, because it is not in the political interests of Republicans to encourage voting.

This is not shrewd strategy, it is unethical voter suppression.  Of all the political shenanigans that tamper with fairness and equity, this is the most despicable, because it threatens a fundamental right of American citizens.  It approaches the manipulative practices of pseudo-democratic nations, which record landslides of 90% or more for the party in power.  Republicans supporting such schemes should blush with embarrassment when they speak of defending the U.S. Constitution and our precious freedoms.

Now I understand why Republicans were so astonished at losing the Presidential election, plus a handful of Congressional seats. They had rigged the election! They had predetermined its outcome!

Ah, but the Democrats registered and drove their supporters to the polls, winning an election by increasing voter registration and participation, of all things. Justice smiled in Florida, where President Obama won a close tally of votes, but it could have easily gone the other way. The ballot and the voting lines were mercilessly long.

Instead of improving their political appeal, Republicans tossed us a banana peel, and we slipped headlong into making them the majority party wherever representatives are elected by red-tainted voting districts and where voting regulations favor the shrewd and privileged.

Is politics so grimy that we can’t call “Cheater!” anymore? Is no one else outraged that one party consistently undermines democracy by scheming so only their kind gets to vote or gets represented? Is this not the most un-American scheme allowed by law?

Don’t tell me I’m a sore loser. My guys won, despite Republican dirty tricks. So there, CHEATERS!