On The New Sanctuary Movement, Difference, and Me

I expected a day like yesterday, but then I ran into Chris Hedges.

Two concepts, one that has never occurred to me, and one that is currently on the front burner in my own life, smacked me in the head, pretty much derailing whatever little task list I had planned for this day.

But about the one that I’m dealing with right now, in my own life.

I haven’t seen it put so well as in this excerpt from Hedges’ review for Truthdig of John Gray’s Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia:

What Gray fails to grasp is the transcendence and power that comes with achieving the moral life, a life a realist has to concede is absurd. There is a meaning to existence. It is found, as Fyodor Dostoevsky, Joseph Conrad and Vasily Grossman knew in simple, blind acts of human kindness, especially towards the outcast and the stranger. It is discovered when we confront and acknowledge the inevitable chains and limitations of human nature but do not completely succumb to them. These small acts of compassion, never free from the taint of self-interest, do not make the world a quantifiably better place. We will not be rewarded for them. We will not save ourselves from evil, suffering and death. But these acts mean that we have, if only for a moment, felt what it means to be fully human. We have reacted not as animals in a herd, but as individuals who rose above our baser instincts and the clamor of the mob to defy hatred and bigotry and to cherish life. These acts of compassion allow us to become conscious, if only for a moment, in an unconscious world. [Emphasis added.]

I live in Arizona, where the “border crisis” is a very present personal moral challenge. Like many others, I am struggling with the problems and opportunities offered by The New Sanctuary Movement. My first instinct is to run away. I am too easily confused by legalities, when the transcendent truth, as Tex Sample recently pointed out to me, is that we have a legal system that frequently achieves technical legality but often doesn't achieve justice.

Anyway, I’m still on the periphery of The New Sanctuary Movement-Arizona, a project of Intefaith Worker Justice. I’m not yet on the front lines, so I don’t want any confusion about the strength of my character on this issue.

What I do want to say is this. The one reliable, fail-safe, within-myself touchstone that I know I have for getting clear about human justice issues is my queerness.

As I've written about before, recently I had to confront Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s hotline for reporting “illegals.” My off-the-top reaction was, “Well, I wouldn’t report anybody myself, but what’s so wrong with that?” However, once I thought of my own experience on the other side of the border, so to speak, I understood immediately what’s wrong with that. A lot.

Arpaio’s hotline is immoral for at least three big reasons, all of which boil down to doing serious damage to what Martin Luther King, Jr. called “the beloved community.”

One, it targets certain human beings in a way that encourages racist profiling. Though there is no way to tell by looking who is an “illegal immigrant” and who is an American citizen, we are being encouraged to act as if there were and follow our worst inclinations.

Two, it reduces human complexity—our individual humanity, the one thing that lets us recognize each other as embodiments of the Sacred—to one mere action, and that one is of highly questionable “illegality.”

Three, it injects fascism directly into to our neighborhoods. Hotlines like this institutionalize anonymous ratting, which enables individuals and communities to sustain the myth of superiority: Ratters never have to confront the consequences of their actions.

The assumption behind the hotline is that every caller will be right and all will call for legitimate reasons only. Meanwhile, however, there is no accountability whatsoever for the consequences of simply being wrong, let alone for being intentionally mean, delusional, racist, vindictive, etc. When there is no accountability, we humans let our nasty side out to play in what soon becomes an endless spiral of suspicion, ratting, revenge, violence, and community breakdown. Didn't we learn all about this from the French Revolution and Nazi Germany? Ain't we been there, done that?

Finally, by shifting responsibility for immigration law enforcement to average folks who are neither trained nor authorized (read given structures of accountability and procedure) to take them on, it makes us all auxiliary vigilantees. Which brings us back to fascism.

However. I know that I wouldn’t get this if I hadn’t personally been on the receiving end of the Arpaio vigilantee mentality. My queerness, in a culture that perceives gay and lesbian people as outlaws, through projection and propaganda, is their "illegal alienness" in a culture that perceives undocumented immigrants in the same way.

Which brings me back to The New Sanctuary Movement. I believe that Hedges is right:

There is a meaning to existence. It is found, as Fyodor Dostoevsky, Joseph Conrad and Vasily Grossman knew, in simple, blind acts of human kindness, especially towards the outcast and the stranger. It is discovered when we confront and acknowledge the inevitable chains and limitations of human nature but do not completely succumb to them.

When the Sanctuary Movement sticks to a core principle from all great religions – that we are called to give our best to -- TaDa! --none other than the stranger and the outcast--and does not allow itself to exploit people in the process of creating public education moments, then it gives us a personal opportunity to

[rise] above our baser instincts and the clamor of the mob to defy hatred and bigotry and to cherish life. These acts of compassion allow us to become conscious, if only for a moment, in an unconscious world.

Two last thoughts. The reason for our myriad personal differences may then be that, if they are lived out fully and considered intentionally (a big if), they become the thing that lets us discern the true difference between mere legalism and justice, and give us the courage to act on that insight.

These days I often feel powerless to stop the BushCo juggernaut of fascism, greed, brutality, and violence that’s rolling over our country at high speed. What my personal struggle suggests to me--still, yet again, one more time--is that we are most powerful change agents when we act in our own communities. That is a battleground of human scale, where victories are imaginable and can sustain us when they occur. That’s where we can best stop fascism, racism, apocalyptic Christianist fundamentalism, and corporatist greed. That's where our focus as progressives should be: thinking globally, acting locally. (You want an example? Local elections were the tool that the fascist Right used to take over the GOP. If they can do that, we can, too.)

More on the Fascist Mercenary Force, BlackwaterUSA

More on BlackwaterUSA from the Christian Science Monitor.

And this, from Democracy Now!

Mercenary, mercenary, mercenary.
Fascist, fascist, fascist.

Fascism Isn't Coming to The USA. It's Here.

Today’s latest Senate disgrace needs to be evaluated in the context of a purely fascist ideology that, gradually over the past 30 years, has seized our country while we were busy refusing to suspend our disbelief that it could happen here.

To some, today’s Senate resolution condemning MoveOn.org’s New York Times ad seems just garden-variety congressional stupidity. In the scheme of things, it is admittedly a smallish thing seen next to anti-war soldiers mysteriously dying, but I think it is more worrisome than mere stupidity. The US Senate, part of the highest tier of government, has chosen to strike directly at our constitutional right of free speech. This seems to suggest the coming-out of something quite troubling.

When God and Country are conflated in an increasingly Christianist military force that, in turn, symbolizes the perfect righteousness of our ends and means, the suggestion that its senior spokesman might be a fraud – could be corrupt, deceitful, and complicit -- is the one implication that a fascist regime cannot afford to let walk unassailed into daylight.

But this ad, which simply asked, “General Petraeus or General Betray-Us?,” publicly pinned the lie to the symbolic heart of fascism. An attack was inevitable.

This isn't so much about the person. I don't know what Petraeus believes, but it's hard to think much of the principles of a commander who doesn't really know whether the deaths he oversees are doing anything to make us safer, but nevertheless hasn't resigned for that reason.

This is about symbolism. The decorated uniform of highest rank wasn’t just meant to lend credibility where it has been so lacking. In the context of everything else we've seen in the last 30 years--especially the last six as the curtain has risen--I'm comfortable saying more. I believe it was also meant to suggest subtly that "moral authority" could be enthroned by force here, too, if necessary, and yes, to dissuade any challenges. By costuming him in full, decorated uniform, the theatre manager intended us to understand that the USA is now God, Might, and Fatherland conflated, and that to question him is to question the new ruling trinity.

But the ad pre-empted the vignette, and in my view, the ad stands as a distinctively populist and distinctively brave American impertinence.

It speaks aloud what we’ve all had to live with for some time: That our leaders, some civilian, some military, some corporate, are equally comfortable eating lobster bisque in a zone of atrocity as perpetrating undeniably deep and extravagant violations of human dignity and the moral, cultural, social, and economic order of Iraq and of our own country. And are happy to lie about it all. If this isn't fascism, I don't know what is.

Thus, the despotic little tanty voiced in the Senate today was inevitable. That it was authentic fury and fear just unmasks these fascists, and their appeasers, for who they are.

We citizens shouldn't let this stand. Small as it may seem, today's resolution must become a turning point at which we call a fascist an un-American, anti-constitution fascist, and demand their resignations en masse. The resignations won't happen, I know, but let us at least get out the checkbooks for MoveOn.org and let our voices be heard.

Now is just not the time to sit down and shut up.

The Bremer Edicts

If you're interested in the edicts of former Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) head Paul Bremmer, they can be found at the website of the nonpartisan Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

Two assessments of interest:

Do the Bremer edicts limit Iraq's sovereignty?
To a degree. Two in particular impose significant restrictions, says Nathan Brown, a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University and the author of a recent article on Bremer’s rulings. Order 17 grants immunity from Iraqi law to all members of the U.S.-led multinational force in Iraq, as well as to foreign contractors and diplomats. Order 57 establishes independent inspectors general in every Iraqi ministry who are authorized to conduct investigations, audits, evaluations, and other reviews. The Bremer-appointed inspectors serve five-year terms.

What is the process for changing the Bremer rules?
Allawi and his Council of Ministers propose a change that legally supercedes one of Bremer’s edicts and win the unanimous approval of the Presidential Council. However, a 100-member Iraqi National Council, due to be formed in July, can veto any Allawi decision if two-thirds of the council oppose it. Once an elected government is in place after January 2005, law-making authority will shift to a 275-member transitional assembly.

Order 17 is the one that appears to let Blackwater and everybody else off the hook for any and everything they do, including all US contractors, for any and every dollar they steal. Order 17 should be named the "Heads I Win/Tails You Lose" order.

But I'm sure it's an immense relief to the Iraqis to know that Bremmer apppointees are keeping watch over their dinars and their oil.

It's So Much Worse Than You Thought. Now Get Moving!

Just as parallel projects are being conducted in New Orleans and on the Gulf Coast, the Bush Mafia is operating a huge plunder-and-pillage privatization scam in Iraq. Read this story in the Rolling Stone, and get ready for your head to explode.

Teaser:

Since time immemorial, the distribution of government largesse had followed a staid, paper-laden procedure in which the federal government would post the details of a contract in periodicals like Commerce Business Daily or, more ­recently, on the FedBizOpps Web site. Competitive bids were solicited and contracts were awarded in accordance with the labyrinthine print of the U.S. Code, a straightforward system that worked well enough before the Bush years that, as one lawyer puts it, you could 'count the number of cases of criminal fraud on the fingers of one hand.'

. . . What no one knew at the beginning of the war was that the Bush administration had essentially decided to treat the entire Iraqi theater as an exception to the rules. All you had to do was get to Iraq and the game was on.

But getting there wasn't easy. To travel to Iraq, would-be contractors needed permission from the Bush administration, which was far from blind in its appraisal of applicants. In a much-ballyhooed example of favoritism, the White House originally installed a clown named Jim O'Beirne [husband of undoubtedly objective political commentator Kate, BTW] at the relevant evaluation desk in the Department of Defense. O'Beirne proved to be a classic Bush villain, a moron's moron who judged applicants not on their Arabic skills or their relevant expertise but on their Republican bona fides; he sent a twenty-four-year-old who had never worked in finance to manage the reopening of the Iraqi stock exchange, and appointed a recent graduate of an evangelical university for home-schooled kids who had no accounting experience to manage Iraq's $13 billion budget.

And you thought it was about WMD. Or removing a dictator. Or, wait, um, bringing “democracy” to Iraq.

I guess we know now why Republicans haven’t put repairing our infrastructure high on the government’s “to do” list. My God, there are starving cronies out there!

If after reading “The Great Iraq Swindle” you can manage to choke out an intelligible syllable, you might want to call your representative and senators and RIP THEM A NEW ONE. Then, make sure everyone you know hears about this.

One last thought: This could not continue, here or abroad, without our complicity. We know, and, face it, this story is not new news, but we haven't put sufficient pressure on our media and Congress to investigate, indict, and impeach. Nor, evidently, have Democrats learned the relatively simple art of influencing American public opinion.