The Baseball Game

        Like a wound that will not heal the Comey-Sessions Intelligence Committee hearing produced a theater of the absurd marching under the banner of the fired FBI Director's foreign policy: "It's not about Republicans or Democrats," it's that the Russians are "coming after America....That's what this is about, we remain that shining city on the hill. And they don't like it."

        It's hard to say with a straight face since the hearings have barely raised a sweat over the Russian threat. A thousand ships have not been launched. We're at Defcon V not Defcon II, and the leisurely pace of multiple investigations make clear that the Congressional fight is over control of resources among the comfortable classes not foreign policy. There's lots of money to be made under cover of the Russian threat: tens of billions in defense contracts, hundreds of billions more to fund virtuous American allies such as the Saudis, Egypt, the Arab Emirates and Israel.  It's the business transactions that move the moral tone of foreign policy idealism into the realm of the preposterous. 

        While it's clear that if President Trump falls at least in Washington the ground will not be soaked in tears, yesterday's shooting at American congressmen  and lobbyists at play exposed the rising tide of violence over inequality. The Gun Violence Achieve website (http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/last)  reports 14 other shootings the past 72 hours.  As the shaken Congressional leaders courageously announce they will go forward with their annual baseball game, they so far have un-courageously made clear they have no plans to convene in special session to adopt gun control or pass a public infrastructure program. 

        The hard question veiled by Washington theatrics is whether anything can lure American leaders to abandon the nostrum sounded by injured Texas Congressman Roger Williams last evening that "America is the greatest nation in the world."  This conceit in the face of American usual and customary racism and the rising new world powers of China and India make clear how grateful we must be for the other rising at hand: a trans-class, post-racial younger adult movement sweeping both the country and around the world.  Notable for its absence in churches, synagogues and temples, clear-eyed about all the customary theatrics of the political pros, this younger generation's spirit will need the cautionary tale of Jacob at the Jabbok River who discovered  that after wresting with God his blessing was the broken hip that would ensure his humanity.

        That's what the latest cover-ups want to cover-over.  In the midst of the current uproar about impeachment and a desperate search for solid ground the new times call all people of faith and serious purpose to write a new story about lessons learned and a common humanity embraced.  There's no time left to waste.