While it's not yet known whether the President's large body of critics will finally run him to ground the other question is how the Republican leadership will make their stand on tax reform, the budget and Affordable Health Care Act amendments after the Labor Day recess. In spite of the outpouring of rage over the President's behavior over racism in Charlottesville he is not without many allies who are content to see the status quo of missing infrastructure jobs programs and anemic education funding continue--under cover of "traditional," racist values.
The clearly uncertain future for the nation and its stability will need more than the current emphasis by progressive young people on righteous resistance. After stalwart resistance, what's the strategy on single-payer, housing for moderate and low income families in the big cities and what about international partnerships for peace, justice and the environment?
Famous community organizer, Saul Alinsky, used to begin speeches to faith leaders by sharing his wonderment at just how they folded up those wings on their backs to be able to lie down to sleep. He was calling for more than vestments of good intentions. In this summer of popular defenestration of old idols like Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee the larger challenge comes from whether we even recognize the monuments not made of marble or bronze but who claim to be our fulfillment. There is among the Silicon Valley gargantuan corporations more than a little resemblance between themselves and that old Canaanite god of biblical reference: both claim to exist for your own good!
With progressive community organizations sponsoring programs they describe as training for "righteous resistance" at least one lesson of history is how the good is defined, by whom and for what purpose. Critical thinking will be required to answer that question. It's always complicated.
Here's a little known example drawn from Stephen Kinzer's book: The Brothers: John Foster Dulles and Alan Dulles and their secret world war," [Henry Holt, 2013]...described by John Le Carre as "an essential allegory for our own times":
The Cold War now in the process of re-start was born not after WW II but before it when Wall Street firms like Sullivan and Cromwell (S & C) put the financing packages together that enabled the rise of Adolf Hitler, first by freeing it from its WW I debt burden and by issuing in 1935 the bonds to re-finance the German steel, and weapons manufacturing titan, Krupp; and further enabling a chemical and rare metals cartel that included I. G. Farben, subsequent producer of the Zyklon B gas used in the Nazi death camps to exterminate millions.
Later to be Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles was managing partner at S & C in those pre-war years and was a defender and advocate for Adolf Hitler. He saw Hitler and the Nazis as a bulwark against Bolshevism. The Germans with their great achievements in language, science, theology and the arts were kinfolk. Dulles was fixated on communism in general and the Soviet Union in particular as enemies of Christianity. He never saw any difference between making money at S & C and the high purpose of Christianity.
After the Second World War Dulles and the Allied High Command saw to it that the Nazi war record of hundreds of German scientists were wiped clean--even Werner von Braun's, who created the Nazi V-I and V-II rockets that reigned down on London, was put to work creating the U. S. space program. Dulles advocated for a global civilized society and interacted in World Council of Churches meetings attended by Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich and others. But after the war he gradually developed a Devil theory of theology at about the same time that he became Dwight Eisenhower' Secretary of State. In that role he led and enabled others such as George Kennan to launch and define a Cold War that sponsored the overthrow of democratically elected governments such as Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran, and others. It was this definition of evil that was championed by many (not all) faith leaders and led sequentially to millions of deaths in the long fight against the devil, the Soviet Union and China, in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.
The moral of this history is that the youthful advocates of dramatic change in the current direction of the Trump White House toward an era of righteousness face the necessity for critical evaluation of complex initiative and promises; challenging every step of the way how the promises of the rich and powerful affect the common good; identifying and critiquing the interplay of their own self-interest. Constantly making sure they've not been captured by a new attractive idol
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