Of Cabbages and Kings

 The International Rescue Committee reports that since 2015 Saudi Arabia has undertaken 18,000 airstrikes on Yemen averaging one every 99 minutes, one-third of which have hit non-military targets. "August was the most violent month of 2018 in Yemen with 500 people killed in just nine days."

        The IRC, created in 1931 by Albert Einstein, Paul Tillich and other refugees from Nazism, is currently led by David Millibrand, former British Foreign Secretary and son of parents also forced to flee the Nazis. As previously reported here the killing in Yemen is being done by U. S. made planes and bombs, refueled midair by U. S. Air Force tanker aircraft piloted by U. S. airmen.

        The intensity suggests desperation. By many accounts the Saudi ground war against the Houthi rebels (said to be Iran's surrogets) in Yemen is not going well, turned into a stale-mate on the ground. Its horrors are part of the Trump-Bibi Netanyahu-John Bolton pathological obsession with Iran as Middle East monster. Zeid bin al-Hussein, former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, cites Nietzsche's observation that if you set out to fight monsters you have to be careful you do not turn into a monster yourself. Eighteen thousand bombing runs should surely qualify.

        The coalition that Saudi Arabia (a Sunni Arab nation)--plus the U. S. and Israel--has cobbled together is a wobbly fertile crescent composed of Sunni followers scattered from Lebanon through Iraq and into Afghanistan, but these demographics don't really work. In addition to Shiite Iran, Shia Muslims make up the majority of the civilian population in Lebanon, Iraq, Bahrain and Azerbaijan and of course irony of ironies in Syria which is 70 percent Sunni, but they're the enemy!

        Iran, on the other hand continues to conform to the inspection requirements of the nuclear accord of 2015 that Trump has now abrogated and the EU opposes the Trump/Pompeo/Netanyahu strategy against Iran.  

        There's more woe for the Trump-Pompeo strategy: including the circumspective and arms length attitude of both Turkey and Russia; while not exactly waiting in the wings there is also China-already on station in the Middle East with many lucrative development contracts. A very imperfect union indeed.

        Hence the night flight last Wednesday by Secretary of State Pompeo to Riyad to meet with King Salman and his Princely CEO, Mohammid bin Salman was not to solve the hideous murder of Jamal Kashoggi, but to prevent further damage to this Trump/Israeli inspired strategy to destroy Iran. Far more important, it was to keep the biggest military and development contracts in the world in U. S. hands. Briefly summarized by the by the New York Times today (10/20/18):

• "Saudi Arabia is pouring $20 billion into a new investment fund run by Wall Street's Blackstone Group. The French oil giant Total just inked a nine-billion-euro petrochemical deal with the kingdom. The British defense company BAE Systems is selling 48 Typhoon combat jets to Riyadh for an estimated five billion British pounds...."
• "In the last decade, Saudi Arabia was awarded $138.9 billion in potential military contracts under the United States' Foreign Military Sales rules, according to the Congressional Research Service. American companies including Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Boeing, not to mention President Trump, are salivating over recent Saudi pledges to buy nearly $110 billion worth of arms in coming years. Much of that commitment has yet to be fulfilled....
• "And that's just spending on weaponry. Saudi Arabia has also dished out billions in fees to American and European banks for advising on business deals. The kingdom bought around $20 billion worth of American products last year, including Ford autos and Boeing jets.
• "Riyadh also sealed $15 billion in deals with General Electric for goods and services in areas like power generation, mining and health care. And the oil giants can't possibly walk away from one of the world's biggest producer. American start-ups have benefited from the largess, as Saudi Arabia became their biggest source of capital last year. Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund recently invested $1 billion in Lucid, a competitor to Elon Musk's Tesla car company, and $3.5 billion in Uber.

So you see it's all about the money.

        In the meantime, half of the American religious community remains captive to the power symbols of Trumpian evangelicalism because it is so American, therefore so right with God! The other half, the liberals-with notable exceptions-continue too often deaf to the cries of hundreds of children dying in Yemen or drowning in the Mediterranean or being separated from their parents at our southern border. At two liberal congregations this writer observed in the past week not a word was spoken about the growing savagery. It is to weep.

 

The Descent

        As the Fall leaves change color and the first rains in six months fall in California the nation continues its descent. Like Dante's Inferno there is a place in hell for all of us from the Prayer Book's "things we've left undone" to Dante's indictment of any "who have perverted their human intellect and committed fraud or malice against their fellowman."

        There was a lot of that last week as the Congress despoiled public confidence in itself and in the Supreme Court, which Nicholas Kristoff reminds us now has one-third of its male members credibly accused of sexual misconduct (NY Times 10/7/18). 

        Part of this calamity can be put at the feet of the Techno-oligarchs, those supposedly friendly billionaires who lead Amazon, Apple, Facebook, etc. whose communication networks are changing the life forms of planet earth in a way that substitutes technological wizardry for lived human experience and feeling. Their algorithms miniaturize sensibilities so that people are unable to muster responses to their surroundings that range from the horrifying suffering of tens of thousands of immigrants to the humiliation of sexual violence.

       The path for the rise to legitimacy of the Oligarchs is now well laid out in this Republican triumph at the Supreme Court and in its control not only of the of the Senate but of two-thirds of state governorships and twenty-six state legislatures (as previously reported in this bog).

        There's much more to this "friendly fascism," as some have called it, than meets the eye. Above and beyond even the Silicon barons is the growing idea advanced by the Koch brothers, the Cato Institute and American Heritage Foundation (among others) that celebrates liberty as an entitlement of only a distinct and virtuous minority--the owners of wealth and production--whose rights are considered greater than the rights of a majority of citizens. Thus in 2010 in its Citizens United decision the Supreme Court defined wealth as a form of speech to be protected by the First Amendment. 

        This view is by no means an outlier but has been at the heart of the Republican leadership's perspective since at least 2012.

In a new book, "Democracy in Chains," Historian Nancy MacLean at Duke University describes why, in this view, Democracy must be modified to protect the owners of capital from the "tyranny of the majority." 

"Democracy is inimical to economic liberty," she reports. Protecting the liberty of the wealthy and powerful is of greater importance to the nation than the rights of the less affluent.

        MacLean's Democracy in Chains and Dark Money by Jane Mayer make clear that the direction of the Trump/Republican machine is drawing on and reintroducing the principle of chattel slavery to justify its moral legitimacy; just as slaveholders considered themselves the virtuous minority called by God to govern an unruly African slave majority, it is now intended that this rule should govern policies today such as privatization of education and the right to eliminate union power. In this light the Supreme Court is now positioned to be the Grand Inquisitor and representative for the interests of Oligarchs.

        Which is why faith communities must reconsider themselves: not as great leaders and great congregations inspiring the rest of the world, but as outliers, underground institutions; failures at entrepreneurship, losers in the universe of algorithms. The humble mission for people of the Books is to spend less time reciting their memoirs and more time taking down these reigning demons.   We can look at Isaiah, Jesus and ML King for inspiration.

         The demonic truth is that the Democrats' lead may have largely evaporated with the triumph of Trump and Kavanaugh. The Republicans will almost certainly keep control of the Senate; a Democrat sweep of the House is no longer assured. The economy is booming; Trump is ascendant again.

 

It all now hangs on the size of voter turnout.

        There is still time to redeem the time being; meaning in this very moment and over the next four weeks the time is come to prod and inspire aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents--your neighbors included--to vote in the midterm elections. Rocket science is not required to know that such efforts can bear fruit. The Pew Research Center reports only 40 percent of eligible voters turn out for midterm elections. The good news is that a full-on effort can move the needle.

        Perhaps another great outlier of history can offer inspiration: Joan of Arc, who in Jean Anhouil's play about her--named The Lark--was portrayed with her underlying innocence and confidence about life. Just so, she claimed that God had told her to resist the decades of foreign occupation and political corruption. "Saint Michael said that I had to climb this mountain of icy injustice even if I tore my hands and my face ran with blood. God wants to see action first," she cried.

       Political campaign experts say it takes seven contacts to get an infrequent voter to the polls. Climb this icy mountain toward a more just society. It's our job.