It’s Time For A National Gut Check
Today, many church-goers will hear the reading from St. John’s gospel about a young boy who offers his five barley loaves and two fish to help feed a crowd that has come to hear Jesus. His small offering prompts Jesus to mulitply the loaves and fish so that everyone is fed. There are even leftovers.
I keep thinking of the courage of that boy, willing to give what meager amount he had. It’s a reminder that even a little can accomplish much when we share.
This gospel story hits home in a particular way because so much of what we hear these days from one side of the political spectrum comes from a mindset of scarcity. Crowds cheer when told to put “America first,” as if we are somehow at risk — as if our country isn’t blessed with an abundance of food, wealth, natural resources.
It is also a perspective at odds with the fundamental gospel message that there is “neither Greek nor Jew … for all are one in Christ.” It ignores what astronauts who have viewed our planet from outer space repeatedly have tried to tell us: we are all inter-connected on a common home.
I just finished watching a week’s worth of campaign speeches by the Republican nominee and his running mate. For people who profess to “love America” — whose supporters shout “USA! USA!” at every chance — these candidates present a dystopian vision where very little is right in our naton, if not on the verge of absolute collapse.
At campaign rallies, the Republican nominee routinely uses his platform to prattle on — often for more than an hour — in what can only be described as one long stream of consciousness gripefest. The speeches are full of dire predictions and sharp criticisms. In this twisted view of the nation, it would appear we can barely walk out our front door without risking being robbed or killed, likely by an immigrant.
Woefully absent are specific policies that might better the lives of Americans. Those specifics are replaced with glittering generalities and boasts (usually false) about having been “the best” or “the most successful” president in the history of the world. In other words, it’s all about him. It’s not about us.
I write as someone who has voted for both Democratic and Republican candidates in the past, choosing the person I believe will best serve the public, regardless of political party. I make these observations mainly as a person of faith, disheartend by the maestrom of lies, distortions and overwhelming nastiness infusing this campaign.
Donald Trump recently told a gathering in West Palm Beach, FL called a “The Believers Summit” that “I love you Christians. I’m Christian.” He received a standing ovation.
I really can’t fathom what version of the gospels he has been reading, if any. Certainly not the one where Jesus washes the feet of his disciples, modeling humility, modeling that leaders must be servants. Or the gospel where Jesus says what we do for “the least” of our brothers and sisters we do for him.
In a letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul says it is not enough to say you are a Christian. He points out, “You must live in a manner worthy of the call you have received with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love.” This is what we need to strive for. This is what we need to hear from those who would be president.
The Republican standard bearer has repeatedly referred to immigrants as “animals” and “not human.” We are told we’ve got to keep undocumented immigrants out because they will take jobs from Americans. In reality, U.S. unemployment is at its lowest since 1969. Everywhere you go, you see “Drivers Wanted” printed on the backs of trucks and “Now Hiring” signs in factories, restaurants, pharmacies, supermarkets.
The nastiness we had hoped would evaporate following the attempt on Donald Trump’s life has not materialized. He has called the Democratic standard bearer — a black and Asian American woman who was elected a district attorney, a state attorney general, a U.S. senator and now vice president — “a bum” and “dumb as a rock.”
Several of his supporters in Congress now label Kamala Harris a “DEI hire.” The reference is to Diversity, Equality and Inclusion programs meant to level the playing field in institutions and corporations. They imply that Harris didn’t earn any of these milestones. It is a blatantly racist comment that those making it don’t even attempt to walk back.
What are we coming to as a nation?
In recent days, a video clip has surfaced in which vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance denigrated women who don’t have children as “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made.”
Cat ladies, really? Does Mr. Vance — a convert to Catholicism — include in that group the thousands of Catholic sisters who chose to forgo marriage and childbearing in order to serve their church, to teach and mentor other people’s children. As the limbo rock song goes, “How low can you go?”
It seems too that we are suffering as a nation from amnesia. More than 400,000 Americans died of Covid while Trump was president. A Lancet Commission study concluded that as many as 40 percent of Covid cases and deaths that occurred in Trump’s final year in office could have been avoided had the former president effectively galvanized the public to fight the pandemic.
Instead, the report found he “publicly dismissed its threat (despite privately acknowledging it), discouraged action as infection spread, and eschewed international cooperation.”
Are we also to dismss the fact that people who profess to crave law and order stormed our Capitol building in 2021, assaulted its police officers, and defecated on its floors — all in the name of keeping their man in power?
Have we forgotten that a court found this candidate guilty of sexually abusing a woman he barely knew in a department store dressing room? Of falsifying business records to cover up another extramarital sexual encounter? That he faces a plethora of other charges, including trying to overturn the 2020 election?
The candidate’s supporters would have us believe he is the victim here. Common sense tells us otherwise.
Still, the crowds keep showing up at Trump rallies, they keep cheering and accepting every word that comes from their leader’s mouth.
It is truly time for a national gut check.
