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| Sarah and James Polk; Donald Trump Sources: left, right. |
He is a bewildered, confounded, and miserably perplexed man.
—Congressman Abraham Lincoln on President James K. Polk.
Unlike the 2026-? war with Iran, the Mexican-American War (1846-48) actually included a U.S. congressional declaration of war, but one that was arguably obtained under false pretenses. Essentially, the U.S. army had to lure Mexican soldiers into a fight in order to obtain a pretext for war.
Abraham Lincoln consistently opposed this war, and he bluntly gave his reasons in, among other occasions, this powerful speech in the House of Representatives in January 1848.
His arguments seem to me to apply pretty well to the war that we and Israel are in now, against Iran. The war with Mexico was an unconstitutional war, based on fiction; it was supposed to be a short war; the supposed gains of the war should have outweighed the losses in combat, but didn't; in any event, the object was to steal from Mexico, which Lincoln judged an offense to the honor of the USA. Lincoln memorably referred to the way that war's romantic propaganda distracts from the shameful reality: ...
... [Polk aims] to involve the two countries in a war, and trusting to escape scrutiny, by fixing the public gaze upon the exceeding brightness of military glory—that attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood—that serpent’s eye that charms to destroy, he plunged into it, and has swept, on and on, till, disappointed in his calculation of the ease with which Mexico might be subdued, he now finds himself, he knows not where.
I do my fair share of following war news on the Internet. So much of the coverage features analysts and commentators doing their best to make sense of an insane war. I see them sitting behind impressive desks or standing in front of charts and digital displays covering whole walls, but mostly what they are doing is trying to guess what this or that inarticulate soundbite might mean.
The reality, which they are not really equipped to analyze in terms of dignified commentary is this: the war was initiated by two corrupt men, one of whom is a completely rogue U.S. president. The news programs are reduced to providing us endless scenes of smoke rising from the impacts of missiles, drones, and the remains of midair interceptions, punctuated by excerpts from bombastic, factually irrelevant statements and press conferences. Donald Trump's contribution to this scene is his constant referral to himself. Everything is about him and what he feels in his bones. Even Stalin pretended to be answerable to structures and committees! This is not a scene that lends itself to rational commentary, but those analysts have jobs to do, cameras pointing at them, and three minutes and fifteen seconds to fill before it's the next well-meaning analyst's turn.
And they're certainly not entirely useless. Today I heard Jon Stewart say, "War is how Americans learn about geography."
I appreciated Anne Applebaum's blunt description of this unprecedented dependence of a whole country, and its fateful global consequences, on an incompetent and thoroughly corrupt individual.
Donald Trump does not think strategically. Nor does he think historically, geographically, or even rationally. He does not connect actions he takes on one day to events that occur weeks later. He does not think about how his behavior in one place will change the behavior of other people in other places.
He does not consider the wider implications of his decisions. He does not take responsibility when these decisions go wrong. Instead, he acts on whim and impulse, and when he changes his mind—when he feels new whims and new impulses—he simply lies about whatever he said or did before.
Applebaum's full article is here: Everyone but Trump Understands What He’s Done.
Back in our own communities here in the USA, are we living life as usual, or are we in one or another form of the chaos the people at the top have unleashed? Our "dual reality" was well illustrated in an illustration on Vox by cartoonist Pete Gamlen:
Sigal Samuel's accompanying article: Your friends are still acting like everything is normal in America. What do you do? She describes this dual reality in the terms proposed by a German Jewish political scientist and labor lawyer, Ernst Fraenkel, who observed the pre-WWII Germany becoming divided into a compliant, passive, and comfortable "Normative State" and its terrifying parallel "Prerogative State" under direct, arbitrary, and repressive state power. Remain passive and compliant and maybe you won't someday find yourself abruptly transferred from normalcy to repression, a transfer that is entirely at the discretion of those in power.
As Samuel's article acknowledges, we're not yet quite at that point in the USA, but that may be small comfort to Renee Nicole Good of Minneapolis, Minnesota, and her family ... and all those on the left side of Pete Gamlen's graphic.
Sigal Samuel's article ends with several suggestions of how we can avoid fatal passivity and regain connection across these divides for the sake of justice. Here are a few of mine; please add yours! As always, the best-fit involvement takes into account your own spiritual gifts, your temperament, and the mutual obligations you have with your own community.
- Keep observing the realities around you to the best of your capacity, and don't let propaganda from any side or camp (including your own!) do your thinking for you.
- Send blessings and prayers to the individuals you become aware of as you follow the news. (Even though the USA's news channels tend to show Arabs as faceless masses, for example, look for the human beings as best you can, and pay attention to their credible spokespeople.)
- Join ethically-organized and ethically-led protests. The more local protests and movements may be just as important as the mass downtown events.
- Following the principles of evangelism with integrity (for example, "permission evangelism"), tell people about Jesus. Help differentiate his tender leadership from the misrepresentations promoted by white Christian nationalism, but do it from intimacy with the Prince of Peace rather than a sly motivation to one-up those whom you oppose.
- Cultivate good relationships with your legislators and local media. Take wise steps to become known as a reliable source of helpful quotations for journalists.
- Grieve with those who grieve, rejoice with those who rejoice; be kind to each other and to yourself. It's a race—an urgent one—but not a competition.
Pete Gamlen's cartoon really caught me in a deep place. Sometimes I've been feeling so far from either of the dual realities. And for some reason, around the time I found myself resisting this sense of alienation, I watched a couple of those smoking cityscape videos as Israeli bombs fell on Lebanon. I began meditating on the dead people lined up at Heaven's gate, and praying for them to be at peace.
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| "Rank Strangers" in our classroom in Elektrostal, Russia. |
We Quakers are not known for speculating about life after death, or about what heaven is like. But I couldn't help wondering what was happening to those whose bodies and souls were being violently separated by high-tech munitions, some of which were paid for by our taxes. In this swirl of alienation and distress, I remembered a recording made by one of my favorite blues musicians, harpist Charlie Musselwhite. It was a track from his album One Night in America, "Rank Strangers to Me," originally created by the gospel writer Albert E. Brumley, Sr. It's a song we used as one of the gapfill exercises in our listening comprehension classes at the New Humanities Institute in Elektrostal.
I don't know many songs that combine grief and hope as well as this one:
I wandered alone to my home by the river
Where in youth's early dawn I was happy and free
I looked for my friends, but I never could find them
I found they were all rank strangers to me
Everybody I met seemed to be a rank stranger
No mother or dad, not a friend could I see
They knew not my name and I knew not their faces
I found they were all rank strangers to me
"They've all moved away", said the voice of a stranger
"To a beautiful home by the bright, crystal sea"
Some beautiful day, I'll meet 'em in heaven
Where no one will be a stranger to me
Everybody I met seemed to be a rank stranger
No mother or dad, not a friend could I see
They knew not my name and I knew not their faces
I found they were all rank strangers to me
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