Thread by @jeffblack945

#RevThread #250
While Waiting

1/ While we hang around waiting for the ballot counting to finish, I thought I’d speculate about what lies ahead. Of course I don’t know anything, but that has never stopped me before.

2/ Maybe, hopefully, what we just witnessed was the peak of what historians will one day call the Age of Infinite Greed. People have always been greedy, but what has marked the past 100 years or so is a silence about why greed is so toxic.

3/ Like most folks, I spent most of my life wanting, you know, just a little more. A few months ago, waiting to watch an hour of news, I took a pad and counted the number of ads in an hour of a regular day’s news on MSNBC. 54.

4/ Most of us seem to share a sense of not-having and not-being enough. We live in a culture that afflicts us with dis-satisfaction. Our anthem might well be “I can’t Get No Satisfaction.”

5/ In 2002, My older brother, who often says very deep things, and I were talking about how to respond to 9/11. He was upset by what our then president said when asked how ordinary citizens could help in the national battle against terrorism.

6/GWB had responded that the government wanted us to keep the economy strong by shopping and going to Disneyland. Pete observed, “So we’re no longer citizens, we’re just consumers.”

7/ Preachers -- I plead guilty -- often make the inane remark that we are too materialistic and too individualistic. No. I can’t get by without some stuff; in Hopkin’s great phrase, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God; . . it will flame out, like shook foil…”.

7/ And I need to individuate in order to see and to cherish community. The blunt truth is that we’re besotted with greed. It ruins everything. Greed propelled slavery. Greed drives mobsters. Greed drives transnational organized crime. Greed drives war.

8/Greed is to social life what rape is to love. The Bible is ferocious on this subject: “Greed is Idolatry” (Ephesians 5). Paul tells us to put that drive for more, more, more - that greed - to death.

9/We’ve just finished a four year dalliance with a president whose sole qualification for our highest office was his shameless greed. He had never held office of any kind, and we lifted him into the most powerful position in the world.

10/Trump neither understood nor cared about law, about justice, about history, diplomacy, the Constitution, the Bible, economics or accountability. Trump’s sole credential was his dubious claim to vast personal wealth..

.11/... He said right out, “All my life I’ve been greedy. Greedy, greedy, greedy. And now I want to be greedy for you.” He lived in a golden tower, used a golden toilet & that was enough to qualify him to lead what had been the world’s greatest democracy. Oh... and he was white.

12/Trump’s presidency is a revelation about us. Quite a big revelation. I suspect that we’re going to find out soon that foreign oligarchs -- especially Putin -- worked to enhance Trump’s candidacy and then had real sway over him while he presided over our Executive Branch.

13/Don’t let that distract you from this issue of greed. All it means is that even more ruthlessly greedy men helped Trump come to power here so that they could continue their exploitation without pesky American interference.

14/ Trump was a betrayer of family, nation, business partners, colleagues -- but all that was fine with half the population as long as he kept presenting himself as rich and promising us we would be rich too.

15/ Much of the New Testament is an exploration of how to create a new human community in which we live in harmony with God, with one another, and with the rest of creation.

16/ Like other creators of great religious traditions, the writers and central figures of the New Testament knew that for a community to emerge that could dwell in peace on this fragile earth, our island home, we would have to put to death the greed inside us.

17/ No one has done a worse job explaining this hard truth than the White Evangelical Church. No one is more clueless about this major theme of faith than the pious Right Wing. No one has made all this clearer than Donald Trump.

18/ Trump has given us a vivid example of how not to live. For this we may be grateful.

19/Today the children and teenagers of our village are in school. I will take a walk with my dog in the great pine forests that surround our home. We’ll watch the otters playing in our upper and lower ponds,...

20/... and the dog will chase some turkeys in the meadow. Maybe we’ll spot some deer who will be grazing in the meadow now that the early snow has melted. When we come home there’ll be some lunch and another day of better peace for us to enjoy our retirement.

21/The children, the innocent creatures of meadow pond and forest, the elderly -- it’s all threatened by unchecked greed.

22/ I’m happy to welcome the modest Mr. Biden who appears to understand all this. With him, let us begin the work of healing our nation’s soul.