I usually avoid politics here. I
tend to the conservative side of things, but I have enough of a populist in me
to keep things at least a little interesting. But politics is not the ruling
passion of my life, and I prefer to talk about things here that are more
important. (Did I really just say that? Something’s more important than
politics?)
But the passion of my young friend David Wheeler, and the words of
Christian and social justice advocate Jeremy John at Glass
Dimly, have given me pause and set me to thinking about what’s been going
on with the Occupy protests.
By personal history and
inclination, I should be looking the protesters with something akin to ridicule
and aversion. But I'm not. I see what's partially inspiring it -- people
feeling betrayed by those who are (in theory) supposed to govern wisely for
common good. I also see some of what Peggy Noonan talked about yesterday in The
Wall Street Journal – it’s a protest, but it’s something else, to, a “be-in” but
also a wave, “an expression of American discontent, and others will follow.” (Her
column is behind the WSJ firewall, or else I’d link to it.)
They are more of us, of all
political persuasions, who share similar convictions. We’re not going to occupy
a park. We’re going to stay polite and not scream at TV cameras. We’re not
going to throw things or spray paint on police cars. But we hear Herman Cain
say the first thing to do is junk the tax code, and we think someone finally gets
it. The system is broken.
This discontent behind the Occupy
protestors is the same impulse drove millions into the arms of the Tea Party --
and forced the Republican Party elite to pay attention, at least for a time,
before it tried to start using it for its own interests. Fortunately, the elite’s
still having problems keeping the Tea Party crowd under control, and that’s a
good thing. If the Occupy protests can do that to the Democratic elite, then
that’s a good thing, too.
I see all the groups and factions
trying to affix themselves to the Occupy protests -- the SEIU, what used to be
called ACORN, groups making anti-Semitic comments, elements of the White House, Nancy Pelosi, movie stars who've
done very well, thank you very much, by the system they love to bash -- and I
step back. Way back. If that’s what it becomes, it will at best morph into a
faction of the hard-core left, and its influence will be limited to the left-side
of the Democratic Party (I know some people think there’s only one wing of the
Democratic Party, but diversity exists there, too.)
Because history’s not a subject especially
popular to be taught or learn in schools, we don’t see that movements like this
(and the Tea Party) have happened before. It wasn’t for nothing that Mark Twain
more than 100 years ago called Judas Iscariot a “premature congressman.”
William Jennings Bryan rode the Populist movement, angry at the control of
economic life by the railroads and other big moneyed interests, almost to the
White House. These movements have effects, and often positive effects, and they
are important.
But I know how all this works, too.
We can have a President rail against the millionaires and billionaires, but
it’s going to be people like me who pay all the taxes the President wants to
raise. There are simply not enough millionaires and billionaires. We all forget
that the so-called Alternative Minimum Tax was designed to catch those
millionaires and billionaires who didn’t pay any taxes, and now it’s snared a
very large part of the middle class.
This raging against the rich is a
nasty impulse. Why people get mad at Bill Gates, who’s created wealth and jobs
and value, and not at Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd – who’ve had a direct
hand in fashioning the current economic disaster – is a mystery, and likely one
with a political explanation.
Something needs to be done.
I wouldn’t ask the question like
the bracelet does (“WWJD?”), but I do have to ask, what is my responsibility here
as a Christian?
I can’t see Jesus advocating a
violent overthrow of the government or whipping up people into a frenzy. I can’t
see him calling for free college tuition (yes, that’s one of the Occupy Wall
Street demands). I can’t see him using the protests to further the narrow aims
of a labor union or to promote organic food (both have happened).
But I can see Jesus walking with
and ministering to the unemployed, and the people whose lives have been wrecked
because of the housing collapse, the banking bailout, the carmaker bailout, and
all that stimulus money that somehow ended up in the wrong places, and all that
green energy money that ended up in the coffers of a bankrupt solar power
company.
And I can see Jesus shocking his
disciples and everyone else by having dinner with the chairman of Goldman Sachs.
He did something just like that, in fact; he tended to go where the sinners
were, where the need for saving was greatest.
I can see Jesus overturning the
moneychangers' tables - because the moneychangers acted with the approval of
the spiritual leaders to defraud the people. That scene outside the temple was
more about the people running the temple than it was about the moneychangers,
and they got the lesson he intended them to get. Of course, they killed him for
it, too.
Jesus was no stranger to
confrontation. He used strong language. He called people’s hands.
But he also knew that the first
line of battle was the heart, and that’s what had to be changed first.
Until that happens, nothing else will
last.
