Category: Michael D
Repair the ACA
Here is the text of a fax and email I sent to one of my Senators today. At some point people of good will are the only persons that can bridge the chasm that exists in State and Federal government. Hyper individualism is breaking the social contract we all signed as citizens of this Nation. Oligarchs and open corruption exist in other countries of the world and it seems that with this President and the supporting cast dominating government right now, that style of governing, oligarchy, is what a minority of loud voice are willing to endure to ensure their dominance, white patriarchy, even when these citizens will suffer the most under the tax, health, energy, and industrial military complex policies to which the current GOP leaders swear allegiance; and look the other way as the President enriches himself, his family, and other political leaders by using the government for their own financial means.
Senator James Lankford,
Sir,
Thank you for serving the public in this anxious and conflicted time in our Nation’s history. I keep you and your family in my meditations. It cannot be easy balancing what you think your constituents desire, what data may tell you constituents want, educating yourself broadly in the issues that effect the Nation and Oklahomans, dealing with lobbyists telling you what their interests desire, and managing your own ambitions.
I email today to encourage you to repair, rather than repeal, the ACA. The GOP at the State and Federal level are making life, free as it is, harder for Oklahomans and our Nation’s citizens by intentionally sabotaging the exchanges & subsidies designed to assist persons to get healthcare. Your participation with the GOP sabotage places you in a challenging moral position to recalibrate your moral compass and find it within your self to do what I know, you know, to be right, equitable, and above all honorable.
I know you profess faith and I often ponder how you balance that discipleship of following Jesus with the policies and politics of our Nation. I know your faith places a high value on belief in Christ for an afterlife in heaven. I urge you to read the parables of Jesus again. Those parables and the Sermon on the Mount are not describing a theocratic Nation evangelizing the world for Christ, but a counter-cultural kingdom of heaven where the first are last and the last first. By the way, you and I are the first.
So, I offer prayers of intercession that you will find some Democratic and Republican colleagues that will set an example and do the hard work of governing for all our citizens by fixing the ACA with the same urgency as you support more military spending, more gun ownership, and more drilling.
Oklahomans and our Nation’s citizens need you to demonstrate consistently that you are not supporting the President for your own gain, political spoils, or ambition. President Trump’s actions are divergent with the faith you proclaim and his ‘Christian’ belief appears tied to keeping his approval rating high with white evangelicals. Are you certain you want your political legacy intertwined with that kind of political leader?
Repeal of the ACA will make life harder for Oklahomans in rural areas as well as urban areas. Be a repairer of the breach rather than a cause of it.
I would be happy to speak with you anytime about this or other topics that address the common good of our Nation and the world.
Learning from History
Pardon a long set up for the transcript of the remarks by the Mayor of New Orleans, Mr.Mitch Landrieu about the removal of monuments to the Confederacy. His words are an example of what could be called a thoughtful and reasoned exegesis of American history and the history or New Orleans. Scroll down to skip my observations for a paragraph and link to Mayor Landrieu’s words.
In the alternative silos of facts and alt histories it feels like these United States, our United States, stands at a fork in the wood. We have a choice to take the the path less traveled that recognizes the lessons of history as a guide and compass. I remember from my college and graduate history courses that the victor(s) write the history from which we all read. Honest history does not need to embellish factual narrative about the character of an enemy or anesthetize the reason for a conflict. It need not flatter nor invoke divine Providence on behalf of the victor as reason or rationalization for victory. History has become more a salve, rather than a teaching fable.
Over the last fifteen years I’ve argued in a few places, including this blog, that there is a new Confederacy. It is clearly visible on an electoral college map, in State houses of government, and within the Congress. Former President Obama, though unwilling to identify the new Confederacy, never the less dealt with it daily in the person of Senator Mitch McConnell and the Tea Party wave in Congress. The new Confederacy manifest itself in ammo and gun sales following former President Obama’s election. The ‘other’ had been elected, and thus the assumption must have been, would likely do to white Americans what some in white America did to the ‘other.’ And just as some segments of Christianity supported slavery, racial segregation, and social classism to maintain and, in some cases claim new power, it today supports the new Confederacy in the person of Fallwell Jr, Tony Perkins, Vice President Pence, and other self-described evangelical conservative Christians that are claiming power through a reverse victimhood with its banner of ‘religious liberty.’ This group cheers ‘States rights’ so long as those rights synthesize with their religious worldview. If you are a Christian in these United States you are part of the privileged system. Yes, there are some boundaries to our freedom, your freedom, because that is what secular governing requires to treat all equally under the law.
Observational science allows one to observe that a desired outcome of religious liberty laws and States rights would be to create what Chris Hayes calls A Colony in a Nation. Are there aspects of our Constitutional Republic where individual States have authority and rights to maintain taxes, order, and the common good. Yes, of course. But, if we are United States and ‘out of many one’ actually has meaning, then there are ideals of our Constitutional Republic that are basic rights for all breathing Americans, immigrants, and those awaiting documents no matter one’s State of residence. Look to Europe struggling to maintain a unity based only in shared economics. A new wave of nationalism based in supremacy threatens a fragile unity. Separate, but equal is a path many have walked before. Have the lessons been learned? And, while mutual assured destruction might serve as a deterrent for rational actors, it does not unite diverse people in creating a fair and equal society, nor deter non-rational actors motivated by a religious certitude spoken, whispered, or silently seeking to reign supreme.
Mayor Landrieu offers a sobering, honest assessment of the Confederacy as he speaks about the removal of Confederate monuments in New Orleans. I was initially against removing these reminders of segregation and slavery that threatened our Nation to keep from whitewash our history. But, his words persuade me to consider the argument to have them removed and, like the buying of ammo and guns when Obama was elected, the Confederacy manifest itself in the rhetorical and visible pushback against their removal from politicians and the general public. Apparently, there is no shaming supremacy even if those that profess supremacy also claim to follow Jesus of Nazareth.
From, Transcript of New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s Address on the Confederate Monuments
And I knew that taking down the monuments was going to be tough, but you elected me to do the right thing, not the easy thing and this is what that looks like. So relocating these Confederate monuments is not about taking something away from someone else. This is not about politics, this is not about blame or retaliation. This is not a naïve quest to solve all our problems at once.
This is, however, about showing the whole world that we as a city and as a people are able to acknowledge, understand, reconcile and, most importantly, choose a better future for ourselves, making straight what has been crooked and making right what was wrong.
Otherwise, we will continue to pay a price with discord, with division, and yes, with violence.
To literally put the confederacy on a pedestal in our most prominent places of honor is an inaccurate recitation of our full past, it is an affront to our present, and it is a bad prescription for our future.