On being civil and honest (and keeping God out of it)

Civil disobedience can be stupid, or violent, or violently stupid.  It can also be sincere and significant.  Civil disobedience is not necessarily disobedient, and it’s not necessarily civil, either—and neither of those observations is insignificant.

Consider these situations that have involved civil disobedience:

The story about the truckers’ convoy in Canada is not over.  There have been public statements and posturing, and later, trials and sentences.  Earlier reports such as this one and this one shed some light, but there is always more.

The January 6 and George Floyd stories are not over, either, and they are by no means as monolithic as the majority has assumed.  (They have not been well told.  See this free movie on Floyd/Minneapolis.)  The misrepresented aspects and concealed truths and ramifications have been rather impressively misrepresented and concealed.

The government-pharmaceutical-social media collusion during the pandemic is still being uncovered, to the surprise of a great number of people with brains and open minds, whose brains and minds had formerly been enshrouded by the government-pharmaceutical-social media collusion.

Each of the above scenarios continues to have profound impact on life in North America, yet they are but parts of a whole picture.  So many more stories will never be fully told.

We figure we have most of the Watergate facts, I suppose, but the JFK, Cuba, RFK, and MLK stories probably have much yet to be revealed, as do the Biden and Trump ones.  And so many more in between.  From swatting to congressional hearings on things formerly unimagined . . . from raids of one palace to the kid-gloves treatment of another . . .  from the appeal to justice to the unjust use of the “justice” system, it goes on.  There are cries of “Lies! All lies!” and opposing cries of the same, and it would be comical if it weren’t so dismally hopeless.  Which side is lying?  Probably both.  And please, for the love of all that’s reasonable, get a press secretary who can at least avoid questions without lying and spouting nonsense inarticulately.  (Having heard just clips, it might not be fair, but I’m given to Andrew Klavan’s sarcastic moniker “Karine Jean-Identity-Hire” and Megyn Kelly’s “Karine Diversity Hire.”)

Reasonable people tend to know when lies are being told.  And moral people tend to realize that there are no moral examples remaining in the presidential race.

Former President Trump has clearly flouted sexual mores (and yet somehow garners the support of “conservatives” and “Christians”).  When he says his accuser is lying, why would I believe him?  I would tend to trust E. Jean Carroll more than Donald J. Trump about those particular escapades, but no one will ever know who is lying more about that or the topics of any of the other lawsuits.  Trump may not be as compulsive a liar as some politicians, but he is at least unwise, megalomaniacal, and in any event a repulsive individual.  The fact that he is being considered for another presidential term is unbelievable.

Unless you consider the alternative, which is at least as bad.  The Bidens are corrupt and dishonest, and President Biden is a victim of dementia, and Dr. Jill Biden is absolutely lying through her teeth when she says her husband is fit for four more years.  And, my goodness, how in the world can Alejandro Mayorkas sleep at night, knowing what illogic and deranged border inaction he has been supporting, or ignoring, or something?  It’s all so stupid and embarrassing.  And we’re supposed to be the greatest country, and our president, the “leader of the free world”?

There are now new truckers’ convoys.  Farmers in Europe are shutting down roads, attempting to deface long-loved art, and generally disrupting things.  Is their disruption greater or less than the issues they are protesting?  Who decides what’s illegal?  And an even newer convoy in the U.S. has truckers from New Jersey, Virginia, and many other states in Texas . . . where the governor is suing the U.S., and the U.S. is suing the governor over the border issues.  Who is more civil?  Hard to say.  But who is on more logically solid ground?  Texas.  Indubitably so.  And people are risking their livelihoods and spending lots of money in order to truck into Texas to show support for locking down our southern border.  If I were a trucker and had the wherewithal, I might join them, but . . .

The U.S. truck convoy is calling itself “God’s Army,” and that part is not okay.  I am offended that people are associating my God with this convoy.  Securing a national border is not God’s business, and the group is not God’s Army in any sense.

Aside:  A Roman Catholic college built a “Center for Constitutional Liberty” and regularly champions the notion of transforming American culture.  That college has considered building a replica of Independence Hall.  The powers appeared, at one point, to have expected a large degree of buy-in from constituents.  While I am beginning to wonder more about “cultural transformation” and its relationship to Christianity, I find the tying of “Constitutional Liberty” to Jesus Christ inappropriate at best.

I’ve gone on record here to say that the U.S. border is of great concern, but it is not a Christian concern.  The Kingdom of God is borderless, and truckers who want to help with the U.S. border are not doing the work of God.  To link the protection of a country’s borders to the cause of Christ is to draw an imaginary, illusory, and irreverent line.  Detention centers are not God’s province, and razor wire is not God’s retribution toward scofflaws and drug traffickers.  An open border that allows thousands of illegal, unmanageable new alien residents is not a thing of God, either.  Neither side of such issues is to be linked with the rule of God.

The issues that lead to civil disobedience are often both serious and complex, such as the situation with Israel and Gaza and Hamas and Lebanon and Hezbollah and Iran.  I have little doubt that Hamas’s initial actions were as atrocious as reported, but that is not the whole picture, and there is always more to a story.  People speculate, and then they speculate about the speculations . . . and all that is normal, but that doesn’t mean that the speculations are categorically false.  (Just like being paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get me.)

Is a labor union’s endorsement important for a presidential candidate?  I suppose so, or at least it can be.  But the president of one union, having endorsed one candidate (speaking in his official role? or not?), made it a point to say that the majority of his union would be voting for the other candidate.  So what does the endorsement really mean, and who paid whom off?  Such game-playing!  Seems to me that Taylor Swift’s endorsement of President Biden is likely a good deal more influential than a union president’s.  Starry-eyed fans are less likely to think for themselves than grizzled, long-term unionites.  It’s conceivable that the Swift-Kelce relationship is a sham to garner Biden support via the NFL TV audience.  I digress.  Do I know what the union president or Taylor Swift really thinks, and why?  No.  How could I?  Do I trust the process and news coverage to be fair and non-corrupt?  Of course not!

Can anyone say “Banana Republic”?  Our political process might have started down the wrong path with Clinton, or the first Bush, or Nixon, or JFK, or long before any of them.  Whatever the American political scene was in yesteryear was better than it looks now; that’s for sure.  (Ah, yes . . . remember the days when we used to be nostalgic?)  Now, it’s laughable as well as corrupt.

If Switzerland hadn’t been an early stupid-actor in the pandemic, and if it didn’t host the WEF in Davos, and if I could work remotely and conduct an ensemble there, I’d move there next month.  But would God seem nearer in Switzerland?  (“I lift up mine eyes to the hills.  Whence cometh my help?”) My help is to come from the Lord, not from the Alps or Lake Geneva or anywhere I think I might rather be.  I want to keep God out of the “Army” convoy, and out of the constitutional liberty efforts, but I don’t want to keep God out of my life.  God, be near.