Keep Walking

Resisting the Empire and Keeping Our Souls

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil,
who put darkness for light and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!

Isaiah 5:20 (NRSVUE)

Photo by Jad Limcaco on Unsplash

I spent the last two days in Kansas City, celebrating my wife’s birthday with our sons, significant others and family. And, on the way home, we listened to the accounts from Minneapolis. I had already planned to write on the 5^th anniversary of January 6^th, a day that had, until that point, joyfully marked my wife’s birthday. My mother was born on September 11^th, so for quite a while we’ve been used to joyful events being replaced with national tragedy. And then there was this new news. The awful just keeps on coming, and that’s just the stuff that makes the headlines.

We’ve had to learn this new skill over the past few years, especially necessary during a pandemic, in which you hold celebration/joy in one hand and tragedy/fear in the other and try and achieve some kind of balance. We’re all familiar with that muted joy, that lingering feeling of foreboding that feels always present, no matter what you try and chase it away with these days.

A 37-year-old woman was shot in the face by a federal agent in a suburb of Minneapolis as she was trying to leave the scene of an ICE raid. She herself was not a target of the raid, she was there either to protest or to document, or both. There was almost no warning, less than one second between “stop” and the shots, and zero rules of engagement, rather complete escalation of the situation, as has been the case with ICE in this administration. To say this is shocking is ridiculously understated.

And, it was absolutely inevitable.

The recruiting for ICE has been absolutely driven by the same scapegoating fear tactics we saw during the campaign, plus the addition of macho, nationalistic imagery.

DHS Director Kristi Noem said in response to the murder in Minneapolis that the agent, “followed his training,” though we also know that such training has been cut in half and standards have been lowered with the unprecedented surge in ICE recruitment. Add to that the rhetoric from the top down and the loose interactions with local law enforcement and you have a dynamic that encourages, if not enables, violent encounters. We have all seen the videos of the ways that ICE agents today have ZERO de-escalation techniques. In fact, they appear to be trained to escalate immediately.

The entire approach, from deportation strategies to budget bills to foreign policy during this second term has been, from the outset, one of no-holds-barred aggression, driven by the mantra of this administration – might makes right. This administration, like all empire-driven mindsets, loves zero-accountability so much that it has confused it with “freedom.” I am reminded of one of the greatest lines in any of the Fargo spin-offs in which Jennifer Jason Leigh’s remarkable character Lorraine Lyon says to the very “MAGAesque” Sheriff – “You want freedom with no responsibility? Son, there is only one person on Earth who gets that deal. A baby.”

We are now living in the wake of infantile power, represented on a national and international level, almost completely unchecked, even enabled by the equal branches that are supposed to provide balance. This has come to be entirely by capitulation, surrender to things that we know officials knew to be wrong because they were winning. The moral compass of this country is deeply broken.

We are now clearly in the grips of an immoral government that cannot be trusted for clarity, honesty, or motive. And when those kinds of foundations are gone, it can be tempting to jump overboard with them, to succumb to playing the same games only trying to be better at them, to fight fire with fire, or hate with hate. But we are in the month of remembering the sage advice of Dr. King, who led against unbearable tactics and impossible odds for the good and the just by leaning in to the good and the just, and by placing his trust in a longer arc than he could see at any given moment.

And all this week I have fielded phone calls and emails, text threads and conversations with congregants, friends and colleagues who are all expressing their fear, their despair and, most commonly, their exhaustion. They are simply scared and tired and are asking – How in the hell does this make sense to anyone? Isn’t this the “last straw?” And, what can I do about it, when everything feels like it is on fire? And my answer is -- keep walking. Maybe you can only take a step at a time, maybe you can go at a full sprint. Whatever you have to give to resistance – resist with it.

It can come in a variety of forms, but resistance is important because what empire wants is conversion, but it will take your apathy. Resistance in an age of “circuit flooding” means learning your own balance, knowing when to rest and when to react, and understanding that if you are not present for one act of outrage, don’t worry – there will soon be another. And it means relearning how to seek, process and share information. In a world in which information is commoditized, it is better to be behind the curve with a more accurate and nuanced story than it is to be immediately responsive. Resistance requires reflection and thoughtful approaches, not just rage. And truth matters immensely right now. In fact, the assertion that there is indeed truth matters right now more than ever.

I finally finished the second season of the series Andor, part of the Star Wars universe, and it was the perfect time. I got to hear this speech, from Senator Mon Mothma, before she flees to become part of the rebel alliance. She speaks to the gathered Republic Senate, as democracy is crumbling and the empire is taking control. She warns her colleagues, saying:

The distance between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss. Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil. When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest.

Friends, we are witnessing the appetite of a screaming monster. And whether it is the reality of an illegal and unjust invasion of Venezuela, the clear truth of what happened 5 years ago on January 6^th, or the obvious overreaction of an ICE officer in Minneapolis, we cannot let the tail wag the dog. We must insist on pointing out the distance between what is said and what we know to be true. This is no longer about partisanship; it hasn’t been for some time. This is about the struggle for our own souls.

So, keep walking the walk, friends. Resist when and where you can. And continue to foster hope, fiercely and doggedly. After all, we are now in the middle of a rebellion. And rebellions are built on hope