The Sermon on the Mount on Down

Zach Rabiroff's post - especially the last ten words - clarified something for me.

I think he's correct that the current right wing belief system is "Tulsa and Kristallnacht" all the way down. And I think you can extend that - e.g. its transatlantic slave trade or social darwinism fantasizing or the crusades all the way down or whatever. There is nothing new under the sun.

The clarification refers to context. Often in my thinking I notice a bright line between current events - which are mere politics, kind of a game - and history, which is a story we tell about the past. But it may be more accurate to think in terms of a process - politics as one lens through which the present moment becomes history. It shifts my focus away from partisan who's winning/who's losing focus and towards a moral focus, a who-is-standing-with-love focus. Where do I as a human being want to stand? Which is also the question, how do I want to respond?

Linking current events to Tulsa and Kristallnacht - extending them to the transatlantic slave trade - makes clear that the problem is deeper than "those guys voting against me." Or even, "those guys doing heinous shit to immigrants." It suggests we have to reach deeper for solutions than "vote for the other side" or whatever.

I am not advocating passivity. Vote, go to protests, donate to folks who want to dismantle ICE, reform the Supreme Court, yes. Do those things. But realize that people have been doing those things for a long time and they have not solved the underlying problem. Driven it underground, staved off the worst of it, weakened it, sure. And that's not nothing. But it has not ended it. Fear and hate go on.

Leonard Cohen was frustrated with this as well - "I fought for something final/not the right to disagree."

Anyway, for me, the answer within history is to stand with the historical Jesus, whose nonviolence and itinerancy - whose Sermon on the Mount - still strike me as insufficiently tested and rich with potential for shared peace and happiness. I am saying something like, yes, it's Tulsa and Kristallnacht all the way down. But it's also the Sermon on the Mount all the way down. Or the Road to Emmaus. We are not alone.