“This Country Is Nuts”

        I have been thinking about and trying to understand some of the more extreme examples of insanity in this country these days --- people abusing a wheel-chair bound woman and mocking a Holocaust survivor in a town hall, having crybaby fits over the President encouraging children to stay in school, hysterics over Bill Maher's comment that anything could happen in this stupid country, Glenn Beck --- anything having to do with Glenn Beck --- when I came across the following:

The whole atmosphere is crazy marked by an air of absurdity and 
moral void, even where conscience and morality is invoked. 
This country is nuts.

       Excellent observation considering it was written in 1965 by the Trappist mystic Thomas Merton in a letter to his friend Daniel Berrigan, S.J. Forty-five years and the only thing that has changed is that now the media does a better job of flogging the insanity and stupidity to death.

       I have been reading Disarmed and Dangerous: The Radical Life and Times of Daniel and Philip Berrigan, probably because Prince of Peace started me thinking about them again. The novel was most assuredly based on their lives combining the two priests into one. It's a terrific read if that period of history interests you and it serves as a potent reminder that insanity has always been a part of politics. There are some great photos in the book, too; Daniel Berrigan with Abby Hoffman, and my favorite taken at a Poets for Peace Rally in which the Vietnamese poet Thich Nhat Hahn and the French poet Anaïs Nin stand on either side of the Jesuit poet Berrigan.

         Reading the book I was reminded of Richard Hofstadter's essay The Paranoid Style in American Politics which was published in Harper's Magazine in 1964, a time when the Berrigans were just hitting their stride as revolutionaries. I went looking for it online and was happy to find the essay in full --- reading it again after all these years was like time travel, it is as relevant today as it was then. Basically, Hofstadter says, there is a certain person who lives in a continual state of paranoia. They are afraid and it is a very easy thing for those wishing to stir things up to exploit their paranoia. They fan the flames of fear by concocting conspiracies that prey on the deepest fears and ingrained paranoia of those folks whipping them into hysterical frenzies of projection. Over the history of the United States the fears have shifted: Masons, Catholics, communists, Jews, socialists, they could probably convince some of these people that Muppets are taking over. But the technique is always the same --- be afraid, be very afraid, they are coming to take your country away! And the paranoid go nuts. Now they are aided by the internet with its message boards, discussion groups, blogs, etc. to spread the fear faster and wider.

       The other thing that strikes me as I read about the Berrigans is Philip Berrigan's endless commitment to the fight for Civil Rights. He was the first Catholic priest sentenced to prison for social activism and his special commitment was seeking social justice for African-Americans. This is something that concerns me these days because under many of the rants against our President is thinly veiled but very obvious racism. It's sickening. I see it especially among the “birthers”. “Why doesn't he just produce his birth certificate?” they scream but would they ask that of a white President? Have they ever? I don't blame the President for ignoring them --- to do otherwise would just dignify their nasty attempts to “keep that (you know the word) in his place”.

       Daniel Berrigan is still a Jesuit priest and poet living in New York City. Philip left the priesthood but remained an activist to the end of his life in 2002. This was the last thing he wrote shortly before his death:

A Time for Prayer
By Philip Berrigan

"But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret." Mt. 6:16

       I've been reading an excellent book on Gandhi, compiled by John Dear, S.J.. Gandhi himself prayed two hours every day, and he concluded that prayer was nourishment for the soul, even as food was for the body, that prayer engendered the essentials of faith and humility, and that prayer, sincerely done, was more valuable than any action.
The following occur to me as worthwhile subjects of prayer.
- that we disarm our hearts and our society
- that the Holy Spirit subvert, stalemate, and expose preparation for the invasion of Iraq
- that God intervene in the ecological crisis as Lord of Creation, because we refuse to change our abuse of the earth
- that Americans begin to understand and resist the three-pronged aims for the Bush Administration: the trashing of civil liberties, perpetual war, and world domination
- that the swindle of "foreknowledge" by the Bushites of 9/11 be fully disclosed
- that the "crime" of 57 years of nuclearism, and its consequent wasting of our lives and planet be revealed
- that Americans grasp that war is our #1 business; that we are violent, killer people, and that we know virtually little of the nonviolence of Jesus and the Gospel
- that the scourges of abortion, euthanasia, and the death penalty be ended
- that the U.S. withdraw all economic and military aid from Israel
- that the global war against children be lifted
- that the rich west contribute medication and food to the global victims of HIV-AIDS
- that each of us become people of fidelity, nonviolence, and justice
AMEN 
 

Amen indeed. I wish he had lived to see President Obama in the White House. He would have been so gratified.

Thanks for reading.