Christmas Tears
I am a 68 year old man. I’ve worked hard my whole life and have little to show for it with just a limited S.S. income and my home. I’ve lived through a lot of history and some very hard times. I cried when my marriage failed, I cried as family members passed, I cried as friends passed. Through it all I have grown accustomed to loss and become fairly resilient. It has been many years since I have cried or really felt sorrow, but this season as Christmas approaches I find myself brought to tears more and more often.
I don’t cry for the reasons you might expect though. I don’t cry for loneliness or any of the other things that old men often do. I find myself in tears when I see an ad for the ASPCA and think about all the beautiful animals that cruel and heartless humans throw away like an old sock, or chain out in the cold to die. I cry when I see an ad for Shriners Hospital and think of all the kids that struggle every day to overcome hardships that most of us never have to face. I cry when I see an ad for St Judes and think of all the kids who struggle simply to stay alive. I cry when I think of all the families whose kids will wake Christmas morning to find no presents because their parents have to choose between feeding their families and gifts. I cry when I see pictures of starving kids in Yemen because we continue to sell weapons to the Saudis. I cry when I see reports of men, women and sometimes kids shot down for simply being born with an African American gene. But most of all I cry for a couple of deaths!
This week I cried more than in recent times, for the death of a beautiful 7 yr old Guatemalan girl, who could have lived, if instead of being forcibly separated from her father she had simply been immediately airlifted to medical aid. And I cry mostly for the death of a nation, because when we allow these atrocities to occur in the USA, we have most certainly died as a nation.
I grew up at a time of great fear in this country having duck and cover drills almost weekly in school, wondering when the nuclear holocaust would begin. It was a time that saw truly great leaders like John F Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King assassinated. It was a time when we had to come to terms with the first truly immoral war this country has fought, and the first truly corrupt American presidency. But it was also a time when we put men on the moon, saw the formation of the Peace Corps, and saw the beginnings of equal rights in this country. It was a time when corporations and the ultra-rich paid the lions-share of taxes and yet we had a booming economy where average people had enough to live comfortably, and could actually see a bright future for their kids. We had some homeless, but we were building social safety nets that were working to mitigate those problems. And we were actually becoming better as a nation.
Now I look around and see my country dying and little to be hopeful for. We have a racist criminal usurper in the White House who was put there based on an obsolete, corrupt, and gerrymandered electoral system and directly against the will of the majority of Americans. A man who for profit supports a tyrannical Saudi despot that virtually all intelligence agencies have agreed was directly responsible for the death of a USA resident journalist. He also supports the like of Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un. Men who are known to be responsible for murdering even those in their own families to gain power and willing to use their militaries aggressively against their neighbors to expand their power. To make it worse we have a supreme court corrupted by politics with at least one justice seated who is a perjurer and sexual predator. We have a border patrol and I.C.E. that are more reminiscent of the Gestapo than a legitimate police agency. We have White Supremacists marching in the streets like the NAZI brown-shirts of the thirties who spawned them. They march and they murder and Trump supports them, and the majority of Republican and some Democratic leaders, ignore the atrocities and continue to do trumps bidding like a bunch of dumb spineless sheep. And then in the general population we have people who call themselves Christian who back these lunatics and mindlessly chant “build the wall” and “lock her up” to their Fuhrer, at rallies reminiscent of Nuremburg. We also have a government as a whole who refuse to wake up and do something to curb climate change, when to do nothing will surely result in the destruction of our entire planet.
Yes folks we are dying as a Nation and many in this country are complicit in that death. This is a country built by immigrants and our entire culture is immensely better for that diversity. If you are truly Christian you cannot condone the separation of families or the criminalization of poor honest human beings who want nothing more than a better life. Did Jesus ever turn away anyone who needed help? Did he ever condone corruption in either government or church? Did he not treat each and every human being as an equal? Was Jesus afraid of terrorists or traitors? (No he was not!) He treated Judas no differently than anyone else, knowing full well he would be betrayed! Why are so many today so afraid of a few thousand asylum seekers? These are not terrorists as the lunatic in the white house would have you believe. They are simply people who need our help. Would Jesus have tolerated the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the annexation of Crimea, the poisoning of an ex Russian agent and his daughter, or the poisoning of Kim Jong-uns brother? Would he have condoned a president of a supposedly Christian nation supporting the men responsible for these atrocities? If you consider yourself a Christian then start thinking about how Jesus would be viewing what is happening and start following his moral compass.
If this country is to survive and retain its place of moral leadership in the world, we have to start changing today. We cannot continue the hypocrisy of calling ourselves Christian while we allow ever more serious moral crimes to be committed in our name. We cannot continue to sit on our hands while every day that passes our world continues to warm and the consequences of inaction become clearer. We cannot continue to ignore the mounting corruption in our political system that every day disenfranchises more voters and puts criminals like Donald Trump in high offices. Are we going to let a minority of corrupt politicians and corporate bosses run this country into the ground, and go down in history as the generation that destroyed the USA and likely the planet? Or are we going to be the democracy that the founding fathers envisioned and find a way to help those in need, put an end to the dictators and neo-Nazis in our world and find a way to save our planet while there is still a chance to do so. The choice is yours! If you claim to be a Christian start acting like one and follow your conscience instead of listening to the lying anti-Christ in the oval office!
