Reply #261: this is your agenda [View All]

[Two Americas]

You want people to leave, and are prejudicially deciding what "they" are all like and what "they" should all do. You want people to leave because that reinforces your position, for your own personal satisfaction, not because of any rational analysis. If you were secure in your position, you would not be aggressively seeking validation for it by pressuring others to march to your tune.

I have problems with my country. I have problems with my family. I have problems with the company I work for. I have problems with the "ownership society" and consumerism, the ascendancy of the investors and speculators and Wall Street to total power over our economy, and those things much more directly and powerfully contribute to inhumane and disastrous conditions and are things which we are ALL deeply complicit in every day in all of our actions. Failing to see that is failing to understand social justice, and to deny the very principles and ideals of community and the political Left we claim to honor. This individualistic - and highly Protestant historically and libertarian in modern culture - notion that we are an island onto ourselves, and merely need to worry about out own self-expression and then "take stands" only in personalized, safe and self-serving ways, is the root cause of the problems we are supposedly all trying to solve. It can never be a solution.

The hierarchy does not own the Church, let alone do the conservatives. Why would you have us surrender it to them? I can assure you the conservatives in the Church would love to see all left wing people leave. That would titillate a few anti-religious zealots among liberals, as part of their simple-minded comic book view of the world, but accomplish absolutely nothing for the causes we supposedly share.

What if all of the left wing people left America, and turned it over to the extreme right wing to run with no opposition? Do you think there is anywhere on the planet we could then hide from them? Could you do that and feel no responsibility, no obligation or duty to anyone or anything other than your own selfish desires? If so, we have a profound disagreement that is much bigger and deeper than your simplified for-or-against ideas about the rank and file Catholic people.

The battle is on, it is right here in front of us. Accusing all Catholics of failing to show up to the fight when most Democrats still refuse to reflects a seriously skewed view of reality, and it is that skewed view of reality that is the biggest obstacle to social progress. Petty little personalized and individualistic actions are a way to hide from the fight, to look after ourselves first and foremost and self-righteously deny any greater responsibility.

All of us are "sitting in the pews" of a corrupt and murderous state, worshiping at the altar of individualism and free market libertarianism, and tithing to the war machine in a myriad of ways every day, and promoting and defending and enabling it in everything we do so long as we are not engaging in outright resistance, and are instead sitting back comforting ourselves with these shallow and weak rationalizations - such as thinking that voting for the good guys is the end-all be-all of our responsibility as citizens, and then pointing fingers and blaming others.


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