BE WARY

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (6/23/2013)

 

          “Be wary of people who ask you to trust them.”  This was some of the best advice my father ever gave me.  Trust those who’ve proven themselves trustworthy.  Trust is given, not requested.  If people have been secretly poking around in your garbage can for several years, saving all those torn up letters, receipts, and credit card and bank statements, would you trust them, especially if they said it was “for your own good”?

 

          Snoops are inherently untrustworthy.  As a young soldier nearly 70 years ago, I was assigned with a top secret clearance to a counter-intelligence unit, snooping on snoops, spying on spies.  Things were never as they appeared.  A distrust of government is built into our system of government with the checks and balances of its three branches, judicial, executive, and congressional.  The reason is obvious as Lord Acton said, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”  Politicians crave power, and, therefore, they tend to be corrupt.

 

          Of course, the government never told anyone that they were pilfering our electronic garbage cans.  Both Republicans and Democrats have been at it.  Now, we have a gang of military officers festooned with ribbons and bric-a-brac, telling us that they haven’t been reading the stuff from our garbage cans.  They just like to collect stuff in case they might need it.  An argumentum ad ridiculum.

 

          I’m not sure I believe them.  By the way, I never broke my pledge of secrecy as long as the secrets remained classified.  Those who have are contemptible.    

ON CHANGING GENDERS

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D.  (6/8/2013)

 

          After I completed my internship at UCLA’s Neuro-psychiatric Institute, I opened an office in West Los Angeles which eventually meant artists, screen writers, musicians, actors, and directors as clients.  Many were gay and lesbian.  Well into the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, several people came to me for counseling as they considered changing their sexual identity.

 

          At first, I was baffled, unsure of what I thought or how I felt.  They were obviously sincere and in emotional distress.  I felt uneasy which set off a long soul searching and an intellectual exploration.  I’m a Christian of fairly conservative theological disposition, but definitely no Fundamentalist, as well as being inclined toward the traditional.  Sometimes, those closest to me call me “a stick in the mud” or “an old fart.”

 

          The creation is not perfect and always evolving.  Without a second thought, we correct club feet, cleft palates, and even transplant organs.  If that were the case, why not gender identities since our given genders are sometimes flawed?  Such a change would be an act of mercy.  Then my responsibility would be to embrace and help them, as I could, with the profound consequences, physical, emotional, social, and spiritual, of those changes.  Frequently, I felt uneasy in those situations, almost tentative; however, unease isn’t a justification for condemnation, disapproval, or inaction.  It’s a cause for compassion.  Once we step off the curb and join the march, we always feel uneasy.  As with Abraham, the journey is always into terra incognita.    

COWARDS IN HIGH PLACES

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (4/27/2013)

 

          One of the Senators who voted against the bill to tighten background checks on gun buyers said that he admired the courage of the parents of children killed in SAndy Hook massacre.  He himself could not muster the courage to vote for it because he was afraid.  Afraid of what?  The National Rifle Association and particularly, its mouthpiece, Wayne La Pierre. 

 

          When politicians are afraid of something, it generally means that they are afraid of losing financial support which means that they are not only cowards, but craven cowards.  Now, the odd thing is that most members of the NRA are proponents of stricter background checks so the Senators weren’t afraid of the NRA, but of the money the moguls in the NRA may not throw they way.  And who finances the NRA?  The gun manufacturers?

 

          Now, mind you, the gun manufacturers aren’t making single shot weapons but weapons of mass destruction.  So it turns out that the Senators are afraid of sociopaths who manufacture weapons of mass destruction.  Our newest Senator, Jeff Flake, made like he supported the bill to enhance background checks and then voted against it.  The word is duplicitous.

 

          The Senators who voted “nay” were, in fact, voting to support capitalistic sociopaths who make weapons of mass destruction.  The only appropriate response of a citizen to this betrayal of victims of mass slaughter is a Contempt of Congress.  Adding to their shame is the weasily way they try to cover their cowardice with cries of defending the Second Amendment as though their betrayal were an act of patriotism.    

 

            

AN ASSAULT WEAPON IN EVERY POT

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (1/20/2013)

 

          A bellicose Republican Party has allied itself with the National Rifle Association in a promise to Americans of an assault weapon in every pot.  Such bellicosity is a sign of impotence, such as the infamous rebel yell.  The strong don’t make threats, only the weak.

 

          Herbert Hoover in the presidential campaign of 1928 promised a “chicken in every pot and a car in every garage,” and we know what came of that promise, the Great Depression of 1929.  Following Hoover’s example, the Republicans with a disapproval rate of 64 percent and an approval rate of 27 percent are classic losers. 

 

In their continued self-immolation, the Republicans seem intent on supporting unpopular causes, such as falling over fiscal cliffs and chiseling on our debts as a nation.  Now, they’re supporting assault weapons or magazines jammed with endless bullets.  The issue isn’t the Second Amendment.  It’s not that these weapons and magazines are used to massacre lots of people.  It’s their emotional value of giving losers the feeling they’re strong by possessing the artificial power of destruction and defiance.

 

          The irony is that defiance is a dependency upon the object being defied.  How would the Republicans define themselves if it weren’t for Barack Obama?  Defiance and anger are the hallmarks of perpetual losers.  Rather than hooking up with the angry and defiant, such as the NRA and the Tea Party, the Republicans might try something different.  A real winner, Abraham Lincoln, said, “With malice toward none, with charity for all.”

 

                 

IDEOLOGICAL FOSSILS

 

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (11/8/2012)

 

          Ideologues who claim they possess the truth are always doomed by their truth because they’re never able to learn anything new.  Just as the Roman Catholic hierarchy found out with Galileo, they were wrong when they thought they were right.  Stuck with their various truths for centuries, they’ve lost credibility as their truths crumbled right down to contraception.  Currently, the Tea Party Republicans are facing the same plight.  They’re stuck with their truth which more or less resembles the religious bigotry and female suppression of the 17^th century.

 

          They’re going to take the Republican Party down to perpetual defeat and fossilization because, in the nature of the case, they can’t learn anything new, possessing the truth as they do.  I’m an old white guy, the ilk the Republicans court, but I like Chinese, Vietnamese, Greek, Thai, Japanese, Soul, Indian, and Mexican food.  Maybe, my Balinese great grandfather tainted my tastes.  The Tea Party’s stuck with meat and potatoes, maybe with a carrot thrown now and then for a little color and celery for excitement.

 

          America ain’t what it was when I was young.  In many ways I miss it, but I relish it now although I find some of it baffling.  As with all ideological fossils, as the Tea Party types and their Republican cohorts see their truth slipping away and even being rejected, they become bitter, a sure sign that they’ve lost.  The rebel yell isn’t a call to arms, but rather the howl of defeat.      

FAITH AND VALUES

Dana Prom Smith

 

          As a Protestant with a conservative theology and liberal social and political inclinations, I fear politicians with a theocratic message.  They want to impose their religious ideas on me and everyone else, even though I may find their religious ideas abhorrent and repressive.

 

          When Paul Ryan used his Roman Catholicism as a justification for imposing his views on contraception and abortion on the rest of the country, I heard echoes of theocratic claims from the Middle Ages down to modern Islamist states, like Saudi Arabia. 

 

          When Willard Romney declared during a presidential debate that he believes in God, he implies that should be a reason to vote for him.  Just as patriotism has often been the refuge of scoundrels, so has a publicly proclaimed piety.  I’m not as interested in his faith as I am in his values.  Since the Republicans have redistributed income toward the rich, does he now believe in redistribution toward the middle class?  What does he think about advocating women’s dignity and freedom in the face of the oppressive powers who want to keep women in a subordinate status, that is, clear answers on contraception, abortion, and equal pay?   They’re the issues, not his faith.

 

          Since politicians lust for power, we should be wary of them, especially when they become publicly pious, their piety masking their lust.  It’s their values that count.  By the way, the word “evangelical” comes from the Greek word meaning the “good news” of freedom, not the bad news of theocratic repression.    

RAVENING WOLVES

Dana Prom Smith

 

          Willard Romney and his right-wing Fundamentalist supporters are unaware of the parable of the Good Samaritan where the chief virtue was helping those in distress (Luke 10:29-37).  According to Jesus Christ, acts of mercy to the down-trodden and despised, “the least of these my brethren” are acts of mercy to Him (Matt. 25:40.)

 

           They’ve rejected the moral code of reaching out to those in need, that is to say, mercy and grace, replacing mercy and grace with moral purity.  Their aim is to prove themselves morally superior to those in trouble as though their station in life was the result of their purity instead of their self-aggrandizement, commonly called greed.  The result is that their relationship to the world is one of condemnation and accusation of the so-called 47%.  They are self-righteous and censorious.

 

          Trying to cast the first stone, they try to pass themselves off as Christians all the while subverting and displacing the Gospel with an antagonist message of greed and sanctimoniousness.  Perhaps, it’s best illustrated by Paul Ryan who claims to be a Roman Catholic but espouses the sophomoric atheism and social Darwinism of Ayn Rand’s “get what you can and to hell with everyone else.”  They ought to get their message straight and admit they are not their brother’s keeper but rather are their brother’s antagonist.  They want a government which favors the one percent and everyone else takes the hindmost.  They bring to mind those false prophets in sheep's clothing who are inwardly ravening wolves.