Go, Gu!

Eileen Gu has taken a lot of abuse for deciding to ski for China, where her mother was born, rather than the United States, where she and her family live, in the 2022 Winter Olympics.

To my knowledge she has never publicly explained why she decided not to ski for the U.S. But no explanation would satisfy her critics.

Most of what I have seen about her on social media is hateful and obscene. You might consider these folks the usual pack of idiots, except that the pack seems to keep getting larger and louder, and that in itself is a troubling development.

Gu doesn’t represent China any more than she represents the U.S. She represents herself, in some ways a product of both cultures. She is trying to stand above all the usual political nonsense we slap over what is supposed to be a showcase of athletic performance. So she stands for what the Olympics are supposed to stand for, not what we have made of it.

Here is one thing she has said in her defense:

“I’m not trying to keep anyone happy. I’m an 18-year-old girl trying to live my best life. I know that I have a good heart and know that my reasons are for the common interest and greater good.

“No matter what I say, if people don’t have a good heart, they won’t believe me because they can’t empathize with people who do have a good heart. So in that sense, I feel as though it’s a lot easier to block out the hate now.

“If people don’t believe me and people don’t like me, that’s their loss. And also, they’re never going to know what it feels like to win the Olympics.”

What a brave and insightful young woman!

There’s a huge hunk of truth in what she says. People who don’t have a good heart are never going to understand people who do have a good heart. They’re always going to hate because they always hate what they can’t understand – and truth be known, they don’t seem to understand much, or try to, so they hate much.

Hate is always folly, even when it fails to multiply. If you are a follower of Jesus, you don’t hate. If you do hate, you’re not a follower of Jesus. You follow another master. Simple as that.

All that is an elaborate way of saying: Go, Gu!

Don’t Talk About It

Shortly after a police officer was convicted of murdering George Floyd, there was talk of the dawning of racial reckoning in the United States.

This event, it was said, would open new avenues for honest conversation about how racism and its corrosive effects throughout our society might be approached, confronted and eventually eradicated.

I saw this as a dim hope. We have had many such opportunities in recent years, and none of them has moved us close to a fruitful discussion. All our opportunities have evaporated almost as soon as they were glimpsed.

Nothing has changed. The Republican party has seen to that. Its campaign against “Critical Race Theory” will doom all efforts to talk about racism, white supremacy, white nationalism and other subjects that some white people will find offensive.

CRT started as an obscure academic exercise examining social, cultural and legal issues relating to race and racism. It may have been taught in law school or other advanced studies. It was never taught in American high schools or elementary schools. And it never will be.

Because the GOP has found a way to turn CRT into a political weapon. Mainly by spinning wild stories about it, most of them approximately 97.5% untrue. And Republican-dominated state legislatures are falling over themselves passing laws to outlaw the teaching of it.

What this means is that whenever a teacher starts a discussion about race, a white student is going to freak out and parents are going to shout “Critical Race Theory!” and the teacher is going to get fired. It won’t take long before everybody gets the point.

In the United States, you cannot have a discussion about race. It is illegal.

That’s only the start, of course. But if you can shut down this discussion, think about what other things you can make sure nobody talks about. Way to go, GOP.

Epiphanies

The outdoor lights, the many-pointed Moravian star and the lighted Nativity trio came down yesterday, January 5, the last day of the Christmas season. We kept the tree up for Twelfth Night but are removing the decorations and putting it all away today, on Epiphany.

It’s nice to get the living room back to normal, but not having the tree in the front window always feels like a loss just the same.

Some people try to put up their tree on the first day of Advent, but that’s so close to Thanksgiving that it never happens for us. This year I think it went up on December 6. That happens to be Saint Nicholas Day. A few days ago I read that many families set up their tree on that day in the old saint’s honor.

I like that custom: from December 6 to January 6, Saint Nicholas Day to Epiphany. Maybe we’ll keep it intentionally come December 2022.

Linda and I have had an artificial tree for most of our marriage. It took us a surprisingly long time to figure out that having a live tree in the house might explain why she always had allergy problems in December and early January. When we got an artificial tree, the allergies mostly disappeared.

Trekking out to the tree farm, picking the “perfect” tree, lashing it to the top of the car and hauling it home always seemed like a meaningful ritual – until we didn’t do it anymore. Digging the tree out of storage in the attic or garage just isn’t the same, but I have to come to prefer this new routine. The result is still gorgeous, and I like the simplicity of the act.

Come December 6, we’ll do it all over again, but with a renewed sense of purpose. Happy day, Nicholas! The season of miracles is upon us again.

* * * * *

An epiphany is a sudden revelation. So on this Epiphany we must not fail to take note of the one-year anniversary of events in Washington. That’s when Donald Trump attempted a coup by subverting the elections, and hundreds of Trumpistas stormed the Capitol building, causing several deaths, national trauma, and millions of dollars in damage.

Trumpistas and other purveyors of the Big Lie still insist is what all a harmless frolic. History will record otherwise, unless the Trumpistas triumph and the last shreds of the American democratic experiment are buried in propogranda and hate. Pray that it is not so.

Remember this day for the insurrection that failed, and also pray for the souls of those who bury their faces in darkness and insist on living a lie.

* * * * *

May the season of miracles continue!

I Wanna Be a Contender

I have a new ambition. I want to be a high Republican official – a legislator or governor or attorney general.

What a great gig! You can lie freely, and your “base” will lap it up.

You can twist information to your heart’s content, and nobody outside of those nasty media folks and a few Democrats will ever question your newfound “facts.”

People will applaud when you claim that the Jan. 6 coup attempt was just a stroll across the lawn.

People will cheer when you compare mask mandates to Nazi oppression.

“Go, go, go!” people will chant when you want to ban books that may offend somebody you want to vote for you.

Bucketloads of money will flow your way when you say Trump won.

You can do anything you want and say anything you want, and nobody gives a fig because you are a Republican, God’s gift to the future of the planet – hell, God’s gift to the whole solar system.

Move over, Ted Cruz.

Give me room, Roger Marshall.

Shut up and learn, Josh Hawley.

Look in your rear-view mirror, all you clowns in the Missouri capitol – and this means you, Parson and Schmitt.

Duck, you suckers in the Kansas crowd – far too many to mention.

Look out, Abbott and Costello (I mean, DeSantis)! I’m coming your way!

So that’s my new ambition. I want to be another scum-sucking liar who’s proud to hang my hat under the GOP banner.

Sorry, all you Republicans who remember when your party stood for honesty and genuine patriotism and all those other quaint notions. Your day is done. This is the new GOP. Get your brown shirt now before the price goes even higher.

A Fourth Deadly Virus

It has become almost commonplace to suggest that there are two viruses in our midst – the coronavirus and the virus of racism.

In a sermon series I did in June 2020, I suggested that three viruses are ravaging American society today – the coronavirus, racism, and authoritarianism. The latter, of course, is most keenly represented by presidential poseur Donald Trump and others who follow in his footsteps.

Now I am ready to add a fourth. Call it a variant of the other three. Call it, as others have, an “infodemic.” It is an epidemic of misinformation. So much of it now concerns vaccination and masks and the “freedom” that some claim to expose others to the virus with no sense of personal responsibility.

The Republican party has become a master of misinformation on almost all fronts. I certainly would not call all Republican legislators liars, but when you consider the likes of Hawley and Cruz and DeSantis and McConnell and so many others, it becomes difficult not to paint with a broad brush.

No, we can’t talk about race because that’s “critical race theory.” No, we can’t investigate the Jan. 6 insurrection because that might expose traitors in high places. Yes, we believe in individual freedom when it comes to masks, but not when it comes to reproductive rights.

Yes, we believe in local control, unless it conflicts with mandates from Republican-controlled state legislatures. Yes, we believe in free elections, as long as Republicans draw the district lines and enact rules that keep minority (but soon to be majority) folk from casting a ballot.

There used to be a thing called truth, around which we could unify. Then along came Trump and the concept of “alternative facts,” meaning self-serving lies. And downhill we have gone.

We are in a volatile moment in our country’s history, maybe in human history as well. This is a moral crisis. We need a moral revival. What we need, the Rev. William Barber Jr. says, is a moral revolution. It will not come from liars and poseurs.

We need leaders who will unify us, not divide us. We need leaders who seek not to dominate but to persuade; leaders who want to make peace, not war; leaders who stand with the oppressed, not the oppressor; leaders who are humble, not proud; leaders who thirst and hunger for righteousness; leaders who understand that the source of real strength is not the knee you press on someone’s neck. No, real power resides in your alliance with the one in whom we live and move and have our being.

Look it up, as the loony conspiracy theorists say. Start with Acts 17:28 and Revelation 4:11. Only the truth will set us free from these four raging epidemics.