Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > It's Not About Trump - Our Political Culture Is Corrupt
________________________________________
It's Not About Trump - Our Political Culture Is Corrupt
By Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II [1] / The Nation [2]
March 15, 2016
Trumpism was created in the crucible of the "Southern strategy." We have
sown to the wind, reaping the whirlwind.
We can't isolate Donald Trump and his supporters, because that is a
simplification. When you unpack the policies of all of his competitors, most
of their disagreement is in tone, not substance. It is not as though they
are moderate and he is extreme. Trump is not the problem; it's all of the
xenophobia and racist innuendo and othering of immigrants that is the
problem. It is all of the coded language about people who want free stuff,
from the Southern-strategy lexicon of Wallace, Nixon, Reagan, and Atwater
that has been spewed for years. That is the problem. Add to it the more
recent rhetoric that says President Obama is unfit. Long before Trump, all
of this rhetoric created a kind of us-against-them mob mentality, which
after it is loosed can manifest in the violence that we now see.
These were tactics used to end the first Reconstruction in America, too,
when many white elites began to fear a black-white coalition. And they were
used in the late 1968, to create the so-called solid South and push back
against the gains of the 1960s, brought about by black, white, Latino, and
interfaith relationships. We need to understand all of this as we approach
this election and think about about kinds of questions we ask the
candidates.
Recently, Senator Ted Cruz was in Raleigh, North Carolina's Calvary Baptist
Church when FOX News anchor Megyn Kelly asked him about his moral values:
"How do you manage to keep your integrity working in Washington?" Cruz said
as president, he intended to "pass a simple flat tax and abolish the IRS,"
"prosecute Planned Parenthood," and end the Common Core educational
standards instantly.
Presidential candidates of all political stripes have long courted what the
media calls the "evangelical voters" in the South, using the language of
morality. Well, I am an evangelical. I have been born again. I don't think
it is because I have African and Native American and some European blood
flowing in my veins that I have a different view of evangelism. Yes, I
learned my evangelism from my father, a Disciples of Christ minister. But I
also learned it from Duke Divinity School, from Union Theological Seminary,
and from great philosophical thinkers and Biblical scholars across this
country. I learned that persons who claim to be evangelicals are anointed to
preach good news to the poor.
As the Gospel of Luke says, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me for he hath
anointed me to preach good news to the Poor." The word poor here is
"ptochos," a Greek word that means those who have been made poor by economic
exploitation. Evangelism always starts with Jesus' words: "When I was hungry
did you feed me? When I was naked, did you clothe me?" In North Carolina,
even our state constitution notes, in Article 11, "Beneficent provision for
the poor, the unfortunate, and the orphan is one of the first duties of a
civilized and a Christian state."
So as the presidential campaign comes to North Carolina on Tuesday, we in
the Forward Together Moral Movement and the North Carolina NAACP urge the
media not to take a positive or negative stance toward specific candidates,
but to ask deep moral questions of all of them. We encourage media and
voters to ask about public morality-determined by policy choices and budget
choices, by concerns like Medicaid expansion, voting rights, and poverty.
Ask them how they "manage to keep their integrity" when 500,000 low-income
North Carolinians-including roughly 30,000 veterans-have no health insurance
because Governor Pat McCrory and the legislature have chosen not to expand
Medicaid. Medical authorities at UNC Hospitals estimate that as a result of
this immoral choice, each year 2,500 North Carolinians will die
unnecessarily due to lack of health care. Most will die because a lack of
preventive care leads to needless strokes and heart attacks. Ask them why
they place their political ideology over human needs.
Ask state legislators how they manage to keep their integrity when they
passed a voter suppression bill the afternoon after the US Supreme Court
gutted the Voting Rights Act in the morning. Their voter suppression law
made dozens of changes to voting policies, aiming to hold down turnout. Ask
candidates what they are doing to expand voting, not restrict access to the
ballot.
Ask them what they will do to raise real wages, which have dropped steadily
since the 1970s, leading to the greatest economic inequality in America
since the Great Depression? Ask them if they support the fundamental
principle of all great religions and ethical systems in the world: To love
one's neighbor. Ask them whether they can name three or four policies that
they believe would be the logical outgrowth of a social ethos grounded in
love for one's neighbor. How would they act to bring those policies about?
And in that context, what would a moral, comprehensive immigration policy
look like?
Few moral issues are more pressing than public education. We might ask
candidates if they support the use of public money to pay for private
schools, including voucher or tax credit programs. Do candidates support the
unlimited replacement of traditional public schools with charter schools and
how do they see the impact of charter schools on public education? What are
some ways that candidates would support public school teachers?
Most citizens increasingly support equality and justice for all citizens,
including those of different sexual or gender orientations. One moral
question for candidates is how they would safeguard the rights of LGBTQ
citizens to be free of discrimination or attack because of their sexual or
gender orientation.
These are a few of the moral questions the Forward Together Moral Movement
and the North Carolina NAACP believe the media should be asking candidates
today. If we are to "prosecute Planned Parenthood," what will we prosecute
them for? Would we prosecute those who slandered Planned Parenthood with
doctored film footage? What kind of educational standards would best serve
our children and nurture them for the world in which they are growing up? It
is time that we asked serious moral questions of all of our candidates.
The Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II is co-author of The Third Reconstruction:
Moral Mondays, Fusion Politics and the Rise of a New Justice Movement [3],
published in January 2016 by Beacon Press. In January 2016 he also began
filing regular dispatches from the southern movement for racial justice for
The Nation, resuming a role Martin Luther King Jr. once filled for the
magazine. Rev. Barber II is the architect of the Forward Together Moral
Monday Movement, president of the North Carolina NAACP and pastor of the
Greenleaf Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Goldsboro. He is also
president of Repairers of the Breach [4]. In 2015, he was the recipient of
the Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship.
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Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/its-not-about-trump-our-political-cult
ure-corrupt
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/rev-dr-william-j-barber-ii
[2] http://www.thenation.com
[3] http://www.beacon.org/The-Third-Reconstruction-P1139.aspx
[4] http://www.breachrepairers.org/
[5] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on It's Not About
Trump - Our Political Culture Is Corrupt
[6] http://www.alternet.org/
[7] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > It's Not About Trump - Our Political Culture Is Corrupt
It's Not About Trump - Our Political Culture Is Corrupt
By Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II [1] / The Nation [2]
March 15, 2016
Trumpism was created in the crucible of the "Southern strategy." We have
sown to the wind, reaping the whirlwind.
We can't isolate Donald Trump and his supporters, because that is a
simplification. When you unpack the policies of all of his competitors, most
of their disagreement is in tone, not substance. It is not as though they
are moderate and he is extreme. Trump is not the problem; it's all of the
xenophobia and racist innuendo and othering of immigrants that is the
problem. It is all of the coded language about people who want free stuff,
from the Southern-strategy lexicon of Wallace, Nixon, Reagan, and Atwater
that has been spewed for years. That is the problem. Add to it the more
recent rhetoric that says President Obama is unfit. Long before Trump, all
of this rhetoric created a kind of us-against-them mob mentality, which
after it is loosed can manifest in the violence that we now see.
These were tactics used to end the first Reconstruction in America, too,
when many white elites began to fear a black-white coalition. And they were
used in the late 1968, to create the so-called solid South and push back
against the gains of the 1960s, brought about by black, white, Latino, and
interfaith relationships. We need to understand all of this as we approach
this election and think about about kinds of questions we ask the
candidates.
Recently, Senator Ted Cruz was in Raleigh, North Carolina's Calvary Baptist
Church when FOX News anchor Megyn Kelly asked him about his moral values:
"How do you manage to keep your integrity working in Washington?" Cruz said
as president, he intended to "pass a simple flat tax and abolish the IRS,"
"prosecute Planned Parenthood," and end the Common Core educational
standards instantly.
Presidential candidates of all political stripes have long courted what the
media calls the "evangelical voters" in the South, using the language of
morality. Well, I am an evangelical. I have been born again. I don't think
it is because I have African and Native American and some European blood
flowing in my veins that I have a different view of evangelism. Yes, I
learned my evangelism from my father, a Disciples of Christ minister. But I
also learned it from Duke Divinity School, from Union Theological Seminary,
and from great philosophical thinkers and Biblical scholars across this
country. I learned that persons who claim to be evangelicals are anointed to
preach good news to the poor.
As the Gospel of Luke says, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me for he hath
anointed me to preach good news to the Poor." The word poor here is
"ptochos," a Greek word that means those who have been made poor by economic
exploitation. Evangelism always starts with Jesus' words: "When I was hungry
did you feed me? When I was naked, did you clothe me?" In North Carolina,
even our state constitution notes, in Article 11, "Beneficent provision for
the poor, the unfortunate, and the orphan is one of the first duties of a
civilized and a Christian state."
So as the presidential campaign comes to North Carolina on Tuesday, we in
the Forward Together Moral Movement and the North Carolina NAACP urge the
media not to take a positive or negative stance toward specific candidates,
but to ask deep moral questions of all of them. We encourage media and
voters to ask about public morality-determined by policy choices and budget
choices, by concerns like Medicaid expansion, voting rights, and poverty.
Ask them how they "manage to keep their integrity" when 500,000 low-income
North Carolinians-including roughly 30,000 veterans-have no health insurance
because Governor Pat McCrory and the legislature have chosen not to expand
Medicaid. Medical authorities at UNC Hospitals estimate that as a result of
this immoral choice, each year 2,500 North Carolinians will die
unnecessarily due to lack of health care. Most will die because a lack of
preventive care leads to needless strokes and heart attacks. Ask them why
they place their political ideology over human needs.
Ask state legislators how they manage to keep their integrity when they
passed a voter suppression bill the afternoon after the US Supreme Court
gutted the Voting Rights Act in the morning. Their voter suppression law
made dozens of changes to voting policies, aiming to hold down turnout. Ask
candidates what they are doing to expand voting, not restrict access to the
ballot.
Ask them what they will do to raise real wages, which have dropped steadily
since the 1970s, leading to the greatest economic inequality in America
since the Great Depression? Ask them if they support the fundamental
principle of all great religions and ethical systems in the world: To love
one's neighbor. Ask them whether they can name three or four policies that
they believe would be the logical outgrowth of a social ethos grounded in
love for one's neighbor. How would they act to bring those policies about?
And in that context, what would a moral, comprehensive immigration policy
look like?
Few moral issues are more pressing than public education. We might ask
candidates if they support the use of public money to pay for private
schools, including voucher or tax credit programs. Do candidates support the
unlimited replacement of traditional public schools with charter schools and
how do they see the impact of charter schools on public education? What are
some ways that candidates would support public school teachers?
Most citizens increasingly support equality and justice for all citizens,
including those of different sexual or gender orientations. One moral
question for candidates is how they would safeguard the rights of LGBTQ
citizens to be free of discrimination or attack because of their sexual or
gender orientation.
These are a few of the moral questions the Forward Together Moral Movement
and the North Carolina NAACP believe the media should be asking candidates
today. If we are to "prosecute Planned Parenthood," what will we prosecute
them for? Would we prosecute those who slandered Planned Parenthood with
doctored film footage? What kind of educational standards would best serve
our children and nurture them for the world in which they are growing up? It
is time that we asked serious moral questions of all of our candidates.
The Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II is co-author of The Third Reconstruction:
Moral Mondays, Fusion Politics and the Rise of a New Justice Movement [3],
published in January 2016 by Beacon Press. In January 2016 he also began
filing regular dispatches from the southern movement for racial justice for
The Nation, resuming a role Martin Luther King Jr. once filled for the
magazine. Rev. Barber II is the architect of the Forward Together Moral
Monday Movement, president of the North Carolina NAACP and pastor of the
Greenleaf Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Goldsboro. He is also
president of Repairers of the Breach [4]. In 2015, he was the recipient of
the Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [5]
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.[6]
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/its-not-about-trump-our-political-cult
ure-corrupt
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/rev-dr-william-j-barber-ii
[2] http://www.thenation.com
[3] http://www.beacon.org/The-Third-Reconstruction-P1139.aspx
[4] http://www.breachrepairers.org/
[5] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on It's Not About
Trump - Our Political Culture Is Corrupt
[6] http://www.alternet.org/
[7] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
