01 October 2017

The General and Luke 16.15

The recent racist incident at the USAF Academy was certainly appalling and is rightfully condemned but I'm afraid I cannot go along with the world's praise of Lt. Gen Jay Silveria, the Superintendent of the school.
His speech is almost ubiquitous at present dominating news feeds and newspapers and I'm sure he'll get a few feathers in his cap. Many are saying, "This is the speech we wish the president would give."
"This is the right response to racism."
This is insanity on display. These commentators as well as the general are blind. This is true in terms of our culture and its history but they are also spiritually blind and their moral judgments are askew. Allow me to elaborate.


The general is not a paragon of virtue or leadership. In fact he's a racist killer himself, something far worse than the cadets he's condemning.
This general flew air missions over the Balkans and Iraq and he was previously vice-commander at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. In other words he's part of the tip of the spear, he was literally 'pushing the button' of the war machine and on its cutting edge. This war machine of empire is all but predicated on racist theory... as all empires are.
They all rest on a basic premise. We are better than you and we have a right to take what you have and kill you if you resist us. We are either racially or culturally your superior and we have a right to your land and if we desire it...your life.
Silveria had no qualms about bombing the people of Balkans. Slavs and others who inhabit that 'impoverished backwater of Europe' (as many refer to it) are not granted any dignity. They are not allowed to sort out their own affairs or reckon with history and its many crimes. The little fleas need the US to step in and with violence force them to conform to the Western-NATO order. It is for their own good. If they resist, they deserve death and this Air Force officer was more than willing to bring it to them as he flew his combat sorties. After all NATO had a continent to consolidate and they had to hurry. Russia was being manipulated and destroyed but there was always the chance it could get back on its feet.
As best we can tell he had no hesitation or experienced any regret in attacking and bombing the people of Iraq... a people who never attacked the United States. And yet the United States decided that it had the right to come in and take their country and their resources. Even before the 2003 invasion and subsequent catastrophe, the US had been engaged in a genocidal campaign that killed over a half million Iraqi children. The so-called No-Fly-Zones and sanctions regime were largely in the hands of the US Air Force and its pilots... men like Silveria, men without consciences.
Like politicians of all ages and stripes the American leadership whipped up some lies to justify this destruction of Iraq. They did this in both 1991 and 2003, though they did not take responsibility for the death and destruction let alone the monsters the desolation produced. But that's hardly a new story. And yet this fine paragon of virtue and leadership even when it was all exposed as rot and deception had no problem continuing his career in that finest and most honourable of institutions... the US military. He'll take a pension too, the blood money of the war machine upon which he feeds.
Silveria decried the racist graffiti on the doors of black students. I wonder how many US bombs were scrawled with the same types of racist epithets when dropped on the 'brown' people of Iraq?
Bagram Air Base was a centre of US torture and at the nexus of the Empire's brutal and immoral war on a country that also never attacked the United States. It was country slated for attack as was evident by the timetable in 2001. The invasion which commenced in October was not something planned in the wake of 9/11. It had already been set in motion. The official narrative has proved spurious on many fronts.
On a somewhat related note, one cannot but marvel at the speed of the US military and yet how slowly the US colossus drags its feet when it comes to storm ravaged Puerto Rico! We're led to believe that plans and logistics for an invasion of a landlocked mountainous country in Asia come together within a couple of weeks but the US can't get basic necessities to its own hemispheric territory in the same time-frame? Or could it be that the folks of Puerto Rico are somehow less important than say... the folks of Florida or Texas?
This general is part of the war machine that has (just since 2001) been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands. By extension when one includes the spin-off and resultant conflicts... a number now creeping into the millions.
He's a butcher and a murderer and then decided to earn some more medals by returning to the fatherland in order to train up some more young men in the paths of death.
I guess there are those that think a generation of war is somehow unrelated to the economic stress and social disintegration we are witnessing. They think America's militarist foreign policy has nothing to do with the problems in our society. They don't see the connection between the US system, its economy, law enforcement, drug addiction, the phony drug interdiction, the security state and the push for endless war. 
The fabric of American society has been torn apart by the greed of deindustrialisation and Wall Street's lust for international markets, resources and labour. American Capitalism and consumerism has made shipwreck of the world and now it is turning on itself. It has led to decadence and self-destruction.  It has resulted in many defeated people who look for scapegoats and lash out in anger at things they don't understand.
How could they? They are propagandised endlessly by the education system, the workplace, television and social media. It's a confusing mess especially for those who have failed to reflect upon it all, or may not even have the tools to do so. It's no wonder so many have turned to drugs and suicide.
That is the irony in this episode. There is a direct connection between the unrest, between the growing race war on the American Street and the wars of the Empire and system it generates.
The war profiteers are cashing in on multiple fronts and the system is predicated on men like Silveria to do its dirty work. It also depends on 'losers' the people who are used and thrown away, the people who fight the wars and fill the jails.
This general so lauded by the media and its hosts of blind political pundits could be a poster-child for the system... the system that has led to Ferguson and Charlottesville... the system that has generated the bestial behaviour on display at the Air Force Academy.
I found his speech to be obscene because it came from his mouth. But of course the soldiers and the military are untouchable. The flag's veneration has been intimately wed to 'the troops'. Patriotism and Militarism have been so intertwined as to become symbiotic and inseparable. Just look at and reflect on the insanity and stupidity of the NFL controversy. A bunch of prima donna spoiled brat gladiators want to parade and strut even while their gluttonous admirers want to feel good about themselves and their wasteful lives and habits. Having bought into the Pentagon's propaganda they have turned even sporting events into culture-affirming religious acts and now they are offended because the gladiators have grown irritated. They've been paid off, they should just shut-up right? Of course how many of these millionaire athletes have in reality turned their back on their people and their values and instead feed from the system... the system they sought to escape. They couldn't beat it, so they joined it and now we're supposed to respect them?
All sides are obscene as is the president who attacks kneeling football players and yet defends racist brawlers in Virginia. It would seem our society has all but lost its mind.
Incidentally as a Christian I tend to avoid situations where I know patriotism will be on display. And yet sometimes I can't help it especially as it continues to creep into hitherto untouched aspects of our culture. When confronted thus (as I was at a graduation not too long ago) I always sit down when the national anthem plays. If our culture called us to kneel, I would stand tall. I will not show respect to the golden image, even if my fellow Christians have confused a strip of cloth with an icon of Christ.
Sometimes the protest even has to be taken into the Church, especially when the Church slips into such idolatries. It's both interesting and ironic that the Christian population is more likely to get angry (and threatening) with you than the confused people of the lost world.
I suppose in another sense it amazes me that any minority would want to be part of the US military. But like the redneck kids I saw at the fair today being wooed by recruiters, they don't understand that they are expendable cannon fodder, fighting the wars and destroying their lives for the wealthy, for the very system which crushes them. The military is disproportionately filled with minorities. It's a sad reality but for many of them it's a way out and leg up. The fact that such a 'way' is at the expense of other people deemed of lesser worth and race is a point few of them seem to grasp. Others see it but refuse to reckon with it, biding their time so they can get the most indulgent pension deal imaginable. Others destroy their own lives after just a short period of 'service'. And yet our culture (and the Church with it) teaches that the way out of despair is through affirmation of the mission and its deeds. Learn pride and feel good about what you were part of! What they need is to learn the grace of repentance.
As long as the system is able to keep finding fools to fight its wars they can keep it going. I was of the most foolish variety. I volunteered but later repented of it as I learned of God grace and quickly divorced myself from the death cult that is the US military. I too was part of the Balkan murder machine and the expansion of the US/NATO Empire, but the Spirit wrought the fruits of repentance. I got out, repented and now denounce it. Silveria continues to feed from the machine and has become one with it.
Christians ought to denounce this general but instead they will praise him. The Apostate Church is led by blind guides. They aren't just the Joel Osteen's or the Rob Bell's, but all too often they are also the celebrities of the Evangelical and Confessional world. Bureaucrats and partisans they defend denominational systems and institutions. They defend the system upon which they feed and grow fat. Truth is all too often of secondary importance. They are happy to teach lies, affirm the world and participate in the idolatries and myths of Western Christendom (so-called) and the American Empire.
While they praise General Silveria and affirm the American system they painfully demonstrate that they have forgotten the lessons of Luke 16.15.

It's a lesson Evangelicalism cannot learn. It is at the very heart of what it is and what they are.