Justice For All

Evil can hide in systems much more readily than in individuals.

-Richard Rohr

As you might be able to tell, I'm not a fan of this election cycle, it's giving me bad feelings on a pretty much daily basis.  The thing that I guess I'm most vexed by is the way that the veneer of our civility has been peeled away and the rotten underneath stuff is so visible. Political relationships have devolved into petty squabbles where truth and righteousness get steamrolled in the push to "win." The prejudice that has lurked in the shadows of our society has decided that now is the hour to step out onto the big stage and strut it's stuff.

I have caught myself, several times, calling a certain orange tinted candidate, evil.  But that's not really accurate.  I don't think the Donald is evil, he's authoritarian, arrogant and chauvinistic, but that just makes him all the more attractive to people who just can not stand Hillary. I think insofar as either candidate represents something evil, it is evil that hides from them behind a mask of ideological assumptions about the world.  Trump preaches the idea that if you just take off all the restraints, people and businesses will be able to roll into prosperity and good times.  Trump is a man at home in chaos, he seems to flourish in this environment where truth is hard to come by.  At the same time, he shouts about "Law and Order" (not the TV show), and seems to have no idea about how that echoes Mussolini and Franco, nor does he see any contradiction in advocating authoritarian rules for the masses while removing what regulations we have to restrain the robber barons (of which class he is a lifetime member).  His personal and professional life has been chaotic to say the least, multiple marriages, failed businesses (and some successful ones), his name on shining buildings and cursed on the tongues of many whom he owed money.  "Reality" television loved him, because he is larger than life, and his cult of personality has proven to be able to cross over into the world of politics.

But he is not alone in serving and protecting Evil.  Hillary has been a part of the political system, with all of its wars, greed and corruption for pretty much her entire adult life. Her "corruption" like her much discussed email scandal, were really just capitulations to political necessity.  The comment has been made by those who pay more attention to politics than me that Hillary has been playing the political game for so long that she may have actually forgotten what it was like to not be a part of the game. She has been so long in the dragon's lair that she has become a dragon herself.

Here is the larger context of the above quote from Fr. Rohr: 

Today, most of us try to find personal and individual freedom even as we remain inside of structural boxes and a system of consumption that we are then unable or unwilling to critique.  Our mortgages, luxuries and privileged lifestyles control our whole future. Whoever is paying our bills and giving us security and status determines what we can and cannot say or even think.  Self-serving institutions that give us our security, status or identity are considered "too big to fail" and are invariably beyond judgment from the vast majority of people. Evil can hide in systems much more readily than in individuals.

If I'm honest, and I generally try to be, I know that I could probably get whole-heartedly behind either candidate if it weren't for this pesky thing called the Gospel that keeps telling me to look out for the least of these and the little ones.  I could embrace Trump's strong-man iconoclasm and say that, for all his faults, at least he's something new and different, because the old system might just be too broke to get anything but congress overriding a veto on highly emotional grounds, and then realizing that they probably just opened American service people and contractors all over the world to being sued in foreign courts.  I could be more enthusiastic about my support for Hillary, because essentially I do believe that she is the better choice, not because she's going to change the system, but because she knows how to work the system.  But I'm not happy about endorsing the status quo (I'm still mourning for Bernie).  I want things to change, I just don't want them to change in the way I think Trump would change them. The majority of us are probably going to be voting based on rejection principle rather than on some positive criteria, and that may be sad, but it might just get us through this kerfuffle.
I believe that the Gospel leads us to be salt and light, and work for the peace of the city, even if we are exile.  The Christian relationship to civil authorities (rendering unto Caesar) is tricky.  I believe we are called to work for justice and challenge "the world," which meant essentially, the systems of greed and violence, those "structural boxes" and systems of consumption as Rohr described them.  The truth of the matter is that we are probably never going to get a presidential candidate who really takes a Gospel approach to the process or the office.  They crucified Jesus, and he wasn't even running.