Stop Looking Backward
Nostalgia is a liar. In the face of current difficulty, we look back to the past and think, “Things were so much better then.” Sometimes, there’s merit to that: you may look fondly on a time before the loss of a friend or loved one, a time when you were still employed, or any number of things that you can more or less objectively say are better than your current situation. Politics is a different story. In the wake of riots, protests, and the struggle to address racial issues and police violence, on top of a pandemic and all its issues, there’s been a tendency to reminisce. Former presidents, George W. Bush and Barack Obama have both made public statements about the murder of George Floyd, and rightly so. It’s a travesty and I hope that Floyd’s death will be a catalyst for long lasting change in policing, especially with regard to accountability and use of force. Even if I were to comb through their statements and find something to disagree with, it wouldn’t take away from the central fact that Floyd, and so many others, should still be alive today.
What puzzled me is how people reacted. Bush and Obama were met with much praise for their words, with claims made, even anecdotally, to the tune of, “I miss having a president,” and “We need a real leader.” The reason why I found this all so puzzling will probably make some people mad, but let’s go ahead and get some disclaimers out of the way:
This isn’t a defense of Donald Trump. Every criticism leveled against previous leaders here applies to him.
This isn’t meant to take away from conversations around race and police brutality. I can be outraged about multiple things simultaneously and so can you.
This is not meant as a, “You don’t actually care” piece. It’s more a “I wish you’d consider this as well,” piece.
All Is Forgiven Once You’re Gone
I wasn’t exactly a politically astute kid, shockingly enough (and I’m barely politically literate now, but that’s beside the point). One thing I do remember is that every kid I knew hated George W. Bush. He was the single stupidest, vilest, and most incompetent person to ever hold the office. Granted, most of us probably couldn’t articulate why, but we didn’t exactly care either. For us, it was largely the result of some press coverage and a lot of SNL spoofs and zingers. It wasn’t just SNL either. Patton Oswalt, on his Werewolves and Lollipops album, (which I can’t recommend now because Oswalt is quite vulgar), referred to Bush and Cheney as draft dodgers and compared their alleged wrongdoings to the Dukes of Hazzard. During his presidency, one could even find discussions on whether or not he could in fact be tried as a war criminal. Now? Bush is essentially thought of as a bumbling, well-intentioned goofball who’s taken an interest in painting.
Obama is a different case, mainly because he famously claimed that he didn’t have an embarrassing scandal during his presidency and also because of the “controversy” about his tan suit (hold that thought). The right typically despises Obama, with Ben Shapiro, for example, publishing an entire book purporting to lay out a criminal case against his administration. Obamagate is still a live discussion, depending on who you ask, and committees are taking actions of various sorts with reference to that even now. I rarely expect much to come of such affairs, but what I do expect to continue is the gradual cooling of rhetoric around the 44th president of the United States.
I say all of that to say, we’re remarkably willing to forget a great deal once someone’s out of office. It’s hardly a malicious or vile thing, to be clear. When a role as significant as that of the President changed hands, it’s understandable that things get lost in the shuffle. However, there’s something that, I think, is too great an issue to ignore and is, in some ways, connected to what is in front of us right now.
Civilian Casualties
The United States has been, on and off, involved in the Middle East for decades. Be it efforts to fund the mujahideen in Afghanistan, the Gulf War, the Iraq War, take your pick. “We’ve” been over there for a while and there doesn’t actually seem to be a plan to leave anytime soon (that I’m aware of at least). One can argue about the necessity of such actions and the wisdom of maintaining a military presence. One could even dispute whether or not, after a certain point, “we’ve” created more problems than have actually been solved. While I’d disagree with many on these issues, I can at least envision an argument made in good faith that isn’t just the functional equivalent of rabidly screaming “Deus Vult!”
What I can’t quite envision good faith defenses of is the fact that by 2012, roughly 15% of people killed in drone strikes were non-combatants. This implicates both Bush and Obama in the deaths of hundreds of Middle Eastern civilians. Democrats and Republicans both would hem and haw about the outrage de jour while people were being killed on the other side of the Atlantic. By the end of his presidency, Obama had ordered over 500 strikes, killing civilians and militants alike: missiles can’t check their targets, after all. Think back to the tan suit. The source of the controversy was apparently that such was far too casual a choice for announcing plans to ramp up military action in Syria. What kind of insanity has to take hold of someone for them to fixate on the color of a man’s jacket while he’s detailing his intention to continue a series of campaigns that have left death and destruction in their wake?
What’s more disturbing to me is that we’ve yet to reject such action. Trump has taken up the mantle well, and while reception has been mixed, as one would expect, one moment haunts me. After ordering a strike into Syria, the response of one Fareed Zakaria was to say that “Donald Trump became President of the United States.” Set aside arguments about the strike itself and the ins and outs of why it was or wasn’t necessary and think about that. The moment, at least in Zakaria’s eyes, that Trump became president wasn’t when he pushed for one policy or another. It wasn’t a speech, or anything like that. For some, the moment that Donald Trump really stepped into the role of President was when he directed military munitions against a foreign body without the authorization of Congress. This praise wasn’t an isolated incident either. While I think it’s safe to say that many have given up on the notion of Congress asserting the fact that declaring war is strictly within its power, not that of the executive branch, I don’t think this should be overlooked. Trump is criticized, usually rightly so, for a variety of things. He’s vulgar, rude, arguably inept, accused of colluding with a foreign power, the list goes on. Yet, for some reason, it’s rarely brought up that he is also killing civilians by the same means his predecessors used. It gets brought up in think pieces, articles, and the like, which is good. However, you’ll have to forgive me if I think that Trump will face a second impeachment for literally anything else before he, or his predecessors, are taken to task for killing brown people overseas with missiles.
Why Does This Matter?
The obvious reason that this matters is twofold. The first is that murder is morally wrong, but there is also another layer. Christians have long disagreed about the question of pacifism. What I don’t think we can disagree about is warmongering. In the Psalms, David calls for rescues from evil men, the kind who, amongst other vices, “stir up wars all day long.” (Psalm 140:2, CSB, see also, Proverbs 6:12–15). In Proverbs, Solomon identifies seven traits of wicked men that God hates: two of those are the killing of the innocent and the stirring up of strife among brothers (Proverbs 6:16–19). I think it’s fair to note that the immediate referent is personal strife and the act of murdering an innocent person directly, but we can hardly ignore the principles at play: those who shed innocent blood and seek to keep violent conflict alive and well bring misery in their wake and beckon God’s wrath to hunt them down.
As to our present crisis and unrest: consider the following: why would a person who can remain calloused and indifferent about hundreds of civilian deaths suddenly become genuinely overwhelmed with a need to grieve the death of one, five, even a hundred civilians? Violence, death, and unrest in the Middle East is a story that is arguably over a thousand years old and the political class of the United States has enthusiastically taken turns involving themselves in it. Why then, are we surprised when politicians especially are so nonchalant about a history of death and persecution only a handful of centuries old? I can’t imagine a person unbothered by explosives snuffing out brown lives being overly concerned about a knee crushing a black life.
I don’t say this to imply that all politicians, without exception, are cold and unfeeling, feigning interest in people’s suffering only for political gain. However, consider this: police brutality isn’t a new issue. Politicians have had time to think about and propose legislation, express concern, and make things happen, both federally and at the state and local levels. By the same token, politicians have had time and opportunity to stop military action in the Middle East and insist on adopting a policy of, for example, taking every pain to only engage in “just wars” after the theorizing of Aquinas. What solution exactly fits each situation can be argued in good faith. What I think is beyond argument, at this point at least, is that more than enough time has passed such that those elected to propose and execute laws, as well as those appointed to interpret them, are out of excuses, at least with reference to time and opportunity. I leave them to formulate their excuses and you to decide their sufficiency or lack thereof.
Why Shouldn’t We Look “Backward?”
I never want to imply that we shouldn’t grieve the unjust death of African Americans and demand justice. I look at the protests going on during this time and am glad to see people uniting around a refusal to allow the state to exert itself so callously. I’m thrilled at the thought that this moment could lead to major reforms and even a complete overhaul of policing in the United States. However, this is tempered by my irritation at nostalgia, as scarce as it is comparatively. When someone says, “This wouldn’t happen under x,” or, “We need a leader like y,” I sigh. More commonly, when one political figure or major party is blamed over another, I shake my head because I want to scream, “Any of them would kill you if they thought they had a good reason!” You may think that’s an overstatement, but remember, when civilians are killed overseas, it gets chalked up to “collateral damage,” or “the price of war.” There are only so many steps between “unacceptable losses” and “acceptable losses” for people primarily concerned with political power.
This is hardly a screed from an enlightened centrist either. My solution to “both sides are bad” isn’t to put forward someone from either side that I happen to like. Rather, I propose that we change direction entirely. Dear reader, stop looking backward. Stop looking backward in time for assurance that the leaders then were so much better. You don’t miss them, you miss a time when a problem wasn’t bearing down on you (and that’s not a slight against you). Stop looking backward to Washington D.C. for help from career politicians. They don’t care about you beyond your ability to keep voting for them. We should look in two directions for help in this time.
A New Direction
Look to Christ, your savior and Lord over all things, not because a prayer and Bible verse will make everything go away, but because the most pressing issues have been addressed in Him and He has promised to make all things new. Look to Christ because He shows us a new way of living and loving our neighbors as ourselves. Look to Christ because apart from him, any effort to address our problems will ultimately fail.
Secondly, look forward. Our path out of senseless violence and death both at home and abroad is ahead of us instead of behind. Instead of insisting on the same pat solutions, look forward and imagine something different. Look forward for new friends and alliances, beyond the boundaries of what the old will insist is even possible. Old wisdom, tested and tried by time, shouldn’t be discarded out of hand, but looked at in a new light. Let new wisdom put itself to the test and prove its worth as well. Embrace the scrapes and scuffs picked up from every misstep along the way as a record of having the courage to try something new. Whatever you do, keep moving and looking forward, fixing your eyes on Christ along the way.
Eyes forward and Christward, dear reader.