Yesterday, John McCain renounced his political endorsement from Pastor John Hagee, and yesterday I was on the phone with what seemed at the time to be dozens of reporters, journalists, and network producers, talking about the details of one little video I'd made, a video which has come to trouble the presidential candidacy of Arizona Senator John McCain who once, it is said, was a maverick but who I have come to feel has lost his moral bearing. Now, a Google search on "Hagee,McCain,endorsement" pulls up over 1,000 news stories, both national and international, on John McCain's rejection of the political endorsements of John Hagee and Rod Parsley. And, a Google search that includes "Talk To Action", the website I co-founded in late 2005 with Frederick Clarkson and which centrally helped make this possible, produces over 230 news stories.
As a result, I've heard I may be nominated for a special award, and at the end of this post (and, I'm adding those credits now) I want to emphasize this: my name will be most centrally this but i want to emphasize the collective nature of this triumph which, in essence, represents a triumph for a traditionally marginalized class, people who study, wrote on and focus on the intersection of religion, especially the Christian right, and politics. This is their triumph, not mine.
The following is a speech--about my role in this, and about the wider context, the path our planet can take now either towards peace of towards nuclear apocalypse. But also, it is a tribute to those who have participated in this, working with me to enable what can come to be, I hope and pray, a shift in our national discourse and a moral awakening, out of the long nightmare which has come to trouble our nation, and hence the world, over the past several decades. lastly, there's an action item concerning Joseph Lieberman--who has publicly compared John Hagee to Moses. I'm preparing a mre focused video on the subject which I'd like to ask you, should this post of mine hit the rec list, to vote up on YouTube, and I'm also preparing a short story on Joe Lieberman's embrace of John hagee, which I'd like to ask you to vote up on Digg and elsewhere. I'll have those two items ready by noon, so if you want to support those with your votes, please return to this post around noon or a little before.
Best,
Bruce Wilson
****
THE SPEECH
My friends [as John McCain would say], ours is a troubled and perilous time but it also is a time of great promise...
In troubled and perilous times we must, if we are to prevail so that brighter visions of the future can come into being, remember foremost that we are strong, politically and morally, to the extent that we remember who we are, where we came from, those who have befriended us and aided us each in our personal paths.
And, we must look to tomorrow, towards where we collectively want our nation and our world to go. We must look away from the visions of John Hagee and John McCain, visions of war and thermonuclear war. We must look towards, and envision, peace in which, as Lyndon Johnson said in 1964, "all God's children can live".
So above all, we must hold fast to out moral bearings, be they grounded in religious, philosophical or ethical precepts. That is what is at national issue here.
The celebration, in American national discourse, of the Holocaust, even of Hitler as somehow inhabiting a unique, divinely mandated role, must end. The discussion of using American nuclear weapons against other nations of the world must also end, for The United States occupies a unique place, in history as the only nation on Earth to have wielded nuclear weapons in anger, in war, in the nuclear immolation of the civilians of the Japanese citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
We do not know if there is life on other planets. We must treat the life that is here, now, on our planet with care, with reverence. To do less than that some would call abhorrent, and I would say that it is that but I would also call it unholy. The whole of life to me is sacred. All of it, not just the fate of humanity but the fate of all living beings on our small, troubled planet. That is why I write this today and that is why I have devoted my life to fumbling towards solutions to that which challenges the existence of earthly life.
In the 1964 US presidential election campaign, one campaign ad above all shaped the course of the election, tarring Barry Goldwater, fairly or not, as a madman prone to launch an apocalyptic nuclear holocaust that would devour the facve of our planet with fire: The Daisy Ad.
Said Lyndon Johnson, in the ad:
"These are the stakes: to make a world in which all God's children can live, or to go into the dark. We must either learn to love each other, or we must die."
Johnson's words are as true now as they were in 1964. The threat of nuclear Holocaust is a future which John Hagee and Christian Zionists worship--as an event that would "cleanse" our Earth: which they have come to regard of infested by evil, by demons, by Satan and by satanically possessed liberals, liberal Jews, "secularists", homosexuals, communists and fellow travelers, and the multitude of other classes of humanity - Muslims and Hindus, Buddhist and Jains, and all those who believe anything other than fundamentalist Christianity. Christian Zionism claims the only hope for a better future lies in destroying the earth, to "save it", such that God remakes it anew. They feel our Earth, and most of its people, must be destroyed, "cleansed" by nuclear fire.
Did God send Hitler and the Nazis to drive the Jews of Europe towards Palestine ? Is God a genocidal real-estate agent who red-lined Europe, as an area out of bounds for Jews to live in, because they possess and embody, claims Christian Zionism, souls that are different from Gentile souls and which consign them to being forced to settle in Israel where, claims Christian Zionism, they will all be killed in an apocalyptic orgy of violence which will eradicate Judaism from the face of the earth and leave only a handful of Jews living, living because they have converted to Christianity ? That is the vision that Arizona Senator John McCain embraced as he has embraced Pastor John Hagee - not just once but numerous times on the national stage, before the press - and that is the vision John McCain tacitly endorsed by endorsing, and accepting the endorsement of, John Hagee before television cameras that broadcast the embrace to the ends of the Earth. Many of the leaders of John Hagee's group Christians United For Israel have talked of their expectations, of "another Holocaust", a "second Holocaust" and even a "final Holocaust which they hope, as part of their eliminationalist eschatological scheme, will forever remove from existence Jews and Judaism from the face of the planet.
Yesterday, Iranian television picked up on the story of my YouTube video, showcasing John Hagee's remarks suggesting that God sent Hitler and the Nazis, and the Iranians must be wondering this: why are presidential candidates, John McCain, Hillary Clinton especially, talking about the need for pre-emptive attacks on Iran, even of "obliterating" Iran with nuclear weapons if Iran uses nuclear weapons on Israel ? Especially when John McCain's political endorser John Hagee suggests God sent Hitler, especially because John Hagee and his church members celebrate the expected invasion and devastation of Israel in song, at their "Night To Honor Israel" events ? To the Iranian people watching, children, women and men who have been threatened with nuclear incineration, by the preeminent military power on Earth, a power which has invaded and occupied their neighbor Iraq in a devastating neo-colonial gambit for oil which has led tp the deaths of thousands of American troops, the wounding of tens of thousands, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, the wounding, possibly of millions, the orphaning of millions of Iraqi children and the creation of millions of Iraqi refugees fleeing the violence...
To the Iranians watching these American presidential candidates, who threaten them and threaten to immolate Iran, in improbable scenarios, it must seem terrifying, absurd and morally grotesque...
And, it is.
The very suggestion that Israel needs an American "nuclear umbrella" is ludicrous; Israel has first and second retaliatory nuclear strike capability. "Never again, the Holocaust", Israel has vowed, and Israel does not need, for its defense, America's nuclear arsenal.
To talk on the national stage, so lightly, as campaign ploys or flip, or in flip, offhand remarks verges on what I have come to feel is close to a national moral derangement, but I do not, as do John Hagee or Jeremiah Wright, each for different reasons, feel America is cursed or doomed. We can change. We can do better, and we will do better.
To be very clear, I do not bear personal animus towards John Hagee or John McCain, though I do decry John Hagee's use of the Holocaust and anti-Semitism to advance the apocalyptic goals of Christian Zionism. I also disparage John McCain's choice, last February, to both accept John Hagee's political endorsement but also to co-endorse John Hagee, which John McCain has done multiple times before national media, calling John Hagee a "spiritual guide" (CUFI event, July 16-18, Washington DC).
In 2000, McCain said he would never solicit political support from evangelists like Hagee - McCain said Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson were "agents of intolerance".McCain went on to chase, in 2006, after Jerry Falwell's and then, gaining that, McCain pursued John Hagee's endorsement for an entire year. In early 2007 Jerry Falwell and John Hagee, with McCain in attendance, staged a fund raiser for McCain 2008 presidential bid. John McCain has - repeatedly and on national television - endorsed John Hagee as a religious leader.
McCain's connection to Hagee has been direct and personal, and it reflects poorly on John McCain - it suggests he has sacrificed his principles on the altar of political power.
There is another politician who needs to be reminded of moral bearing he certainly once had, because we all, as humans, have those in some measure. Joe Lieberman needs to reminded now that John Hagee is perhaps less like Moses than Joe Lieberman would like Hagee to be.
*****
The sudden explosion of this media event, hundreds of news stories on John McCain, John Hagee and Hagee's statements that God sent Hitler, was not my personal creation...
Over the past few days I happened to be in the right spot, at the right time, with the right knowledge, to trigger a shift in the dynamics of the current presidential election. Now, I've woken up this morning to hundreds of mainstream media stories which derived from one little, crude YouTube video I made last week and which triggered an avalanche of national media. It's a very beautiful morning here, now, as I write this - beautiful both because the sun is rising and its spring but also because the events of the past two days have that promises, if we are lucky, to become a shift in the national mood, a moral reawakening. Let us hope and pray for that.
I can't claim personal credit for what happened over the past few days, as a sudden national shift established that there are types of speech which should and must be decried and shunned, types of political and public speech which we should, and must, shun. I played a part in that, but in the end it was a collective project.
This was only possible as a collective effort, and I'd like to credit the fellowing people especially, for making it possible:
(coming up - I'm posting this first and then adding in the credits in the next 15-30 minutes... Best, BruceW)
I'd like to credit, first, my wife Sara, whose patient forebearance made this all possible.
And, I'd like to credit my late father, Richard - who had the moral courage to leave the ministry, in protest, because of the Vietnam War and the Methodist Church less than enthusiastic support of his anti-War work...
I'd like to mother, for all the support she's given me...
Then, I'd like to credit the following people:
Frederick Clarkson, for putting up with me until my knowledge of the Christian right got up to speed, and for teaching a great deal of what I know on the subject, through countless conversations...
The entire cast of people who have written at Talk To Action (I'm leaving some of the occasional/one time posters out for the moment because that this would take forever to compile)
Talk To Action writers :
Frederick Clarkson
Chip Berlet
Joan Bokaer
Esther Kaplan
Bill Berkowitz
Jonathan Hutson
Frank Cocozzelli
"Moiv"
John Dorhauer
Richard Bartholomew
Cindy Cooper
Michelle Goldberg
Dr. Bruce Prescott
Don Byrd
Carlos Stouffer
Jeff Sharlet
Pastor Dan
Chris Rodda
Andrew Weaver
John Gorenfeld
Rob Boston
Steve Martin
Kathryn Joyce
Tanya Erzen
Sara Posner
Max Blumethal
Ed Brayton
The Daily Kos contributor dogemperor
(I'm leaving off the last names of these folks, who choose to remain anonymous)
Marji, who sent me my "John Hagee Prophecy Study Bible" (!)
Rachel and her husband, who sent me lots of key Hagee material recently
George E. Lowe - who has been fighting this fight longer than anyone I know, about 5 decades, and whose fancy bureaucratic footwork helped to prevent, during the 1st Reagan Administration, the Christian right from destroying American public education.
Markos Moulitsas, for starting the Daily Kos - which has been crucial to the rise of the progressive left over the last several years.
The entire Daily Kos Community, for reading and supporting my work.
Sam Stein, whose story on the Huffington Post got the ball rolling and who did the classy thing, by crediting me and Talk To Action as the originator of the story.
Lastly, my mutt of a terrier, Sputnick - for being a companion both loyal and true.