The shame of Greg Abbott
When the Artemis rocket, the most powerful in history, thundered to life on launch pad 39 A at the Kennedy Space Center in central Florida it was aimed at the moon.
During the next years, Artemis rockets will carry American astronauts to the Moon and Mars. The first black Americans, women and other minority groups will be represented among a group of astronauts who are truly the best from among us. Their resumes and achievements are as unbelievable as they are inspirational.
They will see with their own eyes what President John Kennedy must have sensed as so vital and necessary for all of mankind to see during the hours of maximum danger when nuclear Armageddon seemed inevitable. They will see this:
Here is what he said about the most obvious and basic truth of all at American University in 1963:
“In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.”
JFK sensed his mortality. He lived heavily with it. It gave him great purpose and fueled great ambitions. There was a time within reach in America when our politics was less grubby, but our society far more unjust. America remained an apartheid state in 1961, held hostage by the defeated Confederacy, which interpreted defeat as a license to keep their flag, racist ideology and immoral practices of subjugation intact for another 100 years at least.
During those years of tumult and change, on the edge of civil rights, space exploration, assassinations and the Vietnam War a combat veteran of the Second World War said this:
“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon and do these other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”
Today, there is a new creed that is the bitter harvest of the Trump years. Trump is finished, but his fruit remains. His stench prevails. His meanness endures.
Today, American politics is beset by a cast of low men and women whose service is an assault and whose power is a cudgel of cruelty. They are practitioners of an ideology of performative malice for which the most vulnerable people among us are the prey of political predators looking for a stroking.
Today, they follow a creed that could well read, “We choose to do these things, not because they are easy, but because they are cheap and mean. We choose to hurt and scare people who are frightened and alone. We choose to traumatize the child and hurt their mother. We choose to make the infant freeze and to humiliate his father. We choose to make the old and sick suffer. We choose cruelty. We choose to declare that our fellow human beings are less than. We choose to treat our brothers and sisters with a different skin color like animals. We choose to turn the mother and child away from shelter on Christmas Eve.”
This is the creed of Greg Abbott and every man and woman who participated in his act of bigotry, cruelty and indecency on Christmas Eve of 2022 when he deposited three bus loads of frightened and disoriented people into the freezing rain and cold of Washington, DC.
There are no words.
Actually, there are some. There are these from the Sermon on the Mount:
3: Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4: Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.
5: Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
6: Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
7: Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
8: Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
9: Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
10: Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11: Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.
There are two paths ahead as always: down one lies destruction; down the other lies the promise of reconciliation, renewal and hope.
There can be no compromise with evil, and there is no hope of defeating evil by succumbing to its tactics. Like always, the choice is better. We need better in America. We need less shame. We need less evil. We don’t need men like Greg Abbott. Yet, we have them. Worse, voters chose him. Everyone that did got to carry a bit of his shame this Christmas season. They get the satisfaction of knowing they made Christ weep on his birthday.
Though Abbott’s un-Christian and un-American act should be remembered and condemned, it should not blind us to a greater truth. Americans are a good people, led by many terrible politicians. We have it within our power to fix that every two years. In the meantime, there is a term for people who clothe and shelter the suffering and afraid. Those people are called good Americans. Fortunately, good Americans came to the rescue of these migrants — their fellow human beings — in a strange land. I recall there being a story about that — one that is celebrated every year by billions of people on December 25th.
Steve, this is one of your very best. Telling the fake Christians their failures on Christmas is spot on. Thanks
And the very same can be said of DeSantis, dictator of the state that I now call home. Many of us have tried and failed to turn Florida Blue but will never stop trying.