The autocrats, plutocrats, theocrats, kleptocrats and other sworn enemies of democracy, both foreign and domestic, have joined forces in an all-out offensive. We have no choice but to do the same. Angry voters have driven Congressional Republicans into hiding. A worldwide network of nerds is rescuing data before it disappears from “.gov” websites. And a website and mobile app called “Mobilize” lists dozens of upcoming rallies and other resistance actions across the country. I’ll see you there!
“As you sow, so shall you reap.” In his Epistle to the Galatians, St. Paul invoked the ancient Hindu doctrine of Karma, which holds that our daily actions are the seed of our blessings and sufferings to come. Or as we say in the barnyard, “Chickens have a habit of coming home to roost.”
According to the Hindus, karmic consequences are incurred not just by individuals but by entire nations and peoples. The United States, for example, maintains military bases in over 50 countries, deploys troops and bombers and drones wherever it pleases, and supplies the bulk of the world’s arms and munitions. Yet we can’t keep our children safe in their schools. Is this only a coincidence?
Those who label the refugees flocking to our southern border an “army” or an “invasion” conveniently forget that back in the 1840s, the U.S. invaded Mexico and took more than half of its territory by force, including the entire states of California, Arizona, Utah and Nevada. Is today’s “border crisis” just a case of karmic payback?
Under the 1823 “Monroe Doctrine,” for generations our government has sabotaged democracy and subsidized brutal dictators throughout Latin America on behalf of wealthy U.S. corporations. What if our karmic liability for this doesn’t end at the border? Our taxes paid for it; we owe many everyday luxuries – coffee, sugar, chocolate, bananas, copper, petroleum, lithium – to those same wealthy corporations. Could our turn be next? Could our government’s support for ruthless regimes that crush all opposition come back to haunt us?
Asked by a delegation of norteamericanos what message he would like them to take back to the U.S., Father Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann, a Nicaraguan priest who once served as president of the U.N. General Assembly, sighed gravely.
“Tell them,” he said, “that we are deeply concerned about them because a country that exports repression will one day unleash that repression against its own people. A nation that wages war against the poor in Nicaragua will ignore the needs of its own poor. A country which in the name of ‘democracy’ fights wars against the self-determination of other peoples cannot remain a democracy. I have felt for a long time that the U.S. people will one day be the most repressed people in the world.”
I visited Nicaragua with a peace delegation in 1989, during the election that ended in defeat for the Sandinista revolution— after the U.S. allocated $12.5 million to fund the right-wing opposition. When the Mueller Report exposed Russia’s covert interference in our 2016 election on behalf of our own right wing, those karmic chickens finally came home to roost.
Could the election of a would-be dictator in the U.S.A. be karmic retribution for our government’s support for Batista in Cuba, Pinochet in Chile, Duvalier in Haiti, Somoza in Nicaragua, Marcos in the Philippines, Suharto in Indonesia, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the Shah of Iran, the sheikhs of Saudi Arabia, and so many more?
Let’s Go Nazi!
Of course the United States has done plenty of good deeds for the world. Defeating Hitler and liberating the concentration camps, arguably our finest moment, surely tipped the karmic balance in our favor. Yet halting the imperial expansion of Nazi Germany and Japan only cleared the way for our own, it seems, starting with a calculated demonstration of the destructive power of the Bomb. Seen from the viewpoint of massacred Native Americans, enslaved Africans, and millions of victims of neo-colonial wars abroad, the balance is overwhelmingly skewed against us.
But while the American people as a whole have benefited from the empire our taxes built, we have also been its victims. Millions have struggled for political rights and economic equity, only to see their gains beaten back by the entrenched institutions of empire. Now even those institutions are experiencing an unexpected karmic backlash. Progressives have found themselves reluctantly defending the FBI, the Democratic Party, and the mainstream media, to name just three that the radical right has branded “Deep State” agents of the radical left.
Though slow to grasp the magnitude of the threat, all three have tried to uphold the putative standards of democracy. Yet all three have a long history of colluding with the wealthy to marginalize the poor and stifle popular movements for change. True to form, the FBI is now dutifully morphing into Donald Trump’s personal secret police. The Democratic Party, blaming its losses on its progressive wing, edges further to the right. The corporate media compliantly swivel their cameras toward the new locus of power to protect their bottom line.
Now that the billionaires are brazenly crowding to the trough of bribery and corruption, the federal agencies that have allowed them to pay meager fines and pocket massive profits are on the chopping block. Tremors shake Wall Street as uncertainty rocks the economy. And the Supreme Court is about to discover that granting immunity to a dictatorial president makes him immune even to its own rulings.
Assigned to pre-war Germany, reporter Dorothy Thompson was in a unique position to note the parallels between Hitler’s growing base of support and the anti-semitic “America First” movement back home. In her 1941 article “Who Goes Nazi?” in Harper’s Magazine, she wrote:
“It is an interesting and somewhat macabre parlor game to play at a large gathering of one’s acquaintances: to speculate who in a showdown would go Nazi. . . . I have come to know the types: the born Nazis, the Nazis whom democracy itself has created . . . the frustrated and humiliated intellectual, the rich and scared speculator, the spoiled son, the labor tyrant, the fellow who has achieved success by smelling out the wind of success – they would all go Nazi in a crisis.”
Redemption, Not Retribution
It’s alarming that the size of a candidate’s “war-chest” alone can sway an election. But Americans are raised from birth on a diet of slick, expensive ads, so it’s no surprise that people who have been scammed all their lives by voices from a magic box would fall for a consummate scam artist like Trump. To them, the barbaric cruelties of Hitler and Stalin are only stock footage between commercials on the History Channel. They have never experienced life under a dictator.
A close friend, however, had a taste of it in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when she was evacuated to a holding area on Interstate 10 guarded by armed MPs. No shelter or restrooms were provided, and the packaged food and bottled water handed out were nowhere near enough. When she inquired about leaving, she was told at automatic-rifle-point that she was considered a “refugee,” no longer permitted the freedoms any U.S. citizen takes for granted. As she described it, those freedoms are so fundamental that they simply felt like part of her until they were abruptly ripped away.
But people of color in this country have always lived fully aware that the rights of citizenship are only provisional, subject to any policeman’s whim. Even white people who can see this double standard at work have rarely experienced it first-hand. If karmic retribution demands that we whites get “a taste of our own medicine,” the traditional victims of prejudice – Blacks, Latinx, Muslims, women, gay and trans folks – will be getting an unwarranted double dose. Affirmative Action, D.E.I., voting rights and other attempts to pay down the debts of systemic discrimination are all targets of the war on democracy.
And this, paradoxically, offers our best hope. Many whites are now experiencing the visceral fear our friends of color have tried to describe; suddenly we too are targets. And as Trump’s hostile takeover hollows out the economy, skims off its wealth, and spits out his supporters like so many downsized employees, one by one they will realize that they have been taken for a ride – giving “woke” a whole new twist.
In India, belief in past-life karma has been used to justify the caste system and keep the Untouchables in their place. But the true function of karma is not to exact retribution or perpetuate suffering, but to teach us the lessons we need to evolve. Just as individual karma prods an individual soul forward over lifetimes, our collective karma helps to propel the moral evolution of humankind as a whole – toward the recognition that we are in fact a Whole. Accepting responsibility for past wrongs gives us the opportunity to restore the balance by doing right. No one can redeem this nation’s karmic debt except us, taking a stand together.
Recently I attended a rally here in Atlanta supporting the CDC. At least 150 people thronged all four corners of the intersection, waving signs proclaiming “Proud Public Servant,” “Science Makes America Great,” “Stop the Billionaire Takeover.” Almost all of us were white, but a few dark faces peppered the crowd. It was rush hour, and the traffic sounds were drowned out by the almost continual blare of honking horns.
I couldn’t be sure, but I could swear I saw you there.
Note: These are my personal opinions and do not represent any organization I’m involved in. If my words resonate for you, please share widely. You can subscribe (or unsubscribe) at StephenWing.com. Read previous installments of “Wingtips” here.
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Again, Wing, I appreciate your investigation into historical examples and your well-written comments on this topic of the crisis occurring right now in the USA. I’ll be attending protest rallies, too, here in Washington! And I’ll forward Wingbeats on to others.