Politics of Life and Death

For the life of me, I cannot begin to grasp why the “Pro-Life” crowd is so eager to preserve fetuses at one end of the life cycle and enthusiastic—to a noticeably lesser decibel level—to keep people alive when there is but little or no hope of anything but suffering, pain, or prolonged unconsciousness. “Death” before birth does not share space with opposition to death in any other context save for death as an option chosen by people fully in charge of their faculties. Death by bombs? Apparently a perfectly good option. Death by starvation? That too seems to pass muster. Death by deprivation? Who’s counting?

Why should I add my words on this theme to the many already spoken and printed?

The craziness of all this has now reached near-apocalyptic proportions. Sanity needs more of a hearing and a larger audience.

Let’s start with the war against Iran. It is not just against Iran, but neither is it a war only “in Iran.” It is a war that has now—if we can believe anything in the “news” today—spread throughout the Middle East. We have a President who is now disparaged—worse than lampooned—by much of the world, most especially by allies who have steadfastly supported the United States for decades, who have depended upon trustworthy American leadership. That President is flinging around terms like “bomb the hell out of Iran.” Apart from the obvious perfidy displayed in the moving string of rationalizations for going to war in the first place, suddenly the unthinkable is thinkable: the use of American nuclear firepower under the pretext of keeping Iran from doing the same. Stupid and foolish notions like “Armageddon” are trotted out by rightwing “Christians” to justify the destruction of humanity.

Meanwhile, innocent children are “mistakenly” targeted and killed. Lives only matter if you’re white, Christian, conservative, and so on. And even if you are all those things, you only matter to the extent that you’re a useful prop in the service of those whose obvious goal is personal, financial, and racial aggrandizement.

There is something not only crazy, sick, and cruel about preserving all fetuses who the minute they are born are denied proper health care, nutrition, and safety. It is evil. Diabolical. It stinks.

There is something far worse than “ironic” in keeping a human being alive without the possibility of a dignified end of life when prolonging life is extending pain and suffering, when that same life has been belittled, diminished, deprived, mistreated, undervalued, and cheated.

The sickening thing in all this is the blatant hypocrisy of it all.

A society that willingly allows and even justifies policies and practices that shorten, weaken, and end the lives of millions of people is in no sense “pro-life.” Societies and governments as well as individuals who exploit and damage the environment that produces, provides for, and protects living things—including human beings—is not pro-life.” Wars and military actions that threaten entire populations cannot be justified by some claptrap about making the world safe. They do no such of the kind. How do I know? I read history.

I see some positive things happening these days. One of them is the desperation apparent among the people who claim to be “pro-life” and “pro-family” and yet who are doing everything they can to hold on to power while (and often by means of) flagrantly doing the opposite of what they preach. I see a raging fear of losing power. I see a panic about losing control. I see mounting evidence that people are waking up to what is going on.

Despite all the ailments of American society, we still have abundant commitment to honesty, to truth, and to fairness. What we are lacking is courage. And even that seems to be shifting in a positive direction. The rise of independent journalists who are bravely telling the truth is one of the healthiest signs. The arousal of institutions to say, “Hell no” to the regime is a vast improvement over bending the knee and complying in advance. The voices of religious leaders who dare to call out injustice, lies, and cruelty is, however belated, a sign of growing spines.

Don’t be fooled. What the hegemony of unbridled wealth and political manipulation is up to is Death. It literally is resulting in the killing of people, other life forms, and the environment. One of the keys to understand the way all this operates—and therefore what the alternative is—lies in distinguishing the difference between things that masquerade as life-giving which in fact are death-dealing. The obverse is equally true. Things that appear to be certain to ensure death turn out to be the very things that guard, protect, and nurture life.

Look how this plays out in daily life and in the larger sphere of human affairs. The promise of those who bulldoze mountains, rape the earth of its riches to make themselves rich and richer, is always the carrot that these things will secure happiness, prosperity, dominance, and security. Developers everywhere argue that the world will be so much better off once their newest project is completed. They march—or sneak—into communities promising jobs and prosperity and then engage in massive programs of bait-and-switch. A classic example is the stealthy way in which the Department of Homeland Security is paying millions of dollars to acquire properties to convert into concentration camps. The entire justification of the ICE “detention centers” rests on the assertion that all these human pens make the country better, safer, more prosperous, etc. Anybody with an ounce of sense knows that they do nothing of the sort. Imprisoning children, splitting families, cramming people into unventilated, unsanitary, unsafe, unlivable conditions not only destroys the lives of the victims but smothers the souls of their captors. What justifies it all? The fantasy of “it’s us vs. them.”

Another case is the programmatic identifying of communities where enormous data centers supporting AI can be built. Those places, people are beginning to learn, will suck up electricity and water while giving little if anything, especially jobs, to the communities where they’re located past the labor needed to build them.

That brings us to the place of seeing what real life is about. It’s only in a very limited way about competition. Life is far more frequently about cooperation and community-building. Life is only in a very slim way about seizing, grabbing, close-fisted holding. It is far more commonly about letting go, sharing, pooling resources, building alliances, breaking down barriers, replacing walls and fences with mutual respect, bridging differences, seeking commonality.

Yesterday I was on my way into a supermarket. Near the door squatted a man eating his lunch from a Styrofoam box. A glance at him told me he was Latino, dressed in a laborer’s garb. To a younger man with a backpack walking by, he called and asked in Spanish if he’d like some lunch. The younger guy turned around to reply. As I was entering the supermarket, the man eating handed the other what looked like a piece of fried chicken.

I have no idea whether that was an exchange between two acquaintances or an act of gratuitous generosity to a stranger. It clearly was an act of sharing. It would fit with my long experience if this turned out to be another one of a multitude of examples of the poor being far more generous in sharing what little they have with any who have less. Maybe. Maybe not.

But that’s the kind of thing the scriptures mean when they speak of life and life-giving things. Hoarding, fearing the bugbear of scarcity, over-investing in safety as a way of responding to fear: all those things that superficially look like protecting life can by themselves be off the mark. “It is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; it is in dying that we are born to eternal life,” the Prayer of St. Francis reminds us.

That’s not so much irony as it is mystery.

We are beginning to see people doing it more. They’re protesting injustice. They’re getting louder when protecting the innocent. They’re going to bat for the people whose voices are being muted through naked political oppression.

Jesus was not crucified because it was a part of some theatrical script written in heaven. He was crucified by the hegemony of religious superiority and economic oppression for speaking out against both, unreservedly and courageously.

Right now, I’m hearing, “Go and do thou likewise."