And so, to continue with my complete and utter disappointment with voting results, I have a few things I'd like to post that I read on a friend's jounal that touched me, that I would like to share with you.
Before I post these letters, however, I must add a few comments. To all of those who didn't understand my last entry, naming those 11 wretched states, you obviously must belong to the majority of this nations population: the uninformed, the intolerant, and the ignorant.
Last night in class, I heard a rather disheartening statistic. My prof. announced that only 17% of college students voted in the last election. Can someone explain this to me? We are the ones who are going to be the most affected by this election. We, unfortunately, are in that 'perfect' demographic. We are the ones who will eventually have to stand in for those who die in the war. We are the ones who will be responsible for cleaning up the mess this current presidency will leave behind. This was even more disappointing to me after I learned just how many people my age aren't registered to vote...my sister included. I am ashamed of these people, that's all I can say.
Enough ranting, here are the letters. Thank you, Sarah, I hope you don't mind.
Nov. 3, 2004
Jim,
I have an important message for the country, and I thought about writing to the New York Times. But then I thought, Billy, why not go to the top? Write to the State Port Pilot.
Here's what I was thinking -- if you like it you can put it in your own words; I approve this message:
All the commentators are talking on my TV this morning about how important it is to bring the country together after the second divisive presidential campaign in a row. I can only speak for myself, but I don't want to get together with those people. Divided is just what I want to be.
Besides, there are more important matters at hand than unifying the country. There's curing cancer and the common cold and acne and that hacking smoker's cough, to name just four. But our top priority should be to find a way to stop the Bush family from reproducing Look at this country. Look at Florida. Look at Texas. The urgency of this need is apparent to anyone with eyes.
We also need to rewrite the history books our impressionable students are reading in our schools. It's time to remove all references to how Lincoln stopped the South from seceding and saved the Union The South HAS seceded. You saw those maps in red and blue on TV last night Did you see any blue between Virginia and Texas?
And -- VERY important -- we need to think of ways to take advantage of our new theocracy. One way that comes to mind is to enact laws to require that the burning of witches at the stake take place only in winter, so we can gather round and warm ourselves and cut down on our heating bills.
We also need to wage our wars -- and the more the better -- against even weaker countries than Vietnam, Iraq, or even Grenada. You saw what happened in Vietnam. In the Vietnam countryside, the farmers haven't entered the iron age. They plow their rice paddies with bamboo. You can walk all day and never see a vehicle or a tool made of metal. Yet those farmers kicked our butts. Remember that last helicopter lifting off the hotel roof in Saigon?
Those warnings about the domino theory proved correct -- who would expect less from that whiz kid Bob McNamara? -- but lucky for us only that one domino fell.
Our mistake in Vietnam and Iraq was to stick around. In our future televised wars we should declare that we've won and leave. That way, the only people that get hurt are foreigners.
By the way, all presidential campaigns are divisive. That's what a candidate spends his millions for, to divide himself from his opponent. Do you think Thomas Jefferson went around telling everybody what swell guys Aaron Burr and John Adams were?
By the way, I'm drunk.
Respectfully yours,
Billy
All:
By 5:30 a.m. today when I sat down to check the Internet for election results, I found two e-mails waiting. They were from two member-families of St. Andrew's who heard my homily of last Sunday at the 8 o'clock service (and hastily walked out in high dudgeon).The two member-families said that it was either "them or me": they will leave St. Andrew's if I don't. They will not return as long as I am the rector. I contrasted that with unprecedented "amens" and applause of a pretty full church, which greeted the exact same homily at the 10 o'clock service.
And then, of course, I read the all-too-obvious tea leaves of the election. While the results are close and may get closer, it seems pretty clear that America has voted for four more years of what, on the basis of the gospel, I inveighed pretty heavily against last Sunday.
I think whether it knows it or not America has voted FOR the war in Iraq and, by extension, more of the same with declining respect for our European allies.On to Iran.
I think whether it knows it or not America has voted FOR more of a flat-tax approach so that the middle class wage-earners' tax liability will increase while that of the more affluent classes will decline.
I think whether it knows it or not America has voted FOR the removal of taxation on investment income and a shifting of the tax burden to wage earners.
I think whether it knows it or not America has voted FOR the eventual privatization of Social Security that will benefit only those who will not have to depend on Social Security to live.
I think whether it knows it or not America has voted FOR governance that will "get government off the backs of people" only, for example, when it comes to de-regulation of industry to the detriment of the environment.
I think whether it knows it or not America has voted FOR a jurisprudence which will be the result of a Supreme Court that will surely reverse Roe vs. Wade and therefore deprive our daughters and grand-daughters of their reproductive rights, that will further retard stem-cell research, that will discover in the Constitution warrant for the majoritarianism of the Christian Right, that will make it possible for the religious doctrine of creationism to be taught along side of or even instead of evolution in the public schools, that will make possible more overt religious expression in the public sphere, that will dismantle the hard-won values of a secular democracy.
That is what the majority of American voters will now begin to get, whether or not it turns out that they'll like it. My guess is that many will, in fact, like it. Much of what may come down in the ensuing four years (and maybe for sometime after that even) will be counter to the prophetic and gospel themes of classic Christianity. But my analysis is increasingly a minority one, even as it is absolutely supported by solid, objective research and analysis. Yet such voices as mine are drowned out by the loud certitudes of fundamentalist preachers and not a few Roman Catholic hierarchs whose churches are bursting at the seams while places like St. Andrew's aren't.
I can tell you that I am not going to change my retirement plans, and that I do not plan to end my tenure at St. Andrew's any earlier than December 31, 2007. Canon law allows me to remain in the active priesthood until I am 72, which mark I shall reach on February 4, 2011. More than likely, I will apply for retirement no later than 2009 -- the point being that it will not be I who will be leaving any time soon. I hope you can deal with that.
Meanwhile, at almost 66 years of age, I have decided to retreat altogether from the ministry of public advocacy. Also I will no longer reference public affairs and issues in homilies. I will continue to explicate as clearly as I can what the mandates of the prophets and the gospel are, and leave whoever bothers to listen to homilies to figure out the implications for themselves. I will continue to teach and lecture both in St. Andrew's and in the Center for New Thinking. But I will no longer write in the public press, appear on television, be interviewed by newspapers or radio stations on any political or quasi-political issue.
In so saying, I am not attempting to unsay anything I have ever said, including last Sunday's homily. That was the coda of a symphony that began in my younger years as an advocate in the civil rights and anti-war movements, and that has continued with the support of the ordination of women and in the battle of sexuality that has raged in both church and society. The overwhelming vote for Proposal 2 tells me that all my advocacy for its defeat both in my letter to our parish and in my public efforts mocks those efforts. Enough already.
I am as of this third day of November in the Year of Their Lord 2004 retreating to the glad labors of biblical scholarship, to the writing of new books, etc. I will continue my strong ministry as a pastor, counselor and teacher. Public advocacy on hot-button issues is now left to a younger generation. Harry has left the building.
HTC