Vigilance is not panic

Jonathan Green

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Morgan, thanks for your guest post. Several people have asked: Why do we do this, if I’m not going to change your mind and you’re not going to change my mind? But I think arguing with people online actually can accomplish some useful things. For one, it demonstrates that faithful church members can’t be simply classified as Republicans vs. Democrats. More importantly, arguing lets us figure out precisely where we agree or disagree and, ideally, distill the point of disagreement down to its essence.

And we do agree on some things. For example, I shouldn’t try to pressure the Church to take action to support my political views right now. That was actually one of my main points, as a few people pointed out to you. Even if I were right about everything, the best move for the Church in today’s political context is decided by people multiple levels above me, and they have far more data than I do. I restated that point a half dozen times, so I’m not sure how you missed it, but we really do agree on that. Your example about how the Church had to respond to the invasion of Ukraine while protecting its ability to minister to members in Russia is exactly correct – I was considering using it myself.

Several times you object to “hyperbole,” “heated rhetoric,” “exaggerations” or “hysteria.” But I think your objection on the basis of rhetoric evades substantive issues. One phrase you objected to, for example, is “surveillance by a corrupt, vindictive, unchecked personalist autocracy.” But which word is inaccurate? Each one accurately applies to the direction of the Trump administration. The problem we are facing right now is not bloggers using intemperate language, but a corrupt, vindictive, unchecked personalist autocracy.

You also object to my use of “starving children” and “torture.” Last year, the U.S. government suddenly ended a food aid program for starving children who depended on it, and stopped providing medicine for sick children who needed it, and they died. Our government sent planeloads of immigrants to El Salvador so that they could be tortured, and when they returned they described how they had been tortured. This is not hysteric speculation or ventilating. This is fact, and we have to deal directly with the awful truth. Now if you had said that many foreign aid programs are wasteful, several people with experience in that sector would agree, and conservative think-tanks were ready to present plans for targeted cuts. But that isn’t what the Trump administration did. Instead, it turned unqualified people with no relevant experience loose on the budget with no regard for the law or the consequences. Those consequences included children starving to death.

There are multiple valid positions on many issues, but not on every issue. Our elected representatives had approved spending that money to keep those children alive, but the Trump administration canceled the aid precipitously before a replacement could be found. There is likewise no valid reason to grant presidential pardons to violent criminals or wealthy scammers who donate enough. We need to hold on to our ability to recognize wickedness for what it is.

Another phrase you objected to is “delighting in bloodshed.” To clarify, I am not using this phrase for a general leftist critique of the military –  when it comes to my progressive credentials, the esteemed bloggers at BCC have awarded me the grade of F(U). What I mean by “delighting in bloodshed” is that when we deliberately kill people who have not been arrested or tried, for a crime that does not warrant capital punishment, and who are not combatants of a nation with which we are at war, it is not an exaggeration to call it murder. When the U.S. government then proudly uses video of those murders in its propaganda, the correct Book of Mormon term is “delighting in bloodshed.” Perhaps you disagree, but a critique of language usage does not make the substantive problem of unlawfully killing people disappear.

I agree with you about the importance of national defense and a strong foreign policy. And that is why I am begging you to see what is happening to this country, most dramatically in its foreign policy. Abandoning Ukraine is not strong foreign policy. Insulting and threatening our democratic allies is not strong foreign policy. When our nation was attacked, Denmark and Canada and many other allies came to our aid. They fought alongside us – around the time you were in the Marine Corps, I would guess – and many of them gave their lives in our defense. To now demand the surrender of territory is the crappiest way imaginable to reward their sacrifice. As a military analyst, you should understand the horrendous consequences Trump’s attempt to claim Greenland will have on our relationships with our allies, our place in the world, and our long-term safety. As a former Marine, you should understand the moral repugnance of betraying one’s allies in wartime.

I have to correct you in two points. First, tariffs are taxes. They are import taxes paid by Americans.

Second, you claim that your sense of calm is not a luxury based on your race. But the Supreme Court has decided otherwise. One in three Nevadans is Hispanic, and a masked government agent (or someone pretending to be one) might detain your neighbors at any time if they can’t produce a passport instantly, or search their car or invade their home without a warrant, because of their accent or the color of their skin. Talk to your ward members, and you may hear about people who can’t risk traveling to visit their families abroad or who feel unsafe leaving the house for groceries, even with legal immigration status, possibly even with U.S. citizenship.

You say your life is fine under this government, but you need to be aware of the dangers ahead. Half of the Las Vegas economy depends on tourism, but Trump’s foreign policy blundering and immigration crackdown have soured many international visitors on visiting the U.S. The city of Las Vegas is able to exist at its present size because of a large number of intricate, carefully maintained systems; look out your window, and you’ll see it’s not the agricultural fertility that keeps the area going. If we treat those systems recklessly long enough, they will fail. There are complicated and delicate systems underpinning many facets of our society, built up by our forebears over centuries, that have now been turned over to cranks and vandals.

You recommend that I “consume less political media,” but I’d guess we consume about the same amount, and for much the same reason: It is our Distant Early Warning system by which we hope to detect signs of trouble coming our way so that we can act in time to protect our families. It worked to an extent with Covid-19. First the pandemic hit foreign countries, then coastal metropolises, then inland cities, then the town down the interstate, then here. By that time we were as prepared as we could be. Now the plague of our time is Donald Trump, a wicked man of vulgar impulses and failing impulse control who has surrounded himself with scoundrels, and the effects are beginning to appear locally.

I’ve tried to cultivate trustworthy sources and winnow out the reality deniers, and the result of that process is an information environment that tells me that the world is in the most perilous state I have seen in my lifetime, all as the result of one wicked man and an electorate that failed to recognize the consequences of their choices. I’m sure you have your own set of trusted sources. But I think my sources paint a more accurate picture of the oncoming threats, and that we’re a long way from making things better by touching grass. I would very much like to be wrong. You say the Church has no need to panic; I don’t know if that will remain true.

Comments

13 responses to “Vigilance is not panic”

  1. ji

    Thanks for this essay. I appreciate your candor and honesty.

  2. Restored Cricket

    It’s important to remember that all historical Fascism has been christoFascism. Also important to understand that Fascist organize through a cult of personality. Above all else we must clearly understand that the core beliefs of Fascism are inherently anti-Christian. All Fascist supreme leaders have been anti-Christs who persuade their followers to conflate belief in them with belief in God. As a result, any evil they commit cannot in fact be evil given it furthers the work of God.

    Dietrich Bonhoeffer presented a clear theory to explain what we see occur in our peers whenever a christoFascist movement arises. Bonhoeffer’s theory of stupidity argues that Fascists and supporters of Fascism are not unreachable due to an intellectual inability to understand the malice and evil they are engaging in or supporting and that they did not become susceptible to Fascism due to any intellectual limitation or impairment. Instead he argued that some of us choose to become stupid. His theory is that we make some decisions that permanently break us from the shared reality of humankind. Once we have done so we are beyond the reach of reason or empathy. Bonhoeffer argued while people can be redeemed from their malice, but not chosen stupidity.

    “Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil;
    it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force.

    Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless.

    Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed — in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical — and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for than with a malicious one.

    Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.”

    –Dietrich Bonhoeffer, from ‘After Ten Years’ in Letters and Papers from Prison
    (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works/English, vol. 8) Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2010

    Anyone claiming moral authority, let alone Divine authority, who fails to renounce an anti-Christ and fails to oppose the rise of an anti-Christian movement with the full force of that authority has demonstrated that it is absent.

    The U.S. and world are suffering as a result of four popular anti-Christs: Donald Trump and his oligarch benefactor Elon Musk, as well as ‘J.D. Vance’ and his benefactor Peter Thiel. Just closing USAID killed (conservatively) 750,000 people including 500,000 children. If the trolley experiment was just those lives versus upsetting MAGA members and at worst potentially endangering some tax advantages, then the choice is clear. The choice in Palestine has been to speak out and act to prevent or mitigate a genocide campaign against 2.5 million civilians (mostly women and children) including ~75,000 Christians at the expense of a relationship with Israel’s government. Insufficient attention and action there cannot be hand waved without stupidity. Greater attention and empathy for the lives of people in Ukraine must outweigh any relationship with the Russian Federation and the possibility of severely limited missionary work.

    We claim and expect foresight from the Prophet and Apostles of the church. Them demonstrating an inability to confront the facts of shared human reality as we all experience it severely undermines their authority. It is also a self-inflicted injury on their part.

  3. Hoosier

    “We claim and expect foresight from the Prophet and Apostles of the church. Them demonstrating an inability to confront the facts of shared human reality as we all experience it severely undermines their authority. It is also a self-inflicted injury on their part.”

    Not if you freely reject the absolutist conception of moral duty on which you base this judgment, as I do. Always “speak out” here and “attention and empathy” there, a never ending gyre of moral hostage-taking that permits no tradeoffs, no subsidiarity, no conception of scope or role beyond “Protestor of the Current Outrage Who Exceeds His Zealotry of Yesterday.” I don’t recall Christ spending His time on the horrors of the Roman latifundia or their corrupt system of taxation, maybe He thought that His Kingdom was not of this world or something?

    “as we all experience it” speak for yourself.

  4. Anon

    Hoosier,
    I find your critique problematic. It does not necessarily follow that Reformed Cricket does not accept limits to one’s moral obligations or that constant protest is truly the highest form of moral faithfulness. It seems to me that your underlying claim is that moral obligations must be bounded or strictly limited in some fashion for church leaders. But are not church leaders also to speak out on moral issues to all of God’s children? Does not the deaths of nearly one million people constitute a moral issue? Or is the First Presidency and Q12 limited in their mission to the concerns of Latter-day Saints alone?

  5. Hoosier

    Anon,

    I dispute the existence of a moral duty to “speak out” in the first place, and I especially dispute the authority of moral traffic cops who go around dinging people for their failures to signal sufficiently vigorously or accuse with enough specificity. The expansion of modern communications technology and the consequent shrinking of the world mean that the natural boundaries of institutional concern have evaporated. The line must be drawn somewhere – unless every institution really is to become the Protestor of the Current Outrage Who Exceeds His Zealotry of Yesterday – and like all manmade categories it will be arbitrary and artificial. For all that, the categorization remains necessary.

    “The poor ye will always have with you, but me ye have not always.” Matthew 26:11. So spoke Christ to those enraged when a woman anointed him with oil that could have been sold to feed the poor. The Church has a particular role and a particular mission and I reject the demands made on it by those who wish to borrow what influence it has for their political projects.

  6. Anon

    Hoosier,
    You failed to address my questions in your reply. I’ll counter the initial assertion in your reply with a question: Do I have a moral duty to speak out if your child is being abused or assaulted? When I see it or learn of it? I would add that calling others “moral traffic cops” who do speak out hardly constitutes a rational reply. Are church leaders “moral traffic cops” when they do speak out on moral issues? I suppose moral issues would come under the specific church mission of “perfecting the saints.” Sometimes we need to be told what is right and wrong. If we don’t why keep prophets around at all? And yes, “caring for the needy” is a specified church mission, so you choose a poor prooftext to bolster your position in your concluding paragraph.

  7. Jonathan Green

    Restored C.: If, as you say, all fascism is “Christofascism,” then the term is adding no additional information, so just call it fascism and leave the name of the Savior out of it.

    If you read to the end of the section, you’ll discover that Bonhoeffer does not say that people can’t be redeemed from stupidity. “The word of the Bible – that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom – says that internal liberation of human beings to a life of responsibility towards God is the only true overcoming of stupidity.”

    Equating someone with an antichrist is an extreme claim that requires extreme evidence, and you haven’t done the work. We also know from the Book of Mormon what it looks like when prophets confront antichrists, and there’s a lot more teaching of basic doctrine than issuing sweeping statements.

    Your progression of ideas – Trump is an antichrist, therefore the apostles must renounce and oppose him at every step, which they are not doing, so their authority is diminished – is not useful. It would lead to the conclusion that Abinadi’s martyrdom was too little, too late, because he waited so long to oppose Noah, didn’t confront him directly, and disappeared for years at a time. It seems better to me to make the less extreme claim that the Trump administration is doing many bad things and creating a very difficult environment for the Church, requiring wisdom and prudence in the apostles’ decisions.

  8. Jonathan Green

    Anon: We’ve seen over the last few years that what you are proposing – an obligation to condemn every great injustice – has been ineffective and has undermined the missions of the progressive groups that have attempted it. Racism and sexism and the occupation of Gaza and all the rest are bad, but the general condemnation of all these forms of injustice have left the ACLU and the Sierra Club and many other organizations weaker and less effective in accomplishing their missions. If you want someone to speak up for free speech, no questions asked, now you have to turn to FIRE. Would FIRE have to speak up if the government tried to ban a political memoir? Yes, absolutely. Does it have to speak up about the loss of wetlands? No, it has to prioritize, or its witness will be diluted and its effectiveness will be diminished.

    The Church has to prioritize in the same way. If you want people to speak out for PEPFAR, you do it. (My congressional representatives have been called regarding this issue.) If you want a lot of people to speak out, you can organize it! But, as I’ve said, calling on the Church to issue a statement is not an effective use of your sense of injustice, and being disappointed that the Church doesn’t issue a statement is counterproductive.

  9. Travis

    The Church’s moral obligation to speak out on an issue doesn’t just depend on the moral gravity of the issue, but also on how much good the Church might accomplish by speaking out, and the negative effects of doing so. That partially (not entirely) explains the Church’s tendency to be more focused on US concerns than, say, speaking out against the treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. The Church knows the Chinese Communist Party couldn’t care less what it thinks of its human rights abuses, and that speaking out on such a topic would accomplish no good and only set back the Church in China.

  10. jader3rd

    I agree with you Jonathan, that your set of facts are the actual reflection of reality.

  11. Kent Larsen

    Jonathan, thank you for this post and the earlier post on the moral difficulties we face with the current administration. You handle this much better than I could.

    I’m dismayed by the efforts of so many people to ignore the problems, and pretend that it will just go away. I suspect this is the moral crisis of our lives.

  12. Jonathan Green

    Morgan and Hoosier have each in their own way cautioned against getting caught up in a media-fueled spiral of catastrophization and outrage. Everyone should take that caution seriously, especially when so much unverified information circulates so rapidly and it’s so easy to create fake images and video, and no matter who you are, there’s an echo chamber ready to confirm everything you believe. I don’t think that’s what’s going on, but the thing about testable predictions is you eventually get an answer.

    In the meantime, I would caution people who think this is just media-induced panic not to get caught up in a spiral of normalization. You need to give yourself an off-ramp from defending the indefensible before you go too far down that path.

  13. Jack

    That’s a great comment, Jonathan. That’s where I’m trying keep myself–though I know I don’t always have my feet squarely on the line where the truth cuts through all the mucky-muck. But I suppose that will always be a challenge where the line divides a solid waste landfill from sewage treatment facility.

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