Mid-Term Elections: Hannah Arendt on Lies and Politics by Dr. Matthew Fox

 

October 29, 2022

It has been said that the head of the church of Donald J. Trump deserves the title of “Liar in chief” because journalists have counted over 36,000 lies he told as president.  And a few more lies have followed since he was deposed and voted out of office.

 

This includes a new term that has entered our country’s vocabulary– the “Big Lie,” which refers to a very foundational falsehood, namely that President Biden did not win the presidential election of 2020.

 

President Biden is not the president.  The head of the church of Donald J. Trump (CODT) is.

 

But this has been disproven by countless judges (including a number appointed by Mr. Trump); and the congressional committee examining the January 6 insurrection; and secretaries of state who count votes, and even Trump’s former attorney general. AND it has been debunked by many witnesses in the White House who have testified under oath that they heard Trump admit he lost the election. Yet he persists in lying about it to the public.  What are the consequences of big lies like that?

 

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Hannah Arendt is held in high esteem for her studies on fascism including The Human Condition, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Eichmann in Jerusalem, and On Revolution.     In a recent book containing two of her essays called "On Lying and Politics," she alerts us to how there is an “ever-present threat to democracy posed by lying.”    Democracy depends on some commonly held beliefs and truths. One might be that “all men and women are created equal.”

 

In her essay on “Truth and Politics,” Arendt observes that the survival of factual truth depends on the testimony of credible witnesses and on an informed citizenry.  When facts are degraded into opinions, liars may even come to believe their own fabrications.

 

But something even deeper is involved when political leaders lie. Arendt tells us that cynicism is born of lies. The surest long-term result of brainwashing is a peculiar kind of cynicism— an absolute refusal to believe in the truth of anything, no matter

 

how well this truth may be established.

 

Apparently “alternative facts” carry a price with them. In addition, Arendt warns us that the result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lies will now be accepted as truth, and the truth be defamed as lies, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world —and the category of truth vs. falsehood is among the mental means to this end—is being destroyed. This is what the mid-term election is about.

UNFORGETABLE PROPHETS

 

Two prophetic women:  Margeurite Porete and Julian of Norwich.  One executed, the other an emerging feminist cult hero, both forgotten.  They forge their way now into our consciousness at a time of crisis.  Which one should we follow in the political battle to protect mother earth?

Rabbi Heschel defines a prophet as "one who interferes."

Margeurite Porete

Margeurite, a Beguine, wrote an innovative but controversial theology book in French, The Mirror of Simple Souls.

The Beguines were women of faith who lived in prayerful communities and were dedicated to the service of the poor and needy.  Some wrote their meditations in prose and poetry. These women were independent of the church.  They flourished in the 13^th and 14^th century Belgium, Germany and France. 

A beguine represented in an incunable, printed in Lübeck in 1489.

Margeurite’s book was condemned but she refused to stop promoting her work.  She was burned at the stake in 1310 for disobedience to the imperial pope Clement V based in Avignon, France. 

Pope Clement V

The chief inquisitor at Margeurite’s trial was Dominican William of Paris, O.P.  Margeurite was a mystic; she saw God reflected in the poor.  She was also a warrior prophet, a martyr for the truth.  Meister Eckhart, O.P. scholar and theologian consulted her work.  He too was condemned by Avignon but later reinstated.

Avignon had replaced Rome as the Capitol of the Roman Catholic Church.    Many were burned at the stake by Pope John XXII especially Franciscans who disagreed with him on the meaning of poverty for religious.  Pope John XXII canonized Thomas Aquinas who considered women lesser human beings than men.  

John XXII built a summer castle south of Avignon for vacations.  The castle vineyards still produce fine blood red wine known the world over as Chateauneuf-du-Pape.

Julian of Norwich

   Julian of Norwich (1343 - 1416) lived as an anchorite at a church in Norwich, a northeastern port city in England.  At the time Norwich was the second largest city in the country.   As an anchorite Julian lived in a small room attached to the local church of St. Julian.  Historians don’t know her real name so she is called Julian because of the church.  There was a window to the street in her room for contact with the outside world.  There was also an opening to the church so she could attend Mass and receive communion.  She never challenged the Avignon papacy directly.

   Julian of Norwich wrote theology in English.  She is credited as being the first woman author to be published in English.  She lived at one of the worst times in human history:  the bubonic plague, the One Hundred Years War between England and France, the condemnation of John Wycliffe (1328 – 1384) for his theology and his followers being killed.  At the same time the Catholic Church was ruled by corrupt Popes in Avignon. 

"Nature is God."  Julian of Norwich

Julian’s advice to her visitors at her window was positive: “God is good.  All will be well.” She denied sin as a reality and wrote, all is one.  She rejected the duality of the time. For Julian God is nature; God is not relegated to the supernatural.  The soul is the defining aspect of the person not a separate entity – the soul is sensuous.  Christ is mother, the universal presence of God in each and every person – Emanuel, a challenge to imperial patriarchy.

The stories of these women are inspirational in facing today’s challenges of fascism and industrial destruction of the planet.  Margeurite Porete can be remembered by union members fighting for democracy and saying NO to corporate imperialism. Julian inspires us all in the seemingly lost struggle to save mother earth by reminding us of what we all know – “God is good and all will be well.”

The Working Catholic: Identity by Bill Droel

        The pro-ethnicity movement of the early 1970's made some sense.  Michael Novak (1933-2017), to mention one proponent, convincingly argued that the elite Hollywood and Wall St. and Beltway culture might not be "good for children and other living things." He foresaw that the modern emphases on achievement, bureaucratic efficiency, tech-obsession, celebrity status and quick results v may people behind, especially those who live in de-industrial cities and in smaller towns.  Novak's The Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics (Macmillan Co., 1971) championed alternative sub-cultures of families, ethnic groups, neighborhoods and solidarity.  He urged political leaders and policy makers to bank on families and local communities, and the institutions the support their way of life. 

Roots: the Saga of an American Family by Alex Haley (1921-1992), to mention a second example from the early 1970s, was a surprising success upon its release as a book (Doubleday, 1974) and as a TV series. Roots not only appealed to Blacks but also fueled a big interest in ancestry among the general populace.  

To a degree, the pro-ethnicity movement is a reminder that in our pluralistic society a person's self-confidence begins with security in their particularity.  Our civic unity emerges out of respect for our variety (Epluribus Unum).  Cautions are in order, however.  

First, a healthy mediating group must aim toward the common good.  One that exists in isolation and stokes resentments will soon enough poison its members and turn against society.  

Second, the standard of judgment in our beautiful country is ultimately not ethnicity race, gender, lifestyle, religion or ascription.  As Dr Marin Luther King (1929-1968) put it, people are "not judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."  

Third, no group identity is privileged above another, Women are not ipso facto better than men; New York residents are not ipso facto better than Pennsylvania residents; Protestants are not because of denominational choice better than Muslims.  All lives matter.

Give respect and equal treatment to all interest groups over the vast geography of our country, said James Madison (1751-1836).  Then the cross-fertilization and bargaining among those many groups will minimize hostility and foster pluralism.  Each person is more than his or her identity group.  Group identity can be a good and healthy starting point.  But a group identity confers no unique knowledge, talent or civic standing.  Immediately dismiss anyone who begins a conversation by asserting, "Speaking as a white, male, Irish-American..."  or similar claim to knowledge.  Don't bother with anyone whose basis for authority is their gender, their ethnicity, their race, their religion, their aristocratic lineage or their age.

The recent revelation about attitudes in the Los Aneles City Council makes vivid the prejudice about group identities.  The Los Angeles example also shows that class can be a group identity; that successful Mexican-Americans can belittle those Mexican-American groups whom they consider inferior.

Finally keep in mind that some group identittes are made-up political constructs.  There is, for example, no such thing as a Hispanic or a Latinx.  These categories and others like them are used in business or in electoral politics to compress particularity for the sake of appealing to "a target audience."  Our country desires unity but no imposed uniformity.  

Droel edits a printed newsletter on faith and work, INITIATIVES (PO box 291102, Chicago, IL  60629).

A Letter to Chief Justice Roberts on Voting Rights by Matthew Fox

 

October 12, 2022

 

Dear Chief Justice Roberts,   I write you as a fellow American and fellow human being concerned about voting rights. Your Court, having endangered American democracy by allowing dark money to flood our elections, is now discussing dismantling what is left of voting rights laws.

 

I also write you as your elder and as a priest for over 53 years because I am deeply worried about your soul.   We cannot forget your gutting the civil rights act in two previous cases decided by SCOTUS with you as chief justice.

 

I presume you are witnessing, as I and 350 million other Americans are, the tsunami of efforts in state legislatures around the country to reinvent our election laws to assure that people of color, as in the days of Jim Crow that preceded the civil rights voting act of 1965, find it as difficult as possible to vote.  Even the counting of the votes by neutral voting clerks are being tossed aside in favor of state legislature’s choosing their own vote counters who can actually overturn election results that they don’t like.   Given this destruction of American democracy and this affront to everything the civil rights movement accomplished sixty years ago with all of its martyrs and brave marchers and thousands who suffered beatings and jailings and even death to bring about an advance in justice and democracy, I wonder: Does it not rip your heart wide open and make your head spin?  This re-writing of what is left of our democracy?

 

As Supreme Court chief justice, you have been given great powers and responsibilities.  If you are seeing the news (on other than Fox news, of course) and seeing what the rest of us are seeing, do you not feel a deep, deep complicity in all this abuse of our democracy that is going on in state houses?  Is there remorse in your soul as you watch the fruits of your labor at work in our country today?

 

I wonder where your conscience is at.  It is not enough, as a public figure with a public responsibility to protect the constitution under which 350 million of us live, that you go to a private confession to be forgiven sins like this. You need to commit to a public undoing of your sins that truly imperil the future of American democracy.

 

Maybe some sackcloth and ashes are in order, as was the case in our religion 1700 years ago. That is the penance I would prescribe for you, were you to come to confession to me.  Or something equally compelling.  Like resigning from your job.   I pray for you and your soul and for the future of democracy in America, and that judges cleanse their souls of bigotry, racism and unjust decision-making that turns the clock back and threatens to impact hundreds of millions of people for generations to come.

 

Sincerely,   Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox