Continue to Fight Even When You Are Weary

Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler

The presidential announcements and outrage come at us so viciously fast that it is difficult to keep up with the latest assault on governance, our intellect, decency, or humanity. Much of the perceived chaos is planned and judiciously meted out to keep our heads spinning leaving little time or energy to respond to anything before something new intrudes the space. Their goal is to produce as much confusion and chaos as possible so the public will struggle to keep up and lose the ability to pay close and constant attention to the important things of democratic and constitutional order. Our national setting has become a mixture of reality TV with the sensationalism of that genre, where mean-spirited sound bites emanate from those in power who smirkingly stare into the cameras, knowingly creating the next news cycle. There is a racist, hate-filled, untruthful, and vindictive blanket covering this government and suffocating the country under its weight. We have never seen anything like this before. 

There has been one attack followed by another. Federal Employees, The Department of Education, The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Consumer Protection Financial Bureau, the Courts and law firms, media, colleges and universities, The National Institutes of Health (NIH), and The Smithsonian Museums (particularly The National Museum of African American History and Culture) have all fallen under the axe of DOGE or the accusation of promoting “Woke” ideology. Immigrants have been a favorite target of this administration. The undocumented have been hounded, hunted, arrested, and transported to prisons in El Salvador and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba which are known for human rights violations. But the long authoritarian arm of government is not only extended to the undocumented, but also against scholars and students legally here. We were shocked when Mahmoud Khalil was kidnapped. He was a graduate student at Columbia University and had been a spokesperson during that school’s ‘stop the genocide’ demonstrations. Rumeysa Oztur was recently picked up by plain-clothed goons and transported to Louisiana while on her way to an Iftar near Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. She is a doctorate student and legally here like Khalil. Each is apparently guilty of decrying the genocide in Gaza and indicting the white supremacy of Zionism for those atrocities. These two names have been widely reported, but we should not assume that these are the only names. These arrests, however signal a First Amendment crisis where it appears that anyone can be criminalized for supporting Palestinian rights. My fear is that this seems to be a trial run that starts with the undocumented, then moves on to those with legal status, and finally is used against citizens who express points of views critical of and unsanctioned by the government. Where does the creep towards totalitarianism end? 

If you are not already weary from the list of head spinning encroachments on democratic order, there is much more to add to the list of insults. There is the re-installation of Confederate statues, renaming bodies of water and land to fit an imperialistic paradigm, and the removal of photographs and references to Blacks and women, and any image or phrase that speaks to diversity, inclusion or equity. Even the word “Gay” emblazoned on the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Japan, the Enola Gay, came under attack. There are teases about the annexation of Canada, Greenland, and taking back the Panama Canal that adds to the dizziness of any day. In Washington, DC the city government was ordered to dismantle “Black Lives Matter” plaza that was erected during the George Floyd unrest and after first-term Trump held a bible up in front of a church after the crowds had been tear-gassed and attacked by police and military. 

The callous war criminality of this administration in collaboration with other war criminals, have quipped about removing the population from Gaza and turning the devastation produced by that illegal war into a coastal resort. And now there is the insinuation that Trump may try to extend his time in office.

Some of the news and reports from this government are real and some are not. It is difficult to tell what is real from what is not. But one thing we understand with these demagogues and anti-democratic criminals in office or serving the government is that we need to take everything as real. We have discovered that there is nothing beyond the pale for these gangsters let loose on the world stage. 

Since the strategy is to wear us down and out, keep our heads spinning, and make us feel powerless in the face of these avalanches of rumors, innuendoes, and news simply means that we cannot lose our focus, let ourselves become weary or tired, or stop paying attention. We must pay attention to all the mess, all the rumors, and all the insanity coming from this group of White Supremacists, Zionists, and Christian Nationalists. The plan of this government is to change the discussion daily, create a new issue, a new controversy, and orchestrate a new debate to fill the media’s bandwidth. It is their way of moving things in and out of the public scrutiny so fast that you can’t deal with one thing before the next thing comes along. But no matter what they do or say Palestinians are still struggling and dying every day. Israel is still bombing Gaza, Lebanon, and Israeli settlers are still attacking Palestinians in the West Bank. The US is still bombing Syria.  Children are still being exploited for their labor in the mineral pits of Africa. Federal workers still have been fired or are in danger of losing their jobs. And we the people are still trying to remain plugged in and aware of what is going on at home and around the world. But we need to do more than being aware. We need to find ways from the reserves of our strength to do what we can to hold up and onto the light, bring the hope, and maintain a very vocal and very loud demand for justice. We need to remind ourselves that we need to keep our focus and watch over everything and continue to stand, march, demonstrate and confront the wrongs that abound with a strength drawn deep from the reservoirs of our being. 

Yes, we are weary, tired, and frightened. Yet in times like these when our lives or the lives of loved ones are endangered people have been known to find a Herculean strength that has lifted cars, fought bears, and turned ordinary strength into incredible power. We have the surprising ability to reach beyond ourselves to muster the strength and power in moments of fear and great distress. We know the histories of the many movements that produced extraordinary results, brought down mighty systems, freed people, and changed the outcomes of the human story. The movements of labor, civil rights, climate change, LGBTQIA, and every other movement was sparked by a faint flicker in vast darkness when the heaviness of the moment felt unbearable, frightening, and too threatening. When a new outrage, the proverbial final straw of insults and injury is thrust upon us that is when the small amber of resistance begins to spread into the great fires of change. Sparks begin to fly when we become angry, frightened, and distressed enough to stretch beyond ourselves and touch the mysterious fires that power movements that will save us and our loved ones. We are in those moments now and may the sparks that ignite the flames of hopefulness and light drive out the heaviness and darkness and grow into something large and fierce enough to save us from this madness.