Standing Rock...
And My Ambivalence About Suggesting Trump is Worse
Than the Neoliberal Capitalists Clinton/Obama
I walked into the church where I have been pastor for the past 15 years, the morning after the election, and I was received by tear-stained immigrants and refugees who were so frightened over the election of Donald Trump. It's not surprising that they feared him. His behavior had been outrageous, and suddenly, it was legitimatized.
Donald Trump has been calling people names for the past year and a half, while campaigning, but name-calling, religiously speaking, should be reserved as a tool for use by people who are last (and who stand with 'the last') as they rail against abusive powers (see the Prophets of Hebrew Scriptures). Donald Trump displays all the qualities of a terrorist, a sexual predator, a homophobe, a xenophobe and he has surrounded himself with people who espouse, quite publicly, those views. He is a disgusting, disgraceful representative for our country. He deserves, right back at him, every name he has directed toward others. We need to stand strong against the danger he poses to so many vulnerable populations.
But he is not responsible for Standing Rock.
That distinction falls to President Barack Obama. In our rush to criticize the President-Elect (which I believe is a worthy calling) we have, it seems to me, let the current President off the hook. President Obama ran on a platform where he pledged to make huge strides on environmental policy. And yet here, as his Presidency grinds to a halt, he is blessing a pipeline project that is creating infrastructure for further extraction of oil that is contributing to catastrophic temperature increases. He is letting market forces decide the fate of our global temperature and he is letting the desires of the marketplace hold far more sway than the needs of protecting the dignity and safety of a native people.
There is much about President Obama that I respect. He has carried himself with such grace and he has put up with tremendous obstacles from the Republicans in congress. But I am afraid that I will remember him, mostly, as just another neoliberal capitalist who showed more respect for market forces than he did for people.
President Obama, you could still change this situation. You could decide to choose what's right for the earth and for its people rather than for its financial markets. But that is not what you do. You try, it seems, to please the markets and people most of the time. But at the end of the day, when a choice has to be made, you cannot serve both Mammon and people/planet. You let the market win. Why should I expect anything different now?
There is one other way I'll remember you. Your presidency has been the occasion for me to say, "Democrats worship Mammon just as much as Republicans." Standing Rock is a monument to that new conviction.
Rev. Seth Kaper-Dale
Former Democrat, now, Gubernatorial Candidate for the Green Party, NJ