Righteous Anger

Some things are worth getting angry about. Some things should demand that we get angry. For some of us in faith communities we feel God’s call to get angry with issues and people. This is called righteous anger and it means that anger should be right. And it is not limited to faith communities.

The anger I am going to talk about today is anger about our government. It is an anger directed at both Republicans and Democrats and the people who have been bamboozled by them; though more anger is and should be directed at the bamboozlers.

Today’s members of congress by their own admission need to spend 4 of 5 workdays per week raising money to get reelected. That means the vast majority of the time they are working at things that they were not elected to do. It is such a mammoth miscarriage of rightness that you would think they would stop it immediately.

That anger, is the major element behind the so-called Tea Party movement. They were angry with the government, government that wasted their time not doing their job. A great many were angry that the government did anything. “Let’s just go back to the good old west where the good guys just shot the bad guys.” That was not righteous anger but is pretty easy to sell and the bamboozlers sold it well. 

There was the anger that people were coming into our country and taking “our” jobs and benefiting “our” welfare benefits. That was not even true in almost each and every case, but the bamboozlers played on people fears, even these created fears and it worked well. This is not righteous anger.

There were people who were angry at folk who looked different from them. Even though many of these people had been kidnapped and brought to the country for economic gain. These people were often seen as being biologically inferior to the white majority. I even had a high school superintendent tell me this when I was teaching. This not righteous anger, in fact, we should be righteously angry at people who promote such injustice, particularly those who say the follow the teaching of Jesus.

There are those who are anger at members of the opposite sex and also regard them and inferior, “weaker vessels” for literal bible missinterpreters. And again it is particularly odious coming from the followers of Jesus who ignore that in Christ there is no Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, man nor woman for you are all one in Jesus Christ.” This is not righteous anger but rather what brings forth righteous anger.

Obviously I could go on and on and on and on a number of these subjects, but let us return to righteous anger against the government. Government officials are elected or appointed to be public servants. They are to serve the general public, to work for the common good. That should be blatantly clear to everyone. But that is not how our government works today and seems to be drifting farther and farther away from that basic responsibility. Today, government officially work primarily for special interest groups. They are working for people who put their interests above the interests of others generally so they can get more of their share of the economic pie that would be the “just share.” 

Now I do not want to make a blanket judgment on the work of all special interest groups. Some of those groups, even a lot of those groups are forced into existence to combat the special interests of other groups. An obvious example is unions. Unions came into being to find power in numbers to fight those whose power was in money to get more than their fair share of the products they were producing. History shows us that when unions do well, the country as a whole, the common good, works well as well. This does not mean that unions and other well intended special interest group do not abuse their power when they get. History is full of examples of those miscarriages of justice as well. But the point is that it is the roll of the government to work for the common good, not just special interests.

Righteous anger comes when government does not live up to that basic responsibility of working for the common good, for the best interests of every one of its citizens. That is true of Republican and Democrat and other political parties or interest groups as well.

This injustice and miscarriage of justice will continue as long as money is the driving force for electing and appointing government officials. How do you get rid of this evil? Vote the bastards out office, Democratic, Republican, or whatever. If ever there was a reason for a one issue vote it is this one. Vote every politician out office that does not support government sponsorship of elections; money raised by a buck or two added to our tax bill. It works in other countries and it can work here. That limit would also shorter the interminable length of elections just because they couldn’t afford to run them. That is a righteous solution.

One periodically hears about a proposed 28^th amendment. They want term limits, get rid of pensions and tenure, special health care, no and abide by the laws. To me this sounds more like “let’s get even get the bastards.” But I think it also misses the single most important point, limit the money accompanied after with a particular list of things that don’t seem fair. In this case it truly seems that the love of money is the root of all evil. So we may talk about term limits but would you do that in business? Fire someone after they gain skills and know the job? They have some of the most important jobs in the country, pay them well, give good pensions and a few perks. It will still be considerably less that we pay the CEO’s of the major corporations. We need to stay focused on the real problem. The problem is big money buying elections by paying for them. It would be nice if folk elected could ignore those funds, but the don’t and don’t think the can. Thye owe and in owing are owned.

To vote the current money driven system out of office we must find enough people to run for office promising to do that single thing, limit campaign spending. If those people were elected to office then a whole lot of governmental ills and bad governance would give way to folk elected to do their job, to serve the citizens they represent and work for the common good.