Subject: RE: BS: Hurricane Aftermath
From:
Joe Offer
Date: 02 Sep 05 - 03:29 AM
It does seem that the Feds are being slow to respond to this disaster. I guess it's because Bush channeled all our money into his war games in Iraq.
Here's an excerpt from religious perspective that I found interesting. I got it in an e-mail - the entire article is here (click) on the Web. I think it's a pretty rational insight into what's wrong with our society, particularly in the U.S.
Katrina, God and Social Morality
by Rabbi Michael Lerner
The white majority of the people of Louisiana elected Congressional representatives who enthusiastically support the war in Iraq and the Bush Administration's environmental irresponsibility. When economic devastation hit workers in northern cities over the past several decades, Louisianans voted to downsize the federal government and to let others fend for themselves. Many talked about the glories of relying on the free marketplace rather than on the "handouts" from a national government that they abhorred. Or they told the poor and the homeless in northern cities that "if they worked harder or had better habits or were smarter they'd have employment and wouldn't have to depend on others' help. Or they saw that suffering of others as "the hand of God."
And yet, the law of karma or Torah doesn't work on a one to one basis, delivering "just rewards" to those who have been directly involved in causing evil, as JOB noted in the Bible and as we can note watching global warming play out. The terrible truth is that it is the POOR, the MOST VULNERABLE, who are the first to suffer. The wealthy built their homes on higher ground, had better information, more insurance, and more avenues of escape. So whether it is in facing the rising waters in Bangladesh or Malaysia or Lousiana and Missippi, it's going to be "the least among us" who will suffer most immediately. This is why it is inappropriate to blame the victim: because the way the world has been created, the consequences of past social injustice, war and ecological irresponsibility come to a whole planet--because from the cosmic perspective we are one, we are all interdependent—and those who suffer most are often not even those who are most culpable. Ditto with environmental cancers—it's often not the oil company executives but poor people living in proximity to the air and water polluted by corporate irresponsibility and abetted by the lawmakers who depend on corporate contributions and pay them back by imposing the weakest possible environmental regulations.
When some Christian fundamentalists talk about these as signs of the impending doom of the planet, they are laughed off as irrational cranks. It's true that these fundamentalists see no connection between the doom and the environmental irresponsibility that the politicians they support have brought us. But nevertheless, their perception that we are living at "the end of time" can't be dismissed by those of us who know that the life support systems of this planet are increasingly "in danger" if politics continues the way it has been going, with politicians in BOTH parties capitulating regularly to the ethos of selfishness and materialism that is sustained by our corporate plunderers but is validated by the votes of ordinary citizens.
Yet the fundamentalist message is deeply misleading also, because it seems to suggest that all this is out of our hands, part of some divine scheme. But it's not. The biblical version is quite different from what they say: it insists that the choice between life and death is in our hands. After laying out the consequences of abandoning a path of justice and righteousness, the Torah makes it clear that it is up to us. CHOOSE LIFE, it tells us. That choosing of life means transforming our social system in ways that neither Democrats nor Republicans have yet been willing to consider—toward a new bottom line of love and caring, kindness and generosity, ethical and ecological responsibility, and awe and wonder at the grandeur of the universe replacing a narrow utilitarian approach to Nature.
--Rabbi Michael Lerner
Editor, Tikkun and co-chair (with Cornel West and Sister Joan Chittister) of the Tikkun Community
author, The Left Hand of God (forthcoming in January from HarperSanFrancisco)
www.tikkun.org
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sj
