Davidson Loehr
April 21, 2001
OPENING
Under the cover of war, stories circulate that all is not well with our nation, that serious things are amiss:
- hundreds of billions of dollars siphoned from our economy and given to selected corporations
- civil liberties being curtailed and threatened – some say dangerously
- growing evidence that our government knew of the September 11th attacks in advance, and may even have known specific details, including the targets.
As people of faith who are also proud Americans, these things must both concern and disturb us. If true, they have profound implications for our lives and for the soul of America. This morning and next Sunday, we gather to ask some hard and necessary questions. Our gathering is sanctified by the high and serious purposes that collect us.
And so once more, it is a sacred time, this and a sacred place, this:
a place for questions more profound than answers,
vulnerability more powerful than strength,
and a peace that can pass all understanding.
It is a sacred time, this:
Let us begin it together in song.
PUPPET SHOW:
CHARACTERS:
Two raccoons
Dragon
Baby Dragon (same voice as the 2nd raccoon)
– So only three voices for this one, though four characters.
All three characters appear at the beginning. The dragon is in the middle, with one raccoon on each side of him/her. The sex of the dragon doesn’t matter, whoever you have who’d like to be a good dragon here.
RACOON 1: (Doing a double-take at the dragon, looking around it to the 2nd raccoon, who’s also doing a double-take at the dragon and looking around it to the 1st raccoon). Hey! Like, uh, like you look a lot like a dragon!
DRAGON: (Dragon is always very cool, very in control.) Like, uh, that’s because I am a dragon – dude.
RACCOON 2: Wow! A dragon! I’ve never seen a real dragon before!
DRAGON: Most raccoons haven’t. Say, you’re a really good-looking raccoon!
(RAC2 kind of sashays, blushes, is really flattered.)
RAC1: Hey! Like what about me over here?
DRAGON: You wouldn’t think a dragon would be able to tell the difference between raccoons, would you? You’d think that to a dragon, you’d all look alike. But dragons can see some things very clearly, even though we don’t have good eyesight for big pictures.
RAC1: Well (grumbling) you sure are different from us, that’s for sure!
RAC2: Yes, you’re so very different from raccoons!
DRAGON: (To RAC2) Very different, very different. Tell me, what do raccoons do all day?
RAC1: Well, we work mostly at night.
(Dragon can upstage, turning his head when RAC1 answered his question to RAC2 with kind of condescending body language, then turning avidly, almost warmly, back to pay attention to RAC2 when RAC2 speaks.)
RAC2: Yes. We hunt for food.
DRAGON: Food? You mean like a nice medium-rare steak dinner with asparagus?
RAC1: Hah! No man, more like canned food. You know, like garbage canned food.
(Dragon can again turn his head toward RAC1 to kind of put him down or dismiss him through body language, before turning back to RAC2.)
DRAGON: (To RAC2) Oh, that’s not right, you should be eating steaks.
RAC2: (The flattery is working). Hey, you’re really nice, for a dragon. But what do you do all day?
DRAGON: Well, we guard the gold, mostly.
RAC1: The gold? Hey, gold’s so cool, ya know? Like what gold?
DRAGON: Oh, a whole mountain full of gold. Tons and tons of it. And diamonds and rubies and other jewels, too. (Looking at RAC2) Tons of the stuff. Here, like this. (Hands RAC2 either some gold, or a necklace, or jewels – whatever is easiest to handle that comes under the heading of “loot”).
RAC2: Oh, wow! Is this stuff real?
DRAGON: Is it real? Why, it’s as real as you are, you gorgeous little raccoon.
RAC2: Ooooooh! (Putting it on or looking at it, adoring the loot, whatever works.)
RAC1: (caustically mocking) “Your gorgeous little raccoon.” Argh! Like man, make me barf, why don’t you? Like whose gold is this you’re guarding?
RAC2: Oh, it’s probably the people’s gold, right? And you’re keeping it safe for them, huh?
DRAGON: (The dragon is much too powerful ever to need to lie). The gold belongs to the rich masters who own the people. They own the mountain, too. We work for them. And we get special things for doing it. (Dragon looks over to RAC2 with this last remark, as it’s intended to make RAC2 ask what special things.)
RAC1: What, you guard gold some rich finks have stolen from the workers? Karl Marx wouldn’t like that.
DRAGON: No, neither would Adam Smith or Thomas Jefferson. But Milton Friedman does.
RAC2: What special things do you get for guarding all that gold? (RAC2 is getting interested, and starting to take the dragon’s side).
DRAGON: (Dragon turns full toward RAC2, ignoring RAC1) Well, we get to fly, and we can breathe fire whenever we feel like it, and everybody is afraid of us. Here, would you like some more gold/jewels? (Gives more to RAC2).
RAC1: Fly? Hey, I wish I could fly! Can you teach me to fly?
DRAGON: (Slowly, and barely, turning to acknowledge RAC1) Sorry, fuzzbutt. That’s for dragons. (To RAC2) But you might be able to fly!
RAC2: Me? Really? Me fly? Oh like wow, that’s so cool!
RAC1: Hey, how come he might fly but not me? Like, that’s not right, man!
DRAGON: (Ignoring RAC1, talking to RAC2). Here, you need some more gold/jewels. Aren’t they nice?
RAC2: (Loaded down with jewels/gold). Oh, these are just beautiful. And they must be worth a fortune!
DRAGON: They are. Several fortunes. And there’s a lot more where they came from, believe me.
RAC2: Oh, I’d love to see it!
DRAGON: Would you? Then here, have some more (gives a big pile of loot to RAC2. RAC2 starts SINKING under the weight, and as he sinks below the stage, the dragon speaks down to him.) – There you go, there you go! See how easy this was? And look at you! You look marvelous!
RAC1: (Feeling – and being – very ignored and left out). Hey, like I don’t know why we’re bothering with you at all, you scaley old lizard. Come on, you gorgeous little raccoon, let’s go. (Looking over around the dragon, sees that the other raccoon is gone.) Hey! Hey, lizard-face! Where’s my friend? Bring back my friend right now!
DRAGON: (Looks down below stage level.) Ah. Yes. Wonderful. (Turning to RAC1) OK, fuzzbutt. See how beautiful your old friend looks now!
BABY DRAGON: (But with the same voice that RAC2 had – the voice needs to be characteristic enough to be easily identifiable.) Oh my gosh! Look what’s happened to me! Why, I’m not a raccoon at all any more! I’m a ? a?
DRAGON: You’re a baby dragon! Congratulations! Now you really are gorgeous!
RAC1: Hey, hey! This isn’t right! This is all wrong!
BABY DRAGON: Watch your lip, fuzzbutt.
RAC1: Hey, he called me Fuzzbutt! What is this?
DRAGON: This, my dull-witted friend, is what this story was about.
RAC1: What? What? I thought this was a story about how different raccoons are from dragons! DRAGON: Nope. This was a story about how to turn a raccoon into a dragon. (Turning to baby dragon) Let’s fly away, baby, we’ve got a date with a big mountain of gold and jewels! (They start flying away, out of sight.)
RAC1: Hey, that’s not right! That’s not right! The story can’t end this way! I don’t like this! This isn’t the end!
BABY DRAGON: (Either just the voice, or the baby dragon comes back up) Sure it is, Duuude. It’s all over. We win and you lose. (Beats raccoon on the head with the THE END sign, though nobody can read the sign because it’s horizontal while he’s beating raccoon with it. Raccoon disappears from sight, saying “I don’t like this, I don’t like this!”)
After RAC1 disappears, Baby Dragon holds the sign up for the audience to see:
THE END
CENTERING:
500 years ago, Martin Luther said “War is the greatest plague that can afflict humanity; it destroys religion, it destroys states, it destroys families.
35 years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. said “Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.”
I want to talk with you about our nation’s body and soul this morning. Yet I know there are some here who have come with other needs, needs unrelated to this war.
Some come bearing the pain of private, personal wars: hurts and fears that are much with you this morning. Some come needing comfort, or quiet moments, or the hope of finding someone, somehow, with whom you can share your story. Some come for the first time, wondering what kind of church this is, hoping the service will be typical, and an informative introduction to this style of liberal religion, of being human religiously.
Whoever you are, however you have come to us this morning, I welcome you, and am glad you are with us today. If you have a personal matter or would just like someone to listen, please phone the church office and leave a confidential message in the appropriate mail box. We have a listening ministry of trained church members who can meet with you. And I am available to talk or meet with you. Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock, and the doors shall be opened.
For now, let us take some quiet moments to center ourselves. If you like, you can light a candle of memory or hope during the quiet music.
SERMON
How do you turn a raccoon into a dragon? According to the puppet show, you do it by giving them wealth and privilege until they get used to it. In real life, the question and answers are more complex.
The real question is more like “How do you command and control others, to get them to serve your agenda rather than their own? How do you colonize people?”
This sounds like a political coup, so we think of things like armies, guns, loud noises and the smell of gunpowder. But these loud and rude acts only give you the opportunity to win the people’s mind and heart. Really to win them, or to colonize them, takes more subtle means. Still, it can be put simply: To control people, you need to write their story. You need to write the rules of the game that assign them supporting roles in a story that benefits you – and get them to want to do this.
Most religious teaching teaches us that we live in stories. We don’t live in “facts,” but within the stories that assign those “facts” their meanings. These are our life stories, our myths, our necessary fictions. On a personal level, there are many such stories: be pure, be reliable, be hard-working, witty, popular, prove that daddy was right about us, or prove that daddy wasn’t right about us. We have, between us, hundreds of such personal life scripts that assign us some of our life roles.
But I want to talk about larger stories today. I want to back off and look at the stories we live out, and live out of, as a society. This too could get complex, but I want to keep it simple, by looking at our “official” story – that we are a democracy – and the “real” story that has usually controlled our society – that we are some kind of an aristocracy. Democracy, while a high and noble-sounding ideal, is such an unlikely form of government! Even back when our colonies still belonged to England, there were skeptics. Here are some lines from an 18th century English historian that sound very modern. I haven’t been able to shake them, maybe they’ll stick with you too:
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always voters for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average of the world’s great civilizations has been two hundred years. (Alexander Tyler)
Let’s not pretend that this is easy, or that all good people are naturally and solely on the side of democracy here. If you could get the government to give you money that came from other people’s taxes, wouldn’t you take it? If it were legal, if you could actually get other people to pay your way, how long would it take you to rationalize it? I could do it in ten seconds. The problem is how to do it. How can you get other people to support you?
You do it, again, by getting others to play roles in your preferred story. So let’s go back to America’s stories. Since the 17th century, there have been two primary stories that have vied with each other for control of our society. Their descendents still do.
In the language of those writers, it was the choice between rule by the “masters of mankind” and “the majority of mankind.” It is the rule of the many by the few, or of all by the many. Or, in just single words, it is the choice between an aristocracy and a democracy.
Which is better? We have all been trained to answer “democracy, of course!” But opinions have always been divided on this, as they are today, and even in this room. John Locke, the English philosopher who influenced many of our own Founding Fathers, thought it must be an aristocracy because he didn’t trust the masses. He said that “day-laborers and tradesmen, the spinsters and dairymaids” must be told what to believe: “The greatest part cannot know and therefore they must believe,” he said. Many still agree with him.
Thomas Jefferson took the other side. He said aristocrats are “those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes.” Jefferson’s “democrats,” on the other hand, “identify with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as honest and safe?.”
Those who excel, after all, want excellence to rule. The vast majority want the needs of the vast majority to write the laws, so that all citizens can live rich, empowered lives that allow them to become the most that they can become, whatever that is.
The one story seeks government through command and control; the other, through empowerment and trust. You can already hear which one is more vulnerable and less likely to win, can’t you?
Still, there’s a tactical problem. How will the more powerful and wealthy (for example) pull this off, when they are the distinct minority? For all of our history, this battle between aristocrats and democrats has continued. For the first 150 years of our history, it sometimes seemed like a battle between those who had money and power, and everybody else. The courts (sometimes) kept regulating them through laws and statutes that limited their ability to earn profits at the expense of turning the rest of the country into subsistence-level workers or beggars.
The country, when it had a choice, wasn’t buying the story the aristocrats were trying to sell, and people weren’t willing to spend their lives as servants of the few. Here is the long story of labor disputes, monopoly and anti-trust laws, and other rulings designed to protect the rights of the majority from the extra power and skill of those who would be their rulers. If you know much American history, you already know all of this. There’s nothing new here.
But in the 20th century, something new did come along. It was a new invention that could become a tool powerful enough to let a smart few rule an unaware many. It came with mass communication, and was first noticed over 80 years ago, in WWI. It was the invention of propaganda. “Propaganda has only one object,” wrote one of its early masters: “to conquer the masses.” Propaganda is the tool used by a small minority to sell their story to a large majority. With enough slick spin, emotional power, and appeal to elemental yearnings and powerful symbols (as in “God bless America”), a few brilliant visionaries can convert and control an entire nation.
After WWI, people on both sides of the Atlantic wrote about this new invention. Adolph Hitler praised the British, and said the main reason that Germany lost the war was because its propaganda was so inferior to the British. He vowed to learn from the British.
And in this country too, President Woodrow Wilson formed a new group to adapt techniques of using propaganda to influence the American people in desired directions. This was in the 1920s. Let me read you a few quotes from that decade:
The great American journalist Walter Lippman was in President Wilson’s propaganda organization, along with Edward Bernays, who could be called the father of American propaganda. Bernays led the transfer of wartime propaganda skills to business’s peacetime problems of coping with democracy. When the war ended, he wrote, business “realized that the great public could now be harnessed to their cause as it had been harnessed during the war to the national cause, and the same methods could do the job.”
And the payoff? In the words of one of these early propagandists: “If the others let a minority conquer the state, then they must also accept the fact that we will establish a dictatorship.” There is the end of democracy that the 18th century English historian warned about. Once a group learns how to manipulate the masses to its own ends, democracy ends, replaced by a dictatorship, a rule of the few, an aristocracy. This last quote came from Joseph Goebbles, Hitler’s minister of propaganda. It was also Goebbles who said that propaganda’s one object was to conquer the masses, just as he described the masses as “the weak, cowardly, lazy majority of people.”
But the masses – and you realize, I hope, that this means us. We are the masses over whom sly leaders vie for control – the masses weren’t thought of any more highly on this side of the Atlantic. Walter Lippman wrote of the “ignorance and stupidity of the masses.” The general public, he said, were mere “ignorant and meddlesome outsiders,” who must not intrude in the management of public affairs, though they may be permitted to select periodically among the “responsible men” whose task it is to rule them.
Do you see that this is the tool the aristocracy had needed since our country began, a tool to let them write the story for the masses, to put a command and control government in place of a government of empowerment and trust. The invention of propaganda and its immediate use after WWI is one of the most important stories of the 20th century.
Propaganda was talked about pretty openly during its early years, before people realized that wasn’t a very smart thing to do. In 1934, the new president of the American Political Science Association said in his presidential address that government should be in the hands of “an aristocracy of intellect and power,” not directed by “the ignorant, the uninformed.” “The public must be put in its place,” added Walter Lippman, so that the “responsible men” may “live free of the trampling and the roar of a bewildered herd” as they rule them.
That “bewildered herd” – that’s us too, you know.
This is a chapter of American history we must know if we are to understand who is running our country and how they run it. But we don’t know it, do we? Why do you suppose that is?
This is a lot of new and probably strange information. Let me try to sum it up in a clear and simple way, borrowing from the writings of Alex Carey (Taking the Risk Out of Democracy):
There were three key developments in the 20th century which have shaped the world we’re living in today: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.
Corporate propaganda directed outwards toward the public has two main goals: to identify the free-enterprise system in popular consciousness with every cherished value, and to identify interventionist governments and strong unions – the only forces capable of checking the complete domination of society by corporations – with tyranny, oppression and subversion. The techniques used to do this are variously called “public relations,” “corporate communications” and “economic education.”
Corporate propaganda directed inwards to employees has the purpose of weakening the links between union members and their unions. From about 1920 through the present, US business made great progress towards the ideal of a democracy managed through corporate propaganda.
Those who run the best corporations didn’t get where they are by being stupid. They are among the most savvy and quick people in our society; few Ph.D.s would stand a chance against them in their court. Those who were entrusted with corporate power realized that one of the best investments they can make with their money is to invest in buying the politicians who make the laws.
Current struggles to pass meaningful campaign finance reform are attempts to undo this powerful structure of command and control by corporations. But for the past couple decades, many or most of our major political candidates are, like used BMWs, “pre-owned vehicles.” In order to get the money they need to compete in American elections, they must get large investments from large business interests. And for those investments, they owe something once they’re in office. They owe their investors the effort to slant the laws of the land in ways that let their investors “vote themselves money from the public treasure,” as that 18th century historian put it.
What does this mean? It means weakening or eliminating controls on environmental pollution or toxic emissions or burial of radioactive waste, letting chemical companies like Monsanto infect the entire continent’s wheat and corn crops with genetically modified organisms that have not, and can not be, tested.
It means reducing the taxes corporations pay, and shifting that tax burden to the citizens those of us in the bewildered herd, so that they can vote themselves money out of our personal treasuries. It means breaking unions, and redefining the economy as one that revolves around the price of stocks rather than the ability of regular citizens to earn good livings through an honest day’s work.
You can see how corporate investments in political candidates work by looking at NAFTA. NAFTA was carefully crafted as an investor rights agreement. It can’t be considered a worker’s rights agreement. Opening the borders means that America’s higher-paid workers must now compete with the far cheaper labor in Mexico. This threat has been used routinely to break American union demands for decent wages and benefits. If they refuse, the manufacturing is simply moved to northern Mexico, to workers who have low pay and few benefits, but see it as an improvement over abject poverty. NAFTA is an investor rights agreement. It is paying dividends on the financial investment that corporations and wealthy individuals made in our elections. They helped elect their candidate, and they want payback. It is only fair.
Or you can see how the paybacks from investing in elections work by looking at Texas’ own, Enron’s former CEO Kenneth Lay. Lay was the biggest single investor in George W. Bush’s campaign for president. In return for this investment, Lay was able to appoint White House regulators, shape energy policies and block the regulation of offshore tax havens, Enron had “intimate contact with Taliban officials” and the energy giant’s much-reviled Dabhol project in India was set to benefit from a hook-up with the oil pipeline we planned to run through Afghanistan.
These negotiations collapsed in August 2001 – a date that should begin making our ears stick up – when the Taliban asked the US to help reconstruct Afghanistan’s infrastructure and provide a portion of the oil supply for local needs. The US response was reportedly succinct: “We will either carpet you in gold or carpet you in bombs.” The notes of this meeting, which took place only weeks before September 11th, are now the subject of a lawsuit between Congress and the White House. Was the Taliban really destroyed for harboring terrorists? Or was it destroyed for failing to further the ambitions of Texas millionaires?
The London paper The Guardian also reports that US State Department officials in early July of 2001 informed their Russian and Pakistani counterparts of possible plans to invade Afghanistan in the fall.
To put this in the form of a question made famous during the Watergate investigation 30 years ago, we now need to ask “What did the President know, and when did he know it?”
Once we began our new war, it provided a cover for other agendas that the administration had been trying to do since the election, to fulfill their promises to their corporate investors.
I read in early March that over $212 billion was transferred from our economy to our larger corporations in the form of retroactive tax refunds sometimes going back fifteen years. Democracy can only exist “until [some] voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure.”
Huge tax refunds were voted in, from which well over 90% went to the richest 1% of Americans. These are some of the returns on their investments in the president’s campaign.
And do you recall Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld’s recent statement? While requesting an additional $48 billion for defense, much of which will go to corporations closely related to this administration, he casually mentioned that the Pentagon had somehow misplaced $2.3 trillion. This makes me want Lewis Black to do an angry rant! It’s the wrong verb! Nobody “misplaces” $2.3 trillion. Someone took it, moved it to somewhere else, and others else got it. Who? Was it done without the President’s knowledge? If not, again, what did the President know, and when did he know it?
News reports from Der Spiegel to the London Observer, from the Los Angeles Times to MSNBC to CNN indicate that many different warnings were received by the Administration before the 9-11 attacks. It has even been reported that the US government broke bin Laden’s secure communications before September 11. The US government is being sued today by survivors of the Embassy bombings because, from court reports, it appears clear that the US had received prior warnings then too, but did nothing to protect the staffs at our embassies. Did the same thing happen again?
And does it get even worse? Could there be an even darker side to the events of 9-11? Maybe. I read an article in the March/April issue of The Humanist magazine that’s worth sharing. (I’ve since been told by several people at the three services on Sunday 21 April that these things were widely known and discussed back in September. But I don’t have independent verification.)
In the days leading up to 9-11, thousands of “put” options were purchased on companies whose stocks tanked after September 11. “Put” options are bought by investors when they are willing to gamble that a company’s stock prices will go down in the near future. Most prominent among these companies are American and United Airlines, whose planes hit the twin towers, and the investment firms of Morgan Stanley and Merril Lynch, whose offices were destroyed in the towers.
Between September 6 and 7, investors purchased 4,744 “put” options in United Airlines at the Chicago Board Options Exchange. At the same time, only 396 “call” options – where an investor bets on a stock price increasing – were purchased.On September 10, investors bought 4,516 “put” options in American Airlines versus 748 call options. In the three days prior to September 11, investors bought 2,157 “put” options in Morgan Stanley, a company which occupied fifty floors of office at the WTC. Volume during the previous week was a mere 27 “put” options per day. Likewise, investors bought another 12,215 “put” options for WTC tenant Merril Lynch.
Most embarrassing to the government, however, is the fact that many of the mysterious “put” options were purchased through an investment firm that was formally headed by Buzzy Krongard, the current executive director of the CIA.
Next week I want to keep exploring some of these issues. I want to look into propaganda more deeply, and to look at some disturbing developments indicating a new political ideology beginning to take over the religious right in this country – much to the dismay of some of their own Christian ministers. I’ll also want to look at much that is right and promising, and suggest some actions we might take.
But I have asked a lot of you today. I have tried to put some clear patterns to a tremendous amount of what will be new information for most of you. I may be wrong. My patterns and understanding may be wrong. The patterns I see suggest that the aristocracy controlling our election processes and much of our government is not serving, and can not serve, the interests or needs of the vast majority of the American people.
Under the cover of war, I believe there is a good chance that we are losing our American way of life, our civil freedoms, our economy, and the remaining vestiges of our democracy, just as that cynical historian predicted 250 years ago.
Where does this leave us? It reconnects me with some of my strongest and most basic convictions:
- We cannot lose faith. We must continue to appeal to the better angels of our nature, and the better angels of our leaders.
- We cannot lose hope. The future is not yet written, its options are still open.
- And we must try not to become self-righteous or mean-spirited, or attempt to harm our nation. We may and must criticize and chastise its errant ways. But we must struggle to do it in a spirit of love. I struggle mightily with this one, and often lose here.
I hope and I pray that we may indeed add our critical and caring voices to the dialogue. And even though we are few and our efforts may seem meager, they are essential – for us, for our nation, and for the world.
Let us go forth in faith, in hope, and in love.
Amen.
