I
do not know about you but my greatest disappointment with
President Barack Obama is really disappointment over a
collective failing of all of us. The failing is our collective
blindness to the barbarity and moral corruptness of justified
state vengeance, as the worm deep in our
cultural gut that poisons our thoughts and our actions.
The most recent display of this failing was shown by the
first anniversary celebration of the assassination
of Osama Bin Laden. I should say triumphal celebration.
Republicans praised the action and attempted to limit
Obama�s credit for making the decision. Democrats fought
hard to give the President much credit. I was appalled
that any moral, civil human being would want to claim
credit.
My disappointment or sadness is that the substance of this issue is not even
being raised to visibility by hardly any one! This assassination
and many other such actions in the US is a huge, out-there display of our moral corruption.
Much of our criminal justice policy and practices and
our foreign policy and practices grow out of the blind
acceptance of the correctness of state exercised
vengeance. That is what makes me sad.
We can learn from Biblical scripture and the ancient writings and practices
from many cultures around the world that humans have been
struggling with this question of justified vengeance for
a long, long time. Overwhelmingly, the conclusion
from these thousands of years of consideration is that
vengeance � particularly individual vengeance � is morally
wrong. In Romans 12:17-19 one translation is as follows:
17 Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the
eyes of everyone.
18 If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.
19 Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God�s wrath, for
it is written: �It is mine to avenge; I will repay,� says
the Lord.
This basic wisdom concept of leaving consequences to God, to Nature, to the
Tao, to Karma reappears frequently in diverse cultures.
And it has been ignored for thousands of years in almost
all of those cultures, despite the fact that there are
alternative approaches to achieve justice and peace. And
vengeance is totally ineffective at achieving either peace
or justice and is very, very costly.
The People of the Book (Jewish, Christian, and Muslim) seem to
have finessed this wise prohibition against vengeance
by declaring that the humans who are in authority and
their agents are divinely chosen and therefore
their acts of vengeance are as if The Lord is the
architect. Romans 13:4 says as follows:
4 For he is the minister of God to you for good. But if you do that which is
evil, be afraid; for he bears not the sword in vain: for
he is the minister of God, an avenger to execute wrath
upon him that does evil.
There is good historical evidence that Roman Emperor Constantine influenced
which of many hundred year old (at the time) writings
were included and which were left out of (what we now
call) The Gospels. Constantine
would favor the kinds of texts that tout imperial divinity
and obedience to authority.
A careful reading of this compilation of ancient wisdom would reveal that Jewish
prophets from the Old Testament (the Torah) and Jesus
(in the New Testament) frequently challenged authority.
This rejection of the unjust actions of leaders cannot
be denied and the authorities are not justified in their
persecution of the prophets or their use of capital punishment.
The finesse by deification or by giving special dispensation
to the conquerors and usurpers took a thousand years to
break down when kings and presidents were found to be
no longer divinely ordained. Why then (another thousand
years later) do so many of us still think that vengeance
is justified when it is meted out by the state!?
More than 200 years ago, Quakers in the US and England presented strong organized resistance
to state vengeance. In addition to their opposition to
wars and their efforts to end slavery, they were some
of the original founders of the penitentiaries as alternatives
to the jail system that existed at the time. Repelled
by the vengeful bodily punishments such as maiming and
branding, they had envisioned a quiet solitary place where
individuals that had committed anti-social acts could
sit and exercise their penitence. In 1820 they helped
establish Western and Cherry Hill Penitentiary in Philadelphia. �The Quakers hopefully and naively assumed that an inmate�s
conscience, given enough time alone, would make him penitent
(hence the new word, �penitentiary�).�
Unfortunately these reformers did not take into account the mentally debilitating
nature of forced solitude or the unyielding nature
of the wish for vengeance that led to the undoing of Quaker
reformers� good intentions. It was our primitive clinging
to vengeance that turned the original concept of a penitentiary
into another place for punishment and vengeance no different
than a jail. Currently, Quaker and other reformers are
strongly advocating an end to the death penalty and the
substitution of restorative justice for retributive justice
� with little help from Obama or very many of us.
In a recent episode of This Week With George Stephanopoulos, while discussing
the assassination of Osama Bin Laden, Tavis Smiley reminded
viewers that President Barack Obama has a bust of Martin
Luther King Jr. in the Oval Office. Tavis stated, without
response or comment by any other panel member, how hypocritical
it was to consider MLK a personal hero while helping to
exact violent state vengeance. This reminded me of the
hypocrisy of Obama receiving the Nobel Peace Prize just
before he sent a surge of troops into Afghanistan.
The best that I can say for our President is that
he is a capable politician � better than most. But, he
lacks the wisdom of the ages. He is not the prophetic
leader that would challenge the moral corruptions, like
justified vengeance, which eat at the gut and heart of
US society. He is not MLK and he never will be. We cannot
look to Obama for moral leadership; after nearly four
years it is obvious that type of leadership cannot be
found in the White House.
We are all � each and every one of us � called to
become leaders in our own right anywhere and any how you
can stand up for human dignity and human wisdom. That
is the only way that the abomination of vengeance both
personal and state will be curbed.
BlackCommentator.com
Guest Commentator, Wilson Riles, is a
former Oakland, CA City Council Member. Click here
to contact Mr. Riles.
