Sleeping Through A Culture War #TamirRice #DCprotest #Ferguson #TortureReport

Sleeping Through A Culture War

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by Stan Faryna

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Tamir Rice

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It’s heroic humanism, stupid

The heroic humanism that gave unofficial permission to exercise the inhumanity described by ‪#‎TortureReport‬ gives the same unspoken permission to murder 12 year old ‪Tamir Rice‬, ‪‎New Yorker Eric Garner‬, et al.

Consider how such diabolical humanism informs law, the so called rule of law, government mission and the culture of death.

Let us repent, together.

 

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U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee’s Report on CIA practices for Detention and Interrogation

The official title of the unclassified #TortureReport is a long one:  Senate Select Committee on Intelligence: Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program. It is the 528 page executive summary that has been released for public review. The full Study exceeds 6,700 pages and it documents the countless, inhumane, and diabolical abuses and mistakes made between 2001 and 2009. Those abuses and mistakes represent a grotesque monument of horror, immorality and human rights violations.

Here’s a few links for you to begin a journey into an Inferno which makes Dante’s hell seem polite and tolerable:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/12/09/world/cia-torture-report-key-points.html

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/12/09/worst-horrors-cia-torture-report/20146081

http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-cia-torture-report-global-reaction-20141209-story.html

http://thehill.com/policy/defense/226564-us-embassies-issue-warnings-after-cia-report-release

http://www.odni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/198-press-releases-2014/1149-dni-message-to-the-intelligence-community-workforce-on-the-release-of-the-ssci-report

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/dec/10/cia-torture-report-global-reaction-roundup

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/09/the-most-gruesome-moments-in-the-cia-torture-report.html

Culture War

It is no coincidence that we have been woken from our sleep at this time. We cannot ignore the overwhelming and horrific evidence that our society and culture has been compromised, corrupted, and turned over to an enemy – unprosecuted police abuses, the murder of 12 year old Tamir Rice, and, now, the #TortureReport.

Any attempt to defend, ignore and obscure these horrors is reducible to deception, false accusations and diabolical suspicion regarding the dignity of the human person, human purpose and the destiny of the human species.

The Culture War is not an academic debate. It is not a moveable feast for the parlor of intellectuals. It is not a clever forum to debate the diversity and consequence of opinions, values and ambitions. It is about casualties. It is painful, horrible and juggernaut. And wars, they are fought in the streets.

Snooze Button

Who can you trust? Neither Republicans nor Democrats to be sure. Nor libertarians, I regret. For they all serve the same masters – pride, greed, gluttony, lust, etc. Parties are called parties for good reason. No? But if you can’t trust anyone, why not hit the snooze and wake up when the dust has settled? Some suggest that this is what a democracy looks like.

What should a great democracy look like? Where is the dream, the vision, and the want for a promised land?

Where is the hunger and the thirst for good things? Where is the want for greatness, goodness and prosperity?

 

Where is the love!

Love, it is said, comes like a river when we have repented of our evil and forgiven others for the evil they have done to us.

 

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Stan Faryna
09 December 2014
Fairfax, Virginia

Broken hearts and getting away with murder #TamirRice #DCprotest #pray

Broken hearts and getting away with murder

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by Stan Faryna

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Tamir Rice

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It has been said that when evil, immorality and self-serving license prevails in the world, the human heart will grow cold. That our compassion, empathy and desire to be a comfort and help to others shall be greatly diminished. I wonder if these are those times.

I wonder now if my own heart has grown cold.

Because I watched surveillance video footage that provided a view of the murder of a 12 year old child and I did not weep.

I understood it was a true horror that I was watching. I felt deep sympathy for Tamir Rice’s parents, but what I felt did not go deep enough. An awkward sound escaped my mouth but I should have sobbed. And I knew the fault must be mine. That my heart was growing cold.

Has my heart been so broken that it is beyond repair. Yes and no. Comfort and convenience will not heal this heart. Technology cannot fix it. Nor chemical prescription – legal or illegal. Nor government.

The hows and whys of the murder of Tamir Rice will be argued with heartless contention, legalistic pageantry and much anger. But I will not put the murder of a child behind me. I will not move forward in my thoughts. There is enough evil in the murder of a child to claim my hearts’ complete attention. Racism and prejudice is also evil and, yet, I cannot move past the greater evil to feast and rail upon the lesser evil. There is time to account for all of our evil.

There is enough evidence in the paltry, unadorned facts that a child was murdered for you and I to understand that the world is broken and that we, collectively as the human family, are exceedingly worthy of a curse upon our heads- a curse that follows each one of us wherever we go and whatever we do, and confounds us with unrelenting hardships, misery and unbearable misfortune.

Some say that this is what is happening now. Others even suggest that those who do murder or other evil, they share their curse with us all. And those who get away with murder, they break the human heart (all hearts) in ways that shall never be healed – even until the last star blinks out. Yet we also know, deep down, that the answer is not to tear them to little pieces.

I feel the curses piling up upon me, my body, mind and soul. Upon my family, friends and neighbor. Upon my nation and all of the human family. I feel the poverty of my spirit growing wide and deep as oceans. For what should I be proud?

If only I could have wept, I could almost imagine that I could step out from underneath this particular curse – one among the millions. And so I put my face on the ground and I repent for us all.

If we say that we have not sinned, we make [God] a liar, and [God’s] word is not in us.

1 John 1:10

And I beg God to have for mercy on us and on the whole world.

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Stan Faryna
06 December 2014
Fairfax, Virginia

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Where is the light? #EricGarner #ICantBreathe #Nowisthetime

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by Stan Faryna

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Eric Garner died as a result of a choke hold used by a NYPD officer attempting to subdue him. The first video shows it here. Mr. Garner pleads for his life. “I can’t breathe,” he cries out (weakly) to the police officers. The second video (here) shows police officers and EMT handling an apparently unconscious Mr. Garner like an animal. Or a slab of meat.

How did the Grand Jury not indict the police officer?

We should and must mourn the loss of Eric Garner lest we accept that our hearts have grown cold. We should and must grieve over the injustice served by the non-indictment of Daniel Pantaleo.

In the midst of an overwhelming number of police officers, Daniel Pantaleo’s actions in subduing Mr. Garner (in the manner in which he did) were arrogant, contemptuous and, yes, evil – beyond even the possibility of a racially motivated crime. If you watch the second video where Mr. Garner appears unconscious, hand-cuffed and mishandled, Pantaleo appears in the background – proud, puffed up and “manly” in how he holds himself.

Pantaleo did not act as a man on that day. He acted as a coward. He did as a bully does. And we can all see this with our own eyes. Any other conclusion is in itself, cowardice, false consciousness, or, yes, evil. Regardless of prejudice.

Daniel Pantaleo, however, is not beyond redemption or our compassion. He can confess his sin and repent, publicly. And, in return, we can forgive and love the man.

Cases of police brutality, state oppression, terrorism, and all kinds of violence may be worse and more frequent elsewhere in the world. That does not make the wrongful death of Eric Garner, acceptable. Lukewarm reaction is absolutely reprehensible and disgusting. It is written that God vomits the lukewarm.

In the face of overwhelming lack of compassion and concern for the dignity of the human person, outrage and anger will burn in the hearts of those who still have hearts to mourn what has happened. Evil shall also grow in burning hearts. There will grow a want of revenge, a spirit of fear and contempt for others. This too is human – fallen humanity.

Now is the time for justice. For leadership. For love.

Ye are the light of the world.
Matthew 5:14

Where is the Christian voice in the midst of the darkness? Where is the light of Christian love in dark nights as these?

Light does not shine in the streets. Now is the time for Christians to go forth, cast out demons, heal the broken-hearted, and demonstrate the power of Jesus. In prayer. In compassion and with love. In sharing Christian wisdom and truth. In solidarity with the human family. With a crying out to God!

I am reminded of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s words, Now is the time.

Or is my opinion in error?

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Stan Faryna
04 December 2014
Fairfax, Virginia

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