Disloyal Opposition: Striking Back Against the Empire

By Kenneth Wolman

Years ago, as a young(er) and still actively Jewish man, I absorbed an implied message: to be a Jew was to be in a constant state of danger and alienation from the society and majority culture beyond the ghetto walls. And even in America some Jews saw themselves enmeshed by a hegemony or industrial autocracy that gave them two implicit choices: expose the neck or fight back. So many Jews entered the vanguard of labor and other radical movements of the last century. Though the Messiah tarried, they would work for change on earth.

When I came to Christianity in 1997, I discovered that many goyim I'd been taught to fear were at that center of a progressive social activism that, whether religious or secular, was aimed toward what Jews called tikkun olam , repairing the world.

Since the election, what I want is to help add my breath to help fan the political fire of a church that produced William Stringfellow but is now increasingly obsessed over adult sleeping arrangements. We are factionalizing, and in the process are helping lose our country to the worst excesses of quasi-religious practice and belief.

Now we find mainstream denominations beleaguered by politically-driven faith groups that do not wish to repair the world so much as dominate it. God alone knows (but we can guess) how these movements view Episcopalians. Since the election, what I want is to help add my breath to help fan the political fire of a church that produced William Stringfellow but is now increasingly obsessed over adult sleeping arrangements. We are factionalizing, and in the process are helping lose our country to the worst excesses of quasi-religious practice and belief. Any progressive denomination will be at risk. Witness how the United Church of Christ has been dealt with for its gay-friendly TV commercials.

I hope that in the dark days coming we don't go out of our way to prove how “loyal” we are and become “Court Episcopalians.” I believe we are already perceived as disloyal to the soi disant morality of what is becoming an internal empire that views us as religiously suspect and treacherous. We not only ordain women who will not remain silent in our churches, but we also have approved an openly gay bishop.

My weak gesture? I am starting to describe myself as part of the Disloyal Opposition. I can't win by their rules. Thus, I will be what they've said I am: liberal, progressive, ergo disloyal. By their logic, I am a moral leper.

In 1988, Michael Dukakis shied away from the “L-word” as though it were leprosy itself. His cowardice merited ridicule and defeat. Even people like me who voted for him did so with the same hopelessness one might have bringing a water pistol to a firestorm. He seemed unable to fight back. The conservatives have known for years that politics is inherently a barroom fight, they have set the tone, but modern liberals have treated politics like academic discourse. True, taking the “high road” is a virtue, but it ceases to be so when one is in a battle for the vision of the country, and the opponent is someone who believes his morality is contingent on destroying you.

To fend off the “L-word,” otherwise decent people have done appalling things. Shortly before his 1992 election, Gov. Bill Clinton returned to Arkansas to sign the death warrant of Rickey Ray Rector, a profoundly retarded (black) convict. Rector, at his last meal, left his pecan pie, figuring he'd finish it after he got back from his execution. Clinton tried to prove he was as tough as conservatives claimed to be because he could take the life of a man with a baby's capacity to distinguish right from wrong. This is American politics in extremis .

In 2004, the surest way to undercut John Kerry was to call him “the most liberal senator in Washington.” Conservative broadcasters with nakedly Right to Life agendas reduced to ineffectual babbling the liberals who didn't dare counter, “I am Pro-Choice, deal with it.” Nobody wanted – or wants to – state their position or come back at the interviewer with both barrels and make it personal. God forbid a liberal gets involved in “negative discourse”!

Anyone who has ever played competitive chess knows you cannot win if you are kept constantly on the defensive. Hateful as this may seem, in the short term the object of the game is not to be morally correct, but to win. In a society such as what ours is becoming – a demographic minority culture offering a global military steamroller and economic, cultural, and religious hegemony (how many Evangelicals want to convert Muslims to Christianity?) – then moral “correctness” is both ineffectual and itself immoral. It is like refusing to help slaves escape because it is wrong to steal another person's “property.” From the Hebrew Prophets through Jesus through Gandhi, King, Romero, and the Berrigans, victories were won not on the battlefield or in the legislature but by denunciation and refusal.

How refreshing it would be for a progressive American politician to say “I intend to help rebuild our country based on the Gospels, the Prophets' vision of Justice, and if need be on democratic socialism.” Instead of the hollow litany “I have a plan,” describe the plan: expose your ideas to public scrutiny. Risk it.

How refreshing it would be for a progressive American politician to say “I intend to help rebuild our country based on the Gospels, the Prophets' vision of Justice, and if need be on democratic socialism.” Instead of the hollow litany “I have a plan,” describe the plan: expose your ideas to public scrutiny. Risk it. “I Have A Plan” during the campaign sounded like subterfuge. It may have been precisely that.

The Democrats are now talking about a centrist strategy. I would rather see strategies to foster partisans, cultural guerillas. What I am writing here is in that spirit. It is part of my private Time and Talent fair. I use the one gift I have – words – in the name of action and deliberate disunity. It is my public statement of my disloyal opposition to a regime that eventually will try to send my sons to die in Iraq if I sit by wringing my hands but saying nothing.

Targeted dissent will succeed at one thing: it will split the country in half and make it ungovernable. If we are indeed polarized, let's own we are in a war for this country's soul, and aggravate the fissure that began in the 1960s: Christian Taliban vs. mainstream religious faiths, for starts. But we can't be our opponents because Republicans do it better. They have the passion to rig voting machines and invent slanders against the opposition's candidate. They have the fire that many of us have lacked for too long. They, not we, own the media. That fire deserves not respect but a battle, fought by ridicule, radio, TV, journalism, and product boycotts. I want to see Bush subjected to the same ad hominem attacks he allowed to be visited on Kerry; Bush was an ad hominem attack waiting to happen, and you don't even have to lie. But no one with knowledge seems willing to do it.

Do we still know how to upset a table covered with coins?

Kenneth Wolman writes poetry, survives by working for the military-industrial complex, and lives on the New Jersey shore, where he is a member of St. James' Episcopal Church in Long Branch, N.J. He may be reached by email at kwolman@sarnoff.com .