The Shining Light on the Hill

According to an article in the Washington Post, DC is sinking into the swamp from which it once arouse. I confess I am neither alarmed nor caught in bitter dismay. As far as I am concerned, symbolically if not in reality, the sinking of DC symbolizes the hypocrisy and disdain for the truth that so characterizes who we are and what we have become. This sinking of our nation’s capital, the self-proclaimed vaunted shining light that calls the world to embrace the pinnacle of moral behavior, marks the apocalypse of our self-proclaimed impeachable moral fabric. Perhaps as the illusion of the light on the hill sinks into the quagmire of the swamp, we will begin to see what we refuse to see. As Koestler once said, lies often do serve history better than the truth.

After all, we have never signed the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights because we have convinced ourselves that there isn’t a need for us to do so. Yet, we must remind ourselves that black lives matter, that sexual violence against women should be intolerable, that gay or straight our choice of sexual expression should not matter…

Even when we look at those who govern us, those who are quick to point to governmental corruption in other countries, we choose not to see what is before our eyes — so clearly present that it is almost as though those who betray us with their corruption flaunt what they do and have done. We need only look at Biden, McConnell, Manchin. Sinema, and so many others. In the case of both Biden and McConnell, they entered Congress from a blue-collar background. McConnell is reputed to be worth over $400 million, and Biden, I am sure, who owns multiple homes no mere middle class or blue-collar family could ever dream of owning, couldn’t be worth much less.

Riddle me this, Batman, how, on “the meager salary” they are paid, has it been possible for them — and others — to amass this wealth? And then, of course, we have that paragon of virtue, Clarence Thomas, who has sold justice to enhance the lifestyle to which he believes he is entitled.

But, this hypocrisy and self-delusion extend well past the corruption of our own government. They extend to our view of the world and the indignation we feel entitled to with respect to the “border crisis” — Fox New’s favorite topic when not attacking Hunter Biden for doing what McConnell has done since he arrived in the Senate.

Here are the facts:

1. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Venezuela was the top oil producer in the world, and if what I have read is correct, there is more oil in the ground in that country than anywhere else in the world.
2. As Time Magazine reminded us in 2019, since the 1950s, the US has sided with oppressive governments in order to “preserve the balance of power” in Central and South America — in an attempt to keep the then Soviet Russia from gaining a toe hold there.
3. In 1941, Isaías Medina Angarita, who had been a general in the Venezuelan army, became president. During his tenure the enactment of the Hydrocarbons Law of 1943 began the process of nationalizing the oil supply. Under this law, the government took 50% of profits derived from the sale of oil. Nationalization was completed in 1976.
4. Nationalization had little effect on the ability of American companies to develop and profit from Venezuelan oil reserves. Heavy oil projects in the Orinoco Petroleum Belt continued to be operated by ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, and Chevron.
5. Profits from oil were used — in theory at least — by the government to fund social programs.
6. Despite growing tensions between the US and Venezuela, despite the oil embargo of 1973 which nearly destroyed the economy of the US and other industrialized nations which depended on cheap and plentiful oil, production continued to increase until 2012, by which time “96% of the country’s exports and nearly half of its fiscal revenue” relied on oil production.
7. Citing human rights violations, beginning in 2014, the US and other countries began increasing sanctions which in theory were designed to force the government to end oppression.

We know what happened — the economy has collapsed and there is little hope for improvement. To be fair, the collapse of the Venezuelan economy is not totally the result of sanctions levied by the US and other countries. Some of the responsibility rests with several generations of the Venezuelan government and its own social and political decisions and policies.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. It didn’t have to be this way. We could have done something, and we did not. We profess to be the shining light on the hill, and we chose to be denizans of the swamp. We proudly proclaim that this is a Christian Nation, despite the Founder’s insistence that we be a religiously free nation, and yet we place politics over human compassion, oil over food, capitalism over any other form of life. The very swamp that is rising up to consume our capital did this. Poetic justice.

So, let me ask you a question: Who caused the border crisis? Or, at the very least, whose behavior contributed significantly to the crisis? And now, who is panicking as “the great unwashed horde” seeks refuge from life without hope and without a future by coming to that shining light on the hill? The answer to all these questions is one and the same. Us. We did. We continue to do it everyday.

The end of this crisis is not a wall. It is not sending troops to the border. It is not more cruelty. It can only be found in being both human and humane. What does it say in that document we claim as our absolute truth? “I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home. I was naked, and you gave me clothing. I was sick, and you cared for me. I was in prison, and you visited me.”

I guess we just didn’t read that part, or, if we did, we preferred the swamp to the shining light on the hill.