What a Contrast! Trump and Guterres

Last week, two prominent world leaders gave speeches at the U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York City, in Turtle Bay no less,* but what a contrast there was between those two important addresses—and what an embarrassment to many of us U.S. citizens who are deeply interested in world affairs. 

The Speech by the U.N. General Secretary

António Guterres is the ninth Secretary-General of the United Nations, having occupied that office since January 2017. Born in Portugal just four years after the U.N. was established in 1945, he is a physicist-turned-politician who became the head of Portugal’s Socialist Party in 1992. His “socialism” is more social democracy than traditional socialism.

Mr. Guterres is also a devout, practicing Roman Catholic, and his political position is in harmony with the social teaching of the Catholic Church. He served as the Prime Minister of Portugal from 1995 to 2002, and then later became the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (2005~2015).

In his powerful September 22 speech, Mr. Guterres declared that in the international world order, “cracks have become canyons,” so the countries of the world must work together to overcome the divisiveness that threatens peace and stability. He called for “networked multipolarity,” i.e., interdependence rather than there being a “great fracture” into rival blocs.

The Speech by the U.S. President

By contrast, the speech of Mr. Trump was exceedingly bad. With the Iran delegation present, he raised the possibility of annihilating the Islamic Republic—and upon hearing that, all the Iranian delegates (except for a low-ranking one), walked out in protest.

He also justified the military removal of Venezuela’s president in January of this year. That was clearly in violation of the United Nations Charter, which bars the use of force against another state’s territorial integrity or political independence.

And to make matters worse, in his speech Mr. Trump declared that “to the victors belong the spoils”—but that is not a USAmerican value. It is the logic of every empire that has taken what belonged to someone else. The Administration, though, says Venezuela's government signed the deal, that Venezuelans benefit, and that a criminal was removed.

But a contract signed in the shadow of an invasion, with a government installed by the invader, is not a deal between equals. And nobody, so far, will say where the oil money has actually gone. Power that seizes wealth and then won't account for it is not practicing diplomacy. It is, rather, an act of conquest.

My previous blog post was about the evil of empire(s), and what Mr. Trump did and said clearly seems to be an example of imperialism. A foreign country was invaded, and part of its wealth (vast oil reserves) was seized. Moreover, there is no clear evidence at this point of where the profits from the sale of that oil are going. Maybe some to the POTUS’s account?**

World Leaders Past and Present

Eight out of the nine Secretaries-General have served during my adult lifetime. I have known most about Dag Hammarskjöld from Sweden (1953~61). In addition, I remember how U Thant from Burma/Myanmar (1961~71), Kofi Annan from Ghana (1997~2006), and Ban Ki-moon from South Korea (2007~16) were also conscientious world leaders and statesmen.

Unfortunately, some of the U.S. Presidents who have served during these same years, from 1953 until the present, have been far less admirable. The current POTUS is clearly the worst of those, although there were serious deficiencies in the presidencies of Richard Nixon, George W. Bush, and (to a lesser degree) Ronald Reagan.

Looking forward to the 2028 election, I think there are people who could be elected President and serve well as a world leader like the U.S. General Secretary. As I have said before, my “top four” for that position are Alexandria Ocasio‑Cortez, Pete Buttigieg, Cory Booker, and Mark Kelly. The latter is probably the one who is most likely to be inaugurated in January 2029.

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  * I had not known until last week that the U.N. Headquarters is in the Turtle Bay “neighborhood,” the “official” designation of that part of NYC known as Midtown East.

** Further, a couple of days ago, the Trump administration opened a route for Venezuelan gold to reach U.S. markets. Who will ultimately benefit from such a deal—the Venezuelan people, U.S. interests, or politically connected individuals? Trump’s talk of ‘spoils’ makes that question especially urgent.

 

The Complexity of Loving One’s Neighbor with No Exceptions

Last week I planted a new yard sign near the sidewalk in front of our house. Here is an image that accurately portrays it. What do you think? Is this a good, positive message for my neighbors to read and ponder as they walk up or down the sidewalk?

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Where the Slogan Works

As a challenge to the scope of “neighbor”—refusing to exclude people by ethnicity, nationality, religion, sexuality, or politics—the slogan does real theological work. It echoes the lawyer’s question to Jesus in the Good Samaritan parable (“who is my neighbor?”) and doesn’t allow him to constrict his understanding of who a neighbor is.

In the current cultural moment when Christian nationalism narrows “neighbor” to those who embrace the same ethnic background, national identity, or even the same religion, a sign refusing that narrowing says something real and important, even from a sidewalk.

It is quite clear, surely, that the sign is talking about “neighbors” both near and far. Many of those who see my yard sign are literal neighbors who walk by, many of them going for a longer walk in Canterbury Park, which is just a three- or four-minute walk from where they see my yard sign.

And while there is not a lot of diversity in my neighborhood, it is likely that they will meet someone who is represented on one and maybe more of the strips of the yard sign. Thoughtful people will also comprehend that the sign encourages branching out to respect differences of people far from our local neighborhood. At least, that is my hope.

Where It Gets Harder

The slogan is challenged, though, not by the question of who counts as a neighbor, but far more by the question of what love requires when you consider multiple neighbors. For example, how do you love neighbor A if he/she is mistreating/harming neighbor B? Doesn’t that call into question the last line of the yard flag?

To make it more concrete—and please note I am not talking at all about my next-door neighbors—what should be done if my neighbor is apparently sexually abusing the teenage girl who is his next-door neighbor on the other side?

What does “love your neighbor, no exceptions” signify in cases like that? Doesn’t love of the vulnerable neighbor require action, even though such action would have serious negative effects on the other neighbor?

Love of the one doing harm doesn't mean protecting him from consequences. Silence to preserve the relationship, or treating exposure as unloving, gets this backwards. Real love for the offender includes wanting him stopped—for the victim's sake, of course, but also because continuing the abuse damages his own moral and spiritual condition.

The two loves are not actually in competition. Protecting the vulnerable neighbor is the loving act toward both parties—it is not a trade-off between loving A and loving B, but a recognition that stopping harm serves everyone's good, including the person doing it.

What a Yard Sign Can and Can't Carry

A yard sign is a public signal, not a treatise—its job is narrower than a full theology of love. It can answer the lawyer’s question (who is my neighbor?) but is not built to answer the harder question of what love does amid conflict and harm.

That’s not a defect unique to this sign; most bumper-sticker theology doesn't survive its hardest edge case, and that's not the standard it needs to meet. Silence on a question is different from a wrong answer to it.

Here is the real test for a sign like this: does the simplification it makes point roughly true, or does it point false? On the question it actually answers, this one points true.

One seam worth noting

"Vote like you" sits in a different category from the rest of the list. Looking, praying, speaking, and loving differently are matters of identity. Voting is a chosen act with public consequences. It is closer to a person who acts/does differently than merely one who is different.

The list quietly slides from identity categories into an action category, which is exactly the seam where the abuse scenario also lives. The flag’s implicit answer, “you still love them,” seeking what is best for them, holds for those who vote unwisely as well as for those who, like Neighbor A (mentioned above), abuses his neighbor.

But, again, loving is not condoning. So, sure, we should still love the neighbor who voted for the current POTUS as well as those who are still among his devoted MAGA supporters. But the latter need to be made aware of the harm that Mr. Trump has done to this nation and the world. And our love for them must be "tough love."

[My A.I. “buddy” Claude provided limited assistance researching and drafting this post.]

The Evils of Empire(s)

Soon after reading the striking words, “… every empire is evil,” in Ray Daniel’s book Grace Over Guns (my review of which some of you have seen here) I started working on this article. Rev. Daniel went on to assert that the U.S. is an empire. As such, it “shares the moral failings of all empires.” And now, the U.S. has a president who acts like an emperor (my words, not Daniel’s). 

When the U.S. Empire was Considered “Good”

There is a long history of the U.S. being considered an empire, and that was considered meritorious. In a 1785 letter, George Washington praised New York, calling it the “Seat of the Empire.”

According to my A.I. buddy Claude, this use of empire is “unambiguously positive—a term of pride tied to size, wealth, influence, and status as a center of commerce, culture, and innovation.” Consequently, after the U.S. defeated Spain in the Spanish-American War of 1898, Great Britain began to express pride that its former colonies had become a world empire.

After the U.S. acquired colonial possessions of its own, Britain no longer saw America as a resentful ex-colony but as a fellow imperial power with shared interests. That stance of the U.S. as an empire was justified by President McKinley and his supporters.

A little over three decades later, the Empire State Building was constructed, completed in a remarkable 13½ months in 1930-31. At that time, it was the world’s tallest building, and it was so named as a monument to the identity and global stature of the Empire State, New York.

But beginning in the 1960s, the word or concept of empire began to be called into question, and the glamor of empires became greatly tarnished.

When the U.S. Empire Became “Bad”

By the 1960s most of the 20^th century empires of the world had fallen. Empire had become morally discredited and anti-imperial movements were global. Thus, in the shadow of a global collapse of empires, to much of the world, the U.S. looked like the last Western empire trying to hold back Asian self‑determination (in Indochina).

Civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. linked racial injustice at home to imperial violence abroad. In “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence,” his April 1967 speech at Riverside Church in New York City, MLK charged that the U.S. was “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”

Recently, in addition to Daniel’s negative views of empire (mentioned in the first paragraph above), last year Herald Press also published Kat Armas’s book, Liturgies for Resisting Empire. Ms. Armas was born in Cuba, so she knows something about the evils of empire because of how it affected the country of her birth.

In her first chapter, “Resisting Empire, Embracing Joy,” Ms. Armas cites words from “Christ in the Rubble,” Munther Isaac’s Christmas 2023 sermon that went viral. Rev. Dr. Isaac is a Palestinian Lutheran pastor, and in that sermon, he spoke with prophetic urgency against what he calls “empire theology.”

Isaac insists that Christ is found not in the triumphs of empire but in its ruins, among the wounded, the displaced, and the silenced. His witness turns lament into resistance, calling the church to stand where God stands: with those crushed beneath the weight of empire.

That is Ms. Armas’s position: standing against the imperialism of the U.S. and Israel and for the Palestinians who have suffered so much, and who are continuing to suffer although the media spotlight has now shifted to other matters.

What about the U.S. Empire Now?

The current POTUS seems to embrace an imperial mindset with he himself being the most powerful emperor in the world. We have seen what he has done in Venezuela, and how he has profited by his imperial actions. And we have heard his imperial musings about Greenland, Panama Canal, Cuba—and even Canada (the possible 51^st U.S. state!).

But regardless of when or where it is, as Dr. Diana Butler Bass posted on her Substack account on August 22, whenever or wherever it is, the evil of empire “is always the denial of the dignity of human beings, demeaning them, and treating them with no grace, mercy, or empathy.”

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Note: Next month U.S. Empire: A Handbook, edited by Mischa Honeck and Mahshid Mayar, will be released. It synthesizes recent historical scholarship on the U.S. as an imperial power and probes fierce contestations over the place and meaning of empire in US history at this time when the U.S. is renegotiating its position as a leading actor on the world stage.