Crises within Crises

For this blog post, I originally intended to write only about COP28, the international meeting dealing with the ever-growing environmental crisis. Then, I read powerful opinion pieces by Robert Kagan and became alarmed at the expanding political crisis in the U.S.

But how can we neglect to consider the crises in Gaza, Ukraine, and other countries where warfare continues, such as in Myanmar and Sudan that get far less press coverage? In addition, there are millions of individuals in our world who are facing personal crises of various sorts.

Indeed, there are crises within crises that threaten the well-being and even the survival of individuals, nations, and the world civilization as a whole. Please think with me about these crises, beginning with the outer circle that includes the whole world and moving down to the inner circle of individuals. 

The ever-growing environmental crisis was the central concern of COP28, which met in Dubai, the largest city in the United Arab Emirates, from Nov. 30 to Dec. 12.*¹ The first COP meeting, convened in Berlin, was in 1995 and there have been yearly meetings since then.

As I have repeatedly pointed out over the last two years, the current ecological predicament is a crisis that threatens the very existence of the world as we know it (TWAWKI). Some progress was made toward alleviating the global environmental crisis at COP28, but it’s probably too little too late.*²

There will be dire consequences for most of the world’s population if drastic changes are not made soon, which is highly unlikely. This is the existential crisis in which all the other crises exist.

The wars in Ukraine and Israel/Gaza are crises for people living in those areas of the world. But there is an ongoing possibility that they will expand into larger wars. In the worst-case scenario, either of these wars could conceivably escalate into World War III.

These crises are rather localized now, but they might conceivably enlarge to rival the ecological crisis as an existential threat to TWAWKI.

Within these two larger crises is the political crisis in the United States. While this crisis is only brewing at present, there is a real and present danger of democracy being replaced in the U.S. with a form of fascism.

I had not been aware of scholar and journalist Robert Kagan until this month, but he is an editor at large for The Washington Post (WaPo) and has been a foreign policy adviser to U.S. Republican presidential candidates as well as to Democratic administrations via the Foreign Affairs Policy Board.

During the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign, Kagan (b. 1958) left the Republican Party due to the party's nomination of Donald Trump and endorsed Hillary Clinton for president.

Kagan’s Nov. 30 and Dec. 7 WaPo articles were titled “A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending,” and “The Trump dictator-ship: How to stop it.” (These are long pieces, but well worth reading and reflecting on.)

Some Republican politicians are sounding the same warning. For example, former Congresswoman Liz Cheney's new book (released Dec. 5) is titled Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning. (Hear her talk about that in this Dec. 4 interview on NPR.)

On Dec. 10, Sen. Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate in 2012, expressed the same sentiment, although more mildly, on “Meet the Press.”*³

There is a lot that can happen between now and Election Day next November, but USAmericans must be aware of the danger of losing their democracy—and minorities, the poor, and the underprivileged are the ones who would suffer most under a non-democratic government.

We common people may not be able to do much about the ecological crisis or the crisis in Ukraine or Gaza, but we do have the power to vote and to encourage our friends and neighbors to be informed and to vote accordingly.

The inner circle is the crisis of individuals who are suffering from illness, poverty, discrimination, or personal tragedies. We pray that many of these people will experience new hope during this Christmas season. Who is one such person you can help between now and December 25?

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*¹ COP stands for the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. (Click here to access the UNFCCC website.)

*² Here is the link to a helpful summary of the mixed results of COP28 on The Guardian’s Dec. 14 website.

*³ See here; Romney’s discussion of this matter begins at about 7 min. 45 sec. into the program. 

Rep. Liz Cheney: Speaking Truth to Power

My May 15 blog post was about columnist Michael Gerson, whom I called a man of integrity. This post is about Rep. Liz Cheney, whom I see as a woman of integrity. But please note: being a person of integrity doesn’t mean that such a person’s ideas/opinions are always correct.

Rep. Liz Cheney, a Woman of Integrity

The Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives met on the morning of May 12 to consider Cheney’s leadership role in their Party. The candid Wyoming Representative spoke briefly at the beginning of that meeting and led a short prayer, closing with these words:

Help us to speak the truth and remember the words of John 8:32 — “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” May our world see the power of faith.  

Rep. Liz Cheney on May 12, 2021

Less than twenty minutes later, Rep. Cheney was set free from her powerful position as the chair of the House Republican Conference (HRC) because of her unwaveringly speaking the truth about the lies still being propagated with regard to the 2020 election.

A person of integrity is one who consistently speaks and acts in harmony with their core beliefs in spite of the negative consequences that might result. In other words, a person of integrity tells the truth when it would be to their personal advantage to lie or at least to keep quiet.

Rep. Cheney is a woman of integrity because she is speaking the truth to power, denouncing the “Big Lie” about the 2020 election even though, as she knew well, continuing to do so would likely lead, as it did on May 12, to her ouster as the third ranking Republican Representative in the House.

Rep. Liz Cheney, an Opponent of the “Big Lie”

During the entire four years of the Trump presidency, Rep. Cheney was a loyal supporter of the President. She voted in line with Trump's position 93% of the time. But she consistently disagrees with his persistent position that the 2020 election was stolen and that he was actually re-elected.

To support his attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election, DJT and his allies repeatedly and falsely claimed there had been massive election fraud and that Trump had really won the election.

U.S. Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz subsequently contested the election results in the Senate. Their effort was characterized as “the big lie” by then President-elect Joe Biden—and that designation has, for good reason, been regularly used in this regard ever since.

On May 16, Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday asked Rep. Cheney if House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Rep. Elise Stefanik, Cheney’s successor as HRC chair, are “being complicit in the Trump lies.”

Cheney’s straightforward response was: “They are, and I’m not willing to do that.” (See a 40-second clip here.)

Rep. Liz Cheney, a Proponent of Problematic Ideas

Those who are not conservative Republicans find much objectionable in Rep. Cheney’s political views and public statements about political matters. To give just one example, she is sometimes called a “warmonger,” and not without reason.

A May 16 post on NewYorker.com states that “Cheney, like her father [the Vice President from 2001 to 2009], is a committed hawk and a believer in the aggressive use of American power.”

Rep. Cheney has a right to her own opinions and political views, but there is a difference between opinions and facts. We can either agree or disagree with someone’s opinions, which cannot be objectively verified to be either true or false.

But it is different with facts: they can only be acknowledged as being true or denied by lying. Rep. Cheney accepts the facts about the 2020 election and speaks that truth to the powers that oppose her.

So, in spite of her problematic ideas, Cheney’s championing the truth about the 2020 election is a mark of her integrity. And in this regard, as one D.C. newspaper headlined on May 14, “Incredibly, Liz Cheney Is on the Right Side of History.” That is because, in expanding words MLK, Jr., made famous:

The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward truth.