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Friends United Meeting |
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March 1999
The American Sin
Johan Maurer
Last December, during a visit to
Nebraska, I found myself dealing
with three crises simultaneously. The U.S. House of Representatives impeached their country's President. The same country sent a rain of missiles and bombs on Iraq. And Nebraska was getting ready to execute the adopted son of Nebraska Yearly Meeting Friends Don and Barbara Reeves.
Was there any connection between these crises? I think so. First of all, they all reflect human sin. Clinton would not be in trouble if he had not misbehaved and lied. Congress's response, in turn, was a festival of sanctimony. In Iraq, the U.S. and Britain, who in an earlier era had helped arm the Iraqi leader, now found it necessary to kill his pawns in order not to lose "credibility," that psychic commodity which is more precious than life itself (as long as it is someone else's life). And an intoxicated Randy Reeves himself started the chain of events leading to possible execution, on the day he murdered two women in the Friends Meetinghouse in Lincoln. Since then, the state's "obsession" with the death penalty (the word used by Kenneth Mesner, father of one of the victims) has been reflected in inadequate jury instructions, a flawed sentencing process, and a stony refusal by state officials even to consider clemency. (Less than 45 hours before the execution time on January 14, a reprieve was granted by the Nebraska Supreme Court to consider new constitutional issues.)
To me, there is a peculiarly American twist to the ways these sad stories are unfolding: our national weakness for satisfyingly quick results. President Clinton's misbehavior is an example of instant gratification made available by the tempting conveniences of power. Clinton seemed unable to assess these gratifications against the claims of morality, or even against the danger to his reputation and that of his office. The danger was made acute by the fact that (and Clinton certainly knew this) he was being watched closely by a whole industry of conservative Clinton-haters, equipped with high finances and media technology. Their intense dislike of the President certainly fueled the unseemly rush to publicize, at taxpayers' expense, every sleazy detail of the President's foolishness. This campaign to expose, embarrass, punish at all costs, seems another example of unreflective impatience, instant gratification, overwhelming any sense of proportion.
In the Reeves case, eighteen-plus years of court process to decide the fate of the defendant hardly seems "instant." However, it is the insistence of the state on blood vengeance (a quick-fix gratification which seems unrelated to officials' stated desire to "protect" Nebraskans) which triggers this drawn-out process. A prison term would have protected Nebraskans without involving them in corporate killing and without costing taxpayers millions of dollars in appeal expenses.
As for Iraq, nothing is more outrageously "quick-fix" than to starve and blast a country whose renegade leader has succeeded in embarrassing his impatient enemies over and over. Pride and adrenalin are always a lethal mixture-leading to a sort of national "high" which can hide the reality of total ineffectiveness. But who cares for effectiveness when we can feel powerful and the corpses are thousands of miles away? A different sort of calculation is needed: Americans must stop shielding Iraq's neighbors from their own responsibilities to deal with their regional troublemaker, and consider our own relations with the Arab world on a scale of decades and generations, not just the time it takes a carrier task force to get to the Mediterranean; and Christians and Muslims must seek to outdo one another in words and deeds of compassion rather than violence.
W. H. Auden said, "Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience.
Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise, because of impatience
we cannot return." But maybe if we were not so impatient to send
others to hell, God might grant us the grace to look heavenwards again.
Johan Maurer is general secretary of Friends United Meeting and editor of Quaker Life.
Copyright (c) 1999 Friends United Meeting