Don't Despair: Hope is the Chanukah and Christmas Message

There are many reasons to be upset

The violence of Nazi, fascistic, racist and anti-Semitic forces in Charlottesville and in many subsequent locations, defended by the Trump Administration, has pulled politics even further to the Right. This enables extremists in Congress to denounce the overt Nazis and hence look "responsible" while still pursuing a reactionary agenda that is de facto racist and classist in its impact. In between the moments when Trump seems threatening nuclear war, he promises to take actions that will cause a collapse of Obamacare and open the door for the embrace of the Republican alternative that will cut off care for 24 million people and also Medicare and Social Security. The Trump Administration is dismantling environmental protections, food safety, workers rights, protecting corporations from environmental restrictions and corporate taxes, and enacting more evil. They have already succeeded in the Right's primary goal: to undermine trust in government.

Oy.

All of this is deplorable, and it needs to be challenged. In order to make any serious impact, the liberal and progressive forces need to win at the ballot box, and that is unlikely until the Democratic Party, the Green Party, progressive foundations, think tanks, and tens of thousands of local activists and public opinion shapers change in important ways. We cannot win people who did not vote or voted for the Right not because they agreed with its program (many had voted for Obama in 2008 or even Sanders in the Democratic primaries) but because of their anger at liberals and progressives, until we make two serious revisions: (1) We must not only present more progressive policies to the American public, but also use a psychologically sophisticated approach to the need for respect of many who have felt dissed by the Left. This must be accompanied by an end to leftist religio-phobia, elitism and thinking we are on a higher plane than others, and an explicit and worked out vision not only of what we are against but also of the world we are for—the Caring Society: Caring for Each Other and Caring for the Earth. (2) We must stop blaming and shaming the rest of the population, assuming that if they are not yet with us it is only because they are racists, sexists, homophobes, xenophobes or stupid. Meanwhile, Cat Zavis is offering an online training so you can learn how to be an effective and psychologically astute organizer during the Trumpist years ahead. For more information, go to www.spiritualprogressives.org/training.

Is it unrealistic that the liberals and progressives could change, and influence the Right to win back an important segment of support? Do we need a miracle? Well that kind of miracle is precisely what we are celebrating on Chanukah and Christmas.

Chanukah celebrates the victory of a liberation struggle in Judea 165 B.C.E. when a tiny guerilla army of farmers and religious activists beat the powerful occupying army of the Hellenistic Syrian regime. All the "smart money," the sophisticated "realists" said that such struggle was ridiculous and had no chance of winning. Christmas celebrates the birth of a child who became the symbol through the ages to billions of people who were faced with economic and social realities of oppression and clung to the belief that this child, crucified as an adult by the Roman occupying army in Judea, would return and establish a new global reality of peace on earth.

Each of these religious traditions eventually got screwed up. The Maccabees became a corrupt Hashmona'im dynasty that would open Judea to Roman rule. The crucifixion became the excuse to vilify and murder Jews, women (supposedly witches), and people of color around the world and to justify class oppression. All true. And so even when Trump and his coterie of haters and oppressors is no longer in power, we will still have much more to do to replace our current global system of inequality and oppression.

Yet what Chanukah and Christmas celebrate is the possibility of a different kind of world. The Chanukah lights of the Menorah and the Christmas lights...