Young Anabaptist Radicals

Just an image in my head

March 28, 2007Current Events, International Relations, Iraq, Politics, Power

I thought I would share this little image that I can’t get out of my head. I don’t think there’s a point here, I just find it frightening. It’s my image for how things are going in the current administration.

The United States is a big car hurtling down a busy highway at about 150 mph. It is swerving a lot and hitting things but keeps barreling on. Bush is at the wheel and his buddies are in the front seat. They’re all drunk teenagers and they’re having a big party up there. The rest of the country is in the backseat. Some in the back are sleeping peacefully and some are holding on with white knuckles and have that freaked out look on their faces. They’re freaked out because they know there is a really big wall just a mile or two up the road and we’re all going to crash and burn. They also have a sneaking feeling that after all the crashing and burning. Bush and his buddies are going to get up, brush themselves off and stumble away – unscathed.

Anyway, that is my image. I’d really like to get out of the car. Anyone else?

Comments (2)

  1. TimN

    Katie, when I read your post the first thing that came to mind was a presentation that Cliff Kindy did at Goshen College in October 2002, the fall before the Iraq war would start. Cliff was in the midst of organizing “Generations for Peace” to go to Iraq in a last ditch effort to prevent the war. But Cliff was also looking beyond the war to the broader trajectory of our empire. I wrote an article for the Record at the time and quoted him:

    Kindy compared the role the church can play now in the U.S. to that which the early church played during the fall of the Roman Empire. “We are at a time of collapse of empire,” said Kindy, “Ours is beginning to collapse.” In a very different tone then Cortright, Kindy emphasized the role he believes the church needs to play in maintaining “structures of humanity” as the early church did nearly 2000 years ago.

    You pointed out in your comment on Patriotic Correctness, success for the US in Iraq right now might not be the best thing for Iraq right now. What if we ask rather success for the US in general is good for the world right now?

    Two months after his presentation at Goshen College, after he was back in Iraq, he wrote a poem called “Living in the Bullseye”. Here’s an excerpt:

    I write from the land of empires, built and collapsed – Babylon, Assyria, Alexander and Babel.

    Here God looked down on the tower. Here are the ruins of empire, the grave of Alexander.

    Dear Miriam, sister of Moses and Aaron, the one who danced as the winds held back the floods,

    The one who walked through on dry land, who watched as the waters terminated empire.

    Dear Miriam, Mary, mother of Jesus, there as the birth waters broke, the healing river.

    The one who watched, nurtured, pondered, wept as the crosswinds of salvation bucked empire and lifted humanity.

    The one who probably saw the beginning of the Body gathered, a resistance to Empire, a witness to the created humanity.

    Well, Sister, where is the saving flood? Where today the healing winds of Pentecost?

    As Empire emerges from the wellsprings of Hell, is there a Body willing to be nailed

    To the cross with its Jesus, in resistance to this powerful Legion? Does the resurrection

    Live in the scattered “least of these?”

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