PHILIP BERRIGAN HAD IT RIGHT

And We Are Living it Right Now

by

Ruth Ann Angus

​

Stupendous lunacy. That’s what Philip Berrigan said while sitting in a North Carolina jail cell with peace activist John Dear after they participated in a Plowshares protest of nuclear weapons at the Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in 1993.

 

I was reading Dear’s book “Peace Behind Bars.” A journal of his time in the same jail along with Berrigan, Bruce Friedrich, and Lynn Fredriksson where Dear wrote what Berrigan said about the United States’ love affair with nuclear weapons.

 

 Stupendous lunacy – it is what we are living through now with the Trump administration. This lunacy grows with each passing day until it becomes impossible to make any sense of it at all.

 

A good example came clear to me recently when I visited the elementary school in my town to discuss with the principal what I could offer to the kids who formed a peacebuilder club and with whom I had been volunteering doing programs encouraging them regarding how to handle bullying, what compassion means, and why diversity is important. After two years of successful projects with these young people who originally told me they “wanted to change the world,” I was gearing up for the upcoming school year. Much to my dismay, I was told I can no longer offer these topics because the school is afraid of being sued by Donald Trump. Outrageous!

 

School districts are struggling with cuts in funding. With five billion dollars in education funding frozen, educational institutions that have long relied on federal assistance went scrambling for donations and now at the eleventh hour and the new school year about to begin, this administration finally turns around and releases funds. What kind of control is this? Is it just to drive the public crazy? I must admit, I am missing the point.

 

Every day I read online of a variety of lawsuits brought against Trump which for a time halts advancement of programs and projects that were in place to help people who struggle to meet their family’s needs. While some of this could be just punishment for a populace that is captured in consumerism and always looking to purchase the next marvelous gadget, the grinding to a halt of medical assistance for the poor, the cuts to food programs like SNAP, the deployment of 20,000 troops across the country without the authorization from Congress, cuts to the weather service that issue disaster warnings, the idiotic rewording of signs at national parks, and the halting to renewable energy programs, I watch the list go on and on.

 

With tariffs on one day, then off the next, and firing of officials just because he doesn’t like the statistics, it is obvious that this man suffers great mental and emotional pain. I wish I could summon up some compassion, but my patience is at an end. The threat of curtailing free speech and the right to dissent are more than we should put up with. Yet, no matter how much we protest, no matter how much we assail our legislative representatives who seem impossible to manage this, this guy gets away with all of it. So far, the score is Trump 100, People Zero.

 

The list is endless. The daily assault to my senses overwhelming. I realize that I do not live in the United States of America, I live in the United States of Absurdity. Stupendous lunacy indeed! Phil Berrigan had it right.