The Prophet and the Profiteers

One of the most compelling aspects of my faith tradition is “the prophetic voice.”

The prophetic voice speaks strongly in the latter half of the Hebrew scriptures. At its best it holds a mirror up to unjust societies and sounds out a warning for those responsible. It is designed to make the comfortable squirm and the powerful quake.

Words are not usually minced.

This is in the tradition of William Wilberforce, The Quaker abolitionists, Hellen Keller, Desmond Tutu, Martin Luther King JR, and Oscar Romero. While I doubt it is fair to trace the entire genealogy of western progressive activism to the prophetic tradition of the Abrahamic religions, our movements often rhyme at the very least. On Sunday I sat up straight in Mass when I heard from the book of Amos.

Thus says the LORD the God of hosts:
Woe to the complacent in Zion!
Lying upon beds of ivory,
stretched comfortably on their couches,
they eat lambs taken from the flock,
and calves from the stall.
They drink wine from bowls
and anoint themselves with the best oils;
yet they are not made ill by the [degradation/impending fall of a large part of society]!
Therefore, now they shall be the first to go into exile,
and their wanton revelry shall be done away with.

Amos’s message isn’t just for the billionaires, of course. It is for all of us who live in comfort and use that comfort to isolate ourselves from the suffering of others. And I include myself. When combined with another passage (which I may share another day) about ignoring “beggars” on your doorstep, the readings stimulated hard introspection, then a family conversation and plan for action the next day at dinner.

But the Amos passage does point more squarely at some folks. These are the rich that capitulate to the oppressors because doing anything else would compromise their inordinate advantages. This is Amazon bribing Trump and Bezos censuring the Washington Post to protect government contracts. This is Zuckerberg pushing content that is ripping our society to pieces, and playing dress-up to impress Trump.

This is the major networks accepting absurd settlements for sham lawsuits from Trump and self-censoring so they can win favorable merger terms or avoid the ire of the FCC. This is law firms abandoning their commitment to the rule of law for profitable access. This is universities curtailing academic freedom to protect grant money.

We are not in France in 1942. We were not invaded, and, at least right now, we live under a regime that has fascistic elements but remains a roughly competitive democracy. Still, the core players of the Trump administration seem determined to lock us into a white-dominated right-wing autocracy where access is sold to the highest bidder.

Vichy France we are not. But we can draw a lesson from that time. If you ever wondered how in the world there were so many Vichy collaborators, people who knew better but were willing to participate in a heinous movement to preserve their hides—well, now you know.

Because we didn’t even have an invasion. These billionaires’ and big companies’ hides are not on the line.

Just a portion of their fortune.

Their gleeful collaboration tells us exactly who they are.

Woe. Woe to them indeed.