I have a new essay up on my Substack today, about Joe Biden and his abuse of the pardon power this week. Here is a little preview:

I often have a hard time reconciling my own personal dislike of hypocrisy, with the way the voting public at large seems to shrug off hypocrisy, especially is the hypocrite is of the right political persuasion. I’ve long ago come to accept that hypocrisy is one of the costs of doing politics in a democracy; people are flawed and mistake-prone, we all change our minds all the time for a variety of reasons (some of them not very good), and there are bigger fish to fry than playing “gotcha!” with your garden-variety politician over some statement that was made years ago. I personally find that hypocrisy gets my blood boiling in a way other things don’t, but my own personal pet peeves, I must remind myself, do not define American politics. Most people just don’t find hypocrisy to be a deal breaker.

In some cases, though, I really do think we should take hypocrisy more seriously, especially as a person of the left who wants the left and liberals and progressives to take democracy, and its norms, much more seriously. (link to democracy piece here). President Biden’s blanket pardon of his son Hunter last week, and his hundreds of blanket and preemptive pardons earlier this week, is one of those times, especially considering the looming lawlessness and norm-busting of the second Trump administration we are just six short weeks away from. The Biden pardon is a test case for who is committed to democracy, and who is merely focused on winning this week’s political fight on Facebook or cable news. Hypocrisy matters when it means abandoning democratic norms.

Here’s the key point I’m trying to make today: Biden’s pardon of his son makes it impossible to argue from a place of integrity against Donald Trump’s abuses of things like the pardon power when he takes office. The point I’m not trying to make, crucially, is that condemning Biden’s actions here will somehow magically stop Trump from abusing the pardon. I am aware that Trump is going to do what he is going to do, regardless of Biden’s actions here. But, Biden’s use of the pardon power over the past weeks has displayed a shocking level of hypocrisy, and this instance of hypocrisy does more than just tarnish Biden’s integrity; it puts our democracy further at risk.

Click here to read more, and if you haven’t already, subscribe to my Substack for longer, more thoughtful essays on a variety of topics!

There is a very real danger of our drifting into an attitude of contempt for humanity. We know quite well that we have no right to do so, and that it would lead us into the most sterile relation to our fellow-man. The following thoughts may keep us from such a temptation. It means that we at once fall into the worst blunders of our opponents. The man who despises another will never be able to make anything of him. Nothing that we despise in the other man is entirely absent from ourselves. We often expect from others more than we are willing to do ourselves. Why have we hitherto thought so intemperately about man and his frailty and temptability? We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer. The only profitable relationship to others – and especially to our weaker brethren – is one of love, and that means the will to hold fellowship with them. God himself did not despise humanity, but became man for men’s sake.”

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “After Ten Years”, from Letters and Papers from Prison

I originally posted this on my personal Facebook page yesterday.

One of the unexpected blessings of the job I have at Fellowship Congregational UCC is the chance to interact fairly often with a wide range of homeless people who either live in Tulsa, or are passing through. It seems FCUCC has a reputation amongst people on our streets here as a place one can go for a bite to eat, a warm coat or new pair socks, and a place to rest and maybe get out of the rain or the heat. This reputation is down to the leadership of our church, and their commitment to being a beacon of hope and mercy in a harsh and unmerciful world. For anyone who knocks on our doors during the day, we freely give out bags of nonperishable foods, we open our clothes closet, we offer a smile and a kind word and a listening ear. Usually Scott or Chris handle these interactions, but at times I’ve done so, and I’m always struck by how much these interactions are an emotional blessing for me as much as they are a material one for these souls who find themselves in circumstances of life I can scarcely imagine.

This isn’t a post to brag or preen about how good or holy we are at FCUCC. No, it’s an acknowledgement by me that I, and those in this place I work, have a decent numbers of interactions with homeless folks of all varieties. Almost none of those people are saints, no more so than the people in our pews or the folks you pass in the grocery store. Some are, in fact, addicted to one (or more) of a variety of substances. Some of those folks also attend one of the AA or NA groups we host. Many do not. Some do give off a air of danger, or perhaps just instability, which often deters me from engaging in more of these interactions than I do, since most days I have my four year old with me and I don’t want to expose him to even the tiniest chance of harm. Folks who live on the streets have hard, hard lives, sometimes of their own making, but more often, from a fatal combination of their choices, their psychological predispositions, and the way those things intersect with our often uncaring, soulless, profit-driven capitalist culture and economy. Each one of these folks is a walking tragedy, who experienced a hardship or situation in their life that they have never been able to recover from. All of them are reminders that, but for a small few flaps of a butterfly wings here or there, we could be them.

What none of them are is worthy of disrespect, of prejudice, of dehumanization, of hate, of carrying the weight of the rest of our own fears and misconceptions and anger. Most certainly, none of them deserve to be denigrated by a piece of shit billionaire who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth that he is convinced he put there himself and who is so self-obsessed he can’t even begin to imagine what life must be like for the other 99%, much less for that sliver of the population who live on the streets thanks to the depredations and injustices of the same system that randomly plopped him down on top of it.

Folks on the political right like to use the power of the state to make life harder for homeless people, passing laws that require permits for panhandling, or that make it illegal for service organizations to hand out meals, or restrict where people can rest at night. They do all this, while also running around mouthing off about what good Christians they are. But here’s the thing: those two things are not compatible. You cannot use the coercive power of the state to make life harder for vulnerable people if you are really, authentically following the words of Jesus. You cannot badmouth homeless people, and be living in a spirit of love and grace towards others. Elon Musk may not be a Christian, but the people who voted for the candidate he bankrolled and most other elected members of the Republican Party are, or at least claim to be. And when I see stuff like this, when I see them working to make life more difficult for the vulnerable, I can only think of the words of Jesus himself: “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

It is in the face of the homeless addict, of the teen kicked out of their parent’s house, of the child whose mom works two jobs and still can’t make enough to afford rent, of the itinerant woman who fled an abusive husband, of the schizophrenic man who lost his job and his family and his health care because of the way his mental illness manifests itself – it is in these faces that we most clearly see Jesus, if we care to look.