[Dialogue] Sitzer in perspective

Wed Mar 12 12:12:11 EDT 2008

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 From: Rabbi_Lerner at tikkun.org
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note from Rabbi Michael Lerner  

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Elliot Spitzer and America's Ethical  Perversity
by Rabbi Michael Lerner

The cross-the-political-spectrum attacks on Elliot  Spitzer and the intensity 
of the demands that he resign his office  show just how far the  Right-wing 
sexual moralizing has been  able to trump any other kind of ethical reasoning 
in American  society.

Going to a prostitute is legal in  some states and some countries around the 
world, and is often the  very arrangement that saves families from splitting 
up whose  sexual energies have diminished but whose love is intact. It's not  
uncommon for men (and now increasingly women as well) who have  achieved great 
power in our society by adopting an outer show of  ruthless pursuit of power 
and influence (even, as in Spitzer's  case, if the power is aimed at pursuing 
laudable ends) to feel a  deep  emptiness and loneliness that is not addressed 
by  friends or spouse, and hence to seek some kind of outside  connection no 
matter how superficial that is not bound by previous  rules and roles. 
Nevertheless, I and many others in the religious  and spiritual world oppose that 
practice when it involves adultery  or prostitution, because it depends on the 
objectification of  another human being, so that sex is disconnected in ways that 
it  should not be from a significant encounter with the spirit of God  in the 
other or a deep recognition that is the only real way to  overcome 
existential or situational alienation. 

Moreover, the trade in women for sexual purposes has  frequently led to rape 
and abuse and the kidnapping of young women  who are sold into sexual slavery. 
All of these outrageous  practices are abhorrent and should be challenged. 
The flaunting of  sexuality in the media, and the implicit message that the only 
 real satisfaction comes from having the most physically attractive  people 
as sexual partners, not only generates huge dissatisfaction  even as it allows 
corporate advertise to become predators  manipulating our personal sense of 
inadequacy to sell their  products, but also generates desires that feed the 
sexual trade in  women. Given this larger social context, until sexual 
satisfaction  is so broadly available in our society that no one has to pay for  it and 
so deeply tied to love that no one is objectified in the  process, this kind 
of exploitation of women and degradation of sex  is likely to continue. All of 
these practices foster the sexual  predators of the contemporary world. 

So  Elliot Spitzer deserves to be critiqued and ought to be doing deep  
atonement for what he did.  His previous moral arrogance and  willingness when he 
had power to do so to prosecute others for  their participation in creating 
prostitution rings makes him an  easy target. We, in turn, might practice the 
forgiveness that our  religious and spiritual traditions preach, particularly 
those of  us who have been willing to honeslty face how flawed we ourselves  are, 
and how at times we ourselves fail to embody in our actual  practice with 
others the values that we publicly espouse. Humility  and compassion are also 
part of the path of a spiritual  progressive. 

But the  intensity of the critique of the N.Y. governor,  tied with the 
demand that he resign, shows more about American  society's ethical perversity than 
about Spitzer. 

The President of the U.S. and the Vice President,  working in concert with 
several other high ranking officers of our  government, lied and distorted to 
get us involved in a war that  has led to the death of over a million Iraqis, 
the displacement of  3 million more, the death of 4,000 Americans and the 
wounding of  tens of thousands more. After token opposition in Congress, our  
elected representatives have overwhelmingly passed budgets funding  this war, rather 
than refuse to fund any military projects until  the President stopped the 
war and withdrew the troops.

Meanwhile, our government has overtly engaged in  torture, wiretapping of our 
phones, and violation of our human  rights and the rights of people around 
the world. Senator Diane  Feinstein and Senator Charles Schumer votes to confirm 
as Attonrey  General a right-wing judge who refused to repudiate these 
crimes.  

The U.S. government has rejected every  attempt to implement the Kyoto 
environmental agreements or to work  out new agreements sufficiently strong to 
reverse environmental  destruction that is certain to lead to new levels of 
flooding  particularly in several poor countries around the world. The  consequence: 
tens of millions of deaths. 

The  Clinton Administration pushed, along with corporate support, a set  of 
trade agreements that have devastated the farmers of many  developing 
countries, forcing many off their farms and into city  slums where their daughters and 
sons are often sold into sexual  slavery.  The global economic system we have 
fostered has led  to increasing gaps between the rich and the poor, so that 
over one  out of every three people on the planet lives on less than $2 a  day, 
1.5 billion live on less than one dollar a day, and over  15,000 children die 
every day from malnutrition-related diseases  and inadequate availability of 
medicine that is hoarded by the  rich countries who can afford the prices made 
to ensure huge  profits to the pharmaceutical industry. 

Health  insurance companies and private medical profiteers are doing all  
they can to ensure that there will be no health care for tens of  millions of 
Americans, unless that is provided in ways that  guarantee corporate 
super-profits and thereby guarantee that the  cost of health care paid through taxes will 
be huge and create  anger at all government social welfare and well-being 
programs,  leading to their likely de-funding. 
People in the US have  faced severe economic crises on a regional and soon on 
a national  level because corporations move their centers of production to  
countries in Asia where they can exploit workers with less  government or union 
interference and where they can destroy the  environment with less societal 
restraints. Wild to achieve greater  profits, corporations and the rich have 
managed to support  politicians who lower the taxes on the rich, in the process  
bankrupting the public sector or severely reducing its ability to  provide 
enough funds for quality education, health care,  libraries, public 
transportation, and social welfare. 

That there is no outcry for these government officials  and corporate leaders 
to resign immediately or be impeached, that  there is no moral outrage at the 
entire system that produces this  impact, is America's ethical perversity. 
Instead, the only crime  against humanity that the media takes seriously and the 
 politicians fear is being exposed for personal sexual immorality.  While 
everyone basks in their own self-righteous demands on  Spitzer, we all allow 
media and elected officials to fundamentally  distort our ethical vision and play 
out our morality on the  smallest of possible stages while ignoring the global 
and personal  consequences of our larger ethical failures.

Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun magazine  www.tikkun.org 
<http://www.tikkun.org> , Chair of the  Network of Spiritual Progressives 
www.spiritualprogressives.org  <http://www.spiritualprogressives.org> ,  rabbi of Beyt  
Tikkun synagogue-without-walls in San Francisco and Berkeley, and  author of The 
Left Hand of God. He welcomes comments at  RabbiLerner at tiikkun.org

If you agree  with this perspective, call your local media and ask that it be 
 presented alongside the mainstream views. And help us continue to  provide 
alternative analyses by joining the Network of Spiritual  Progressives 
(www.spiritualprogressives.org) and urging your  friends to do so as well!   

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