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Like most readers, I am recoiling daily from horrific news as the fabric of our democracy is torn asunder. It is as if the world we knew is being turned upside down, where the rule of law doesn’t matter and where billionaire autocrats rule with impunity.
Dedicated career and probationary federal government employees are herded up like cattle for slaughter with no due process or basis for their dismissal. People are swept up on streets like rats, detained, chained, deported to El Salvador and locked in its notorious prisons or sent to Guantanamo Bay jail cells — all without a court hearing or any due process guaranteed them by U.S. law.
More than 1,300 convicted rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, some of whom assaulted and injured law enforcement officers, are set free. Concurrently, revenge is sought to punish prosecutors who rightfully pursued their cases.
Contracted food for starving people and critical medicines to save lives are withheld from USAID.
Our environmental laws are being usurped, and the EPA is being euthanized while sensible efforts to slow down global warming are mocked and discarded. Chesapeake Bay funding has been withdrawn, some of the funds guaranteed under contracts. This comes at a pivotal time in Chesapeake restoration with a moribund governor and legislature stealing more than $100 million for land acquisitions that could help protect the bay while doing little to deal with farm pollution hindering water quality.
Then there is the president’s blaming Ukraine for starting the war with Russia and granting concessions to and embracing Putin, a despotic murderer wanted for crimes against humanity.
Our precious national wilderness treasures in Alaska and western states are being flung open to coal, oil and gas extraction under a presidential executive order declaring a National Energy Emergency.
Facts and truth do not matter in these decisions. For example, there is no energy emergency and not even an energy shortage. Beginning in 2018, the United States produced more oil than ever and more than any nation in the world for 7 straight years. We are producing more than any nation historically. The United States has been a net exporter of oil since August 2021 and is exporting more crude oil than it imports.
Since 2011, the United States has been the world’s largest producer by far of natural gas and its largest exporter. Exports tripled in the past five years. We are the biggest consumer of natural gas. Europe has become the biggest importer of our gas, enabling the continent to slash by more than half its reliance on Russian gas since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
The national emergency is global warming, wreaking havoc on our lands, water, forests and homes, roads and businesses. The fracking for oil and gas produces massive amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. President Donald Trump has disturbingly blocked methane recapture/control regulations adopted under Joe Biden. He has acted to reverse all regulatory and funded measures to combat global warming.
In my depressive state over the reversal of the rule of law and the world order and the dismantling of our democracy and environmental protections, I am looking for heroes. But I am finding none as Republicans in the Congress cower and few shining knights emerge otherwise.
Jimmy Carter, one of my real political and humanitarian heroes, has just passed. Sir David Attenborough is still doing his part on behalf of wildlife, but he is 98. So, I find myself turning toward Pope Francis, who is 88 and ailing. This remarkable man has been an inspiration to me, a ray of hope in a dangerous world.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio, an Argentinian, has been a calming moral voice holding world leaders to account over the last 12 years. He has taken up the cause of the weak, the poor and the homeless. Pope Francis has consistently emphasized interfaith dialogue, particularly with Muslims. He has travelled to Muslim-majority countries including Indonesia, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates, meeting with Muslim leaders. He has made gestures of respect for Islam, such as washing the feet of a Muslim girl during the Holy Thursday ritual. He also has reached out to Jews, embracing both a rabbi and an imam during a visit to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.
Pope Francis appealed for a ceasefire in the Middle East, calling for the release of the Israeli hostages. He noted the ever-greater suffering of Palestinians, “mostly innocent civilians,” and urged humanitarian aid. He has repeatedly condemned violence and extremism, regardless of religious affiliation, and has called for peace and understanding between different faiths.
Last month, he sharply rebuked President Trump’s policy of mass deportation of immigrants, cautioning against anti-immigrant sentiment, noting that “an authentic rule of law is verified precisely in the dignified treatment all people deserve, especially the poorest and most marginalized.”
Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, who is overseeing the mass deportation efforts, dismissed the pontiff’s criticism, calling on him to stay out of U.S. national security issues. In 2019, Pope Francis spoke out against governments that build walls to keep out migrants, reiterating his calls for a compassionate approach to migration. “Those who build walls will become prisoners of the walls they put up,” the Pope said. “This is history.”
I am still in awe of Pope Francis’ powerful 2015 environmental encyclical “On Care for Our Common Home.” The Pope took his name in honor of St. Francis of Assisi, patron saint of animals, and a symbol of love of nature. Calling for an “ecological conversion,” he outlines the necessity for all of us to take action on the protection of wildlife, forests, wetlands and our waters.
Pope Francis acknowledges that “climate change is a global problem with grave implications … representing one of the principal challenges facing humanity … there is an urgent need to develop policies so that, in the next few years, the emission of carbon dioxide and other polluting gases can be drastically reduced … substituting for fossil fuels and developing sources of renewable energy.”
He passionately calls for the protection of creation: “It is not enough to think of different species merely as ‘resources’ to be exploited, while overlooking the fact that they have value in themselves. It means protecting all creation, the beauty of the created world, as the Book of Genesis tells us and as Saint Francis of Assisi showed us. It means respecting each of God’s creatures and respecting the environment in which we live…
“Each year sees the disappearance of thousands of plant and animal species which we will never know, which our children will never see, because they have been lost forever. The great majority become extinct for reasons related to human activity. Because of us, thousands of species will no longer give glory to God by their very existence, nor convey their message to us. We have no such right.”
Indeed, we have no such right. But we have a duty to protect God’s creation and all wildlife as well as to ensure all of God’s people are treated with respect and, when in need, are cared for.
Let’s all be heroes in these frightening times and shine forth as beacons of hope.
Gerald Winegrad represented the greater Annapolis area as a Democrat in the Maryland House of Delegates and Senate for 16 years. Contact him at gwwabc@comcast.net.
