Irony within a Sea of God Knows What

Looking at the calendar, I am reminded that today is the 37th anniversary of Robert Kennedy's assassination. I have no idea, had he lived, if he would have somehow wrestled the Democratic nomination from Hubert Humprhey or, given that, if he could have beaten Richard Nixon for the Presidency. The dynamics of that general election would have been very different than what actually happened: of that I am quite certain, whatever the final outcome. I also believe that if he had become President, Kennedy would have focused on poverty with a renewed intensity, brought an end to our involvement in the Vietnam War without five more years of bloodshed and managed to defeat Ronald Reagan in 1972 (bringing an end to the "Conservative movement" and saving us from the Religious Right's ursurpation of power through the choice of George W. Bush. In any case, Kennedy died 37 years ago tomorrow and his loss saddens me. Given the latest example of yet another case of political corruption (from Shelby County, Tennessee primarily), I find this date especially ironic.
In the last twenty years or so, I have developed a love-disdain relationship with "politics" and its process. In my early 20s, I was full of passion, tactlessnesss and what Reinhold Niebuhr might call a "Child of Light" idealism. I wanted, in short, to make the world a better place to live and those feelings still resonate within me. It's a large part of why I went into theological work, believing (as I still do) that the Church should be at the forefront of efforts to ease suffering, feed the hungry and clothe the naked. In the intervening years between (more or less) 1984 and today, however, I have become skeptical and bascially cynical about what "politics," even if it is working for benefit of the many, can actually accomplish. I am both saddened and not surprised by the news from my home state of Tennessee. Of course, I thought, politics lends itself to greed and avarice: what else is new? I also wondered if the current administration, which happens to be of a different political party than most of those arrrested, had something to do with setting up the sting operation originally and if the timing of those arrests was not coincidental to the announcement of Harold Ford, Jr.,'s campaign for the Senate. I do not know, of course, but I wonder. Naturally, if Democrats were in power, we would in some way try to pull those stunts as well, which makes my sense of ennui that much stronger.
I have become something, in other words, of a Christian nihilist in the last several years. Melville's despair powerfully attracts me, as does that of Dreiser and O'Neill. At the same time, however, I cannot relinquish the faith through whose symbols I can access some fleeting sense of meaning. My younger colleagues at SIU seem to have trouble understanding my reliance upon faith, which frustrates me. To paraphrase Bill Clinton, "I feel their freedom," but wonder if they're as free as some of them might think they are. I doubt it. Still, I believe and even if Bob Schieffer and CBS were to have been at the tomb on the first Easter and filmed that God among us was still inside, dead on the ground I would nonetheless proclaim the symbol of resurrection. Despairing hope? Despairing muted hope? Perhaps....