In the United States of today, many of us suffer from the condition known as “moral injury.” First identified as something veterans suffer from, this condition is the trauma experienced by someone in the midst of a situation where what they are asked to be part of goes so much against their conscience that it does damage to their very identity. Soldiers who served under Lieutenant Calley in Vietnam were asked to slaughter civilians in a Vietnamese village. Those who obeyed the order to murder civilians suffered the psychic trauma of “moral injury.”
Today, employees of the Federal government are being asked to do everything from firing others who have done nothing wrong, to calling farmers who bought solar panels in good faith, relying on the promise from the USDA that they would be reimbursed. Now they are being left with a debt they did not budget for, by a government that no longer operates in good faith. Farmers are going broke. And those who have to tell them that suffer from moral injury. So do you and I.
The US government represents us, and is paid by us taxpayers. What is being done is done in our name. I will never recover from the news that 8 million people, in Sudan alone, have been left to fall into starvation, because of the shuttering of USAID. Previously, and for many years, USAID was the largest aid organization on Earth. Sudan is not the only country now going hungry because of the sudden removal of this aid. US farmers suffer too, as promised crop purchases are rescinded, leaving them in the lurch again. In addition, thousands of AIDS victims are going without antiviral treatments, and thousands more are sickening and dying from malaria and other ailments that had been regularly treated by USAID. In the US, the slashing of EPA, NOAA, HHS, Meals on Wheels, and other budgets is damaging US health, and bringing hunger here too. And immigrants to our land are being unceremoniously deported, or locked up and sent to prisons for gang members in other countries, without any attempt to make sure they are gang members.
While it is true that I didn’t choose these heartless and often illegal policies or vote for those who did, nonetheless, those carrying out these policies represent me around the world. With the addition of the economic destruction brought about by our unnecessary tariffs, now raising prices for Americans and others, and especially hurting the poor, my government is moving from widely respected to widely disliked in a matter of months. Friends around the world are asking many questions. Most of all they ask why Trump would do this, especially to his allies? And why wouldn’t their American friends stop it?
In the past, whenever I felt the moral injury of injustice carried out by my own government, I worked harder for justice. I wrote to my legislators and my newspapers, marched in protest, and worked for better candidates. No,w doing these things can be a full-time job. And we find ourselves squirming through internal arguments about our age and our responsibilities. Because I’m old enough to remember marching to impeach Nixon, do I get a pass from protesting now? No. Younger people wonder whether, because they are still working full-time, they get a pass from writing to legislators? No. This is our reality today. We all have to write, we all have to protest, we all have to stand up for the planet, for our neighbors, for the poor all over the world, for everyone who is being unfairly treated by the United States. We do it for our own sake too, because answering the call to action is how we recover from moral injury. We pick up the tools at hand and get to work.
What time is it? It’s time for moral courage.
Judy Young is a retired United Methodist pastor. She convenes Gettysburg for
Gun Sense and the Adams County branch of the PA Prison Society, and is a
member of the Green Gettysburg Book Club.
Judy, I always read your writings and know that you do them with thought and care. You have served as a moral compass for our community, and I thank you.
Well said!