President George W. Bush walks through graduating seniors as he enters Paladin Stadium to give the commencement address to the Class of 2008 at Furman University in Greenville, SC.

At first, I thought about holding on to this expose until former President George W. Bush dedicated his $500 million library and archives (207,000 square feet) on the campus of Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, Texas. But when the Washington Post devoted a two page full-length article (pictures and all) titled ‘Bush in a Cul-de-Sac Bubble: Back in Texas, Bush enjoys an insular world where the negative doesn’t exist,’ (April 20-26, 2009 edition-page 6 and 7), I wanted to write my own memoirs about Dallas and SMU. The Washington Post story gave a glowing account of Mr. Bush’s new $2.4 million home in Preston Hollow’s wealthy gated suburb. It also recounted the security details, neighborly visits, and the biking trails Mr. Bush frequents. Although the story mentioned that Mr. Bush’s world bears little resemblance to most of the country and its economic and social crises, which many people blame him for, it failed to mention that Prescott Hollow neither reflects the suffering Mr. Bush has caused and the worlds he left behind in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Haiti, Gaza, and other parts of the world. Sadly, Mr. Bush and his archives might actually be a match made in Dallas and a shoe fit for SMU.

The first time I drove onto SMU Campus in Dallas, Texas, I immediately noticed Ford Stadium-a massive sunken football complex with hundreds of rows lined with thousands of seats. I too remember driving down University Boulevard and seeing, in the midst of numerous buildings and towering oak trees, Dallas Hall. It was the first building constructed on SMU and displayed colossal-type pillars reminiscent of an ancient Greek Pantheon. Sometimes at night I would walk to Dallas Hall, maneuver through the Palace of Versailles-like maze of sidewalks, and sit beside a vast water fountain. It would be neglectful of me not to mention the highly esteemed and prized Highland Park United Methodist Church. Along with SMU’s faculty and staff, people from northern wealthy and gated suburbs like Plano, Carrolton, Flower Mound, and Richardson, would flock their on Sundays.

One of the first things required in pursuing a Doctorate in Theology at SMU, (I never finished.), was an overnight retreat. After going around the room and sharing our personal “journeys”, resumes, and how we had arrived at SMU, my professor looked directly at me and exclaimed, “It sounds like you have almost lived five lifetimes.” I must admit that I was a little embarrassed. Personally, I thought that working in a Guatemala Refugee Camp, pastoring three churches in Rural America while dealing with the Farm Crisis, being involved in the U.S. invasion of Panama and then returning to help rebuild the barrios that were destroyed, working with the poor in urban settings, participating in many protests to prevent U.S. weapons from reaching Third World dictators, and being a Conscientious Objector during Gulf War One and then facing the persecutions that followed, hardly qualified me for one existence, let alone five. But then SMU, like other institutions of higher learning, is an elite university and sheltered from the harsh realities of life in America and the brutal foreign policies instituted by the U.S. Empire.

Around this same time, the North American Free Trade Agreement had just been signed and the Indigenous Peoples of Chiapas, Mexico were in open revolt. The importation of cheap grains from the U.S. and a long history of human rights violations finally took its toll. Since Theology is the study of God, I mentioned during one class the best thing we could do was to collect humanitarian supplies and take them to the Mayans in Chiapas. I also explained how solidarity with the poor and oppressed, especially those who had been injured by our unjust trade policies and corporations, would teach us more about God, the state we live in, and our world in which we are called to serve. Above all else, I believed it would deepen our love for others, especially those who suffered. After all, Jesus told us to feed the hungry, visit those who were in prison, clothe the naked, care for the sick, and welcome the stranger (“illegal” alien). My professor quickly frowned upon this idea, thought I was insane, and changed the topic. Academic elitism, when divorced from reality, always views camaraderie with the poor as too radical or too extreme.

You do not have to travel very far from SMU to find entrenched structures of racism and poverty that have existed for years and that have kept people poor and oppressed. I still recall several years earlier when I flew back from Panama and landed at Dallas/Fort Worth and somehow ended up in south Dallas. The reason I remember this incident is it occurred right after the Rodney King Trial when three white police officers were acquitted. (It was interesting to see how Panama covered this incident.) For anyone who is not familiar with south Dallas, it consists of a large African-American population. Since I needed fuel, I stopped at a black-owned convenient store but was refused service of any kind. I recall one gentleman yelling at me to “get the hell out of here whitey.” If looks could kill, I would have been dead several times. So I left and to this day, I still try and understand the pain and humiliation of hundreds of years of slavery, lynchings and racism. As a white Anglo, though, it is very difficult. And still to this day across the United States, there are thousands of segregated cities and minorities suffering from abuse, neglect and poverty.

This is the problem with many influential privileged universities in America. The concept of empathy and compassion is often non-existent. During another classroom debate with a Jewish professor (if I remember right), I mentioned that under past presidents and Ronald Reagan the U.S. had committed many holocaust-like events in Central and Latin America. The professor became very angry and distraught and accused me of being insensitive and anti-Semitic. She also said I, nor the world, could ever understand how Jews were shipped off to Concentration Camps and murdered. I agreed that the Jewish Holocaust was a horrible event and unique and that the Nazis killed millions of Jews and other “less desirables”. But I also tried encouraging her to make comparisons with other present day holocaust-like events, even those committed by our own government. I also asked if one group of people or one nation should be allowed to monopolize genocide and mass killing, specifically since history was filled with many unfortunate examples.

I then asked her what she would call a refugee camp where survivors had been bombed from their homeland to make room for corporate farming, where forty thousand people lived with one water faucet, where a family had only a six foot by eight foot plot of land for shelter, and where 250,000 people had been killed due to a U.S. covert operation. I asked if she had ever talked to any of the thousands of widows in Central America whose husbands had been assassinated by U.S. corporations because they wanted to start a union and therefore, were considered agitators and dangerous. I asked her how many priests-who had preached God’s love for the poor and liberation of the oppressed though land redistribution, fair working wages, schools, clinics, and farm cooperatives-had been murdered by U.S. trained paramilitary death squads. I asked how many billions of dollars of weapons had the U.S. sent to Central American dictators for the purpose of killing the poor. I mentioned the Mothers of the Disappeared who had to go identify their loved ones whenever a mass grave was uncovered. I asked if she ever witnessed thousands of civilians being slaughtered by missiles, machine gun fire, or being mangled underneath armored vehicles. She stormed out of the classroom and unfortunately, never talked to me again.

Don’t get me wrong. I know there is a movement in the United Methodist Church to prevent Caesar’s image and his $500 million presidential library from being erected on the campus of SMU. (At this point, the argument is mainly over the issue of keeping Church and State separate. Forget about torture, human rights abuses, two ill-fated wars, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, and millions of Iraqi refugees.) But I also remember a couple of SMU students who tried to camp out in front of Dallas Hall to bring attention to the plight of Dallas’ homeless problem. Security quickly tore down their tents and they were barred from any more protests. It is a lost cause, that is, to try and change America’s elite academia. They depend on donations from those wealthy gated communities filled with million dollar mansions and six-figure homes and where the average square footage is thirty to sixty thousand, where parents will spend $1000 on a prom dress, where double and triple closets are filled with hundreds of shoes, shirts, dresses, pants, and suits, and where no one blinks an eye when someone buys a $50,000 Hummer. State and federal funds, including military research, also funds this cycle of dependency and bureaucracy which hinders evaluative and creative thinking and diminishes discovering the “other.” In the end, higher education in the U.S. is about consuming the American Dream and McDonaldizing the world. Believe me, it isn’t pretty.

I almost forgot to mention Highland Park United Methodist Church. On Sunday morning, it was like being at a fashion show for the ‘Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.’ No sermon here about how Jesus commanded the rich young ruler to sell all and give to the poor, or Amos’ and Isaiah’s messages condemning the wealthy and calling for armaments to be beaten into ploughshares and missiles into pruning shears. Never a mention how nations should learn war no more and that Christians should love their enemies, including those Communists in Latin America and Islamists in the Middle East. Jesus’ nonviolent actions and civil disobedience campaigns against the Roman Empire were absent. Since the Soviet Union had collapsed, no one was quite sure who the whore of Babylon, in the Book of Revelation, was that was drunk with the blood of martyrs. You can also forget about John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, and how he unconventionally preached hope and justice to the poor industrial workers of England, while condemning the Enclosure Movement. The numerous orphanages he and his wife built for children whose parents had been killed due to the harsh working conditions and monopolists were never mentioned.

When Mr. Bush recently visited SMU and spoke to a locked-down class of students, (A photo op to give credence to his presidential library and spin any resistance by professors and alumni.), a student asked how he made his decisions. “You make your decisions based on principles, and you never worry about popularity polls,” said Mr. Bush. Evidently, Mr. Bush’s principles-the killing of 1.3 million people, kidnapping and forcibly removing a popularly elected leader, and initiating pre-emptive wars-were much more acceptable than mine. Just in case you are wondering, the Military-Academic-Industrial Complex severely censored and reprimanded me for my statements and actions. In fact, I had to eventually leave my home state due to political retaliation and death threats. I also ended up living in a mobile home with parts of the floor missing, a far cry from Preston Hollow. Mr. Bush’s $500 million presidential library is undeniably a match made in Dallas and will fit nicely with Southern Methodist University.

In his first one hundred days Mr. Bush has raised over $100 million for his presidential library, no doubt a library which will rewrite history and distort the truth. (No wonder Mr. Bush loves this country more than he loves politics!) But then again, truth is still as elusive as when Pontius Pilate asked Jesus, “What is truth?” (John 18: 38) Unless, of course, you read the rest of John’s Gospel. Jesus said his truth and reality-based kingdom was in opposition to Pilate’s and Caesars’ truth and reality-based empire. Jesus and God’s reign would be founded on peace with justice and communities that practiced forgiveness and mercy. It would not originate from war and revenge and armies that occupied territories brutally killing its inhabitants. It seems a more important and eternal question for Mr. Bush, Dallas, and SMU is: Will the library and archives be a match made in heaven? 
 

(Dallas Darling is the author of The Other Side Of Christianity: Reflections on Faith, Politics, Spirituality, History, and Peace, and is a writer for
www.worldnews.com.

You can read more of his articles at www.beverlydarling.com.