Posts from ‘Politics’
Watching Donald Trump play the “race card” is fascinating. On the one hand he is appealing to his white supremacist base by using “dog whistle” racist comments, that is, by appealing to race while not using the word race itself. Racism is as racism does. It is only non-whites that he has railed against. You haven’t heard him tell any white congress people to go home to where they came from. He hasn’t told white congress people who represent majority white poor districts that their districts are unfit for human habitation. You haven’t heard him say or tweet that white immigrants are rapists. You haven’t heard him call places from which white immigrants come “shithole” countries.
Like all of his ilk he has little experience of African Americans and their lives. He presumes that African Americans all live in poverty with the exception of the entertainment and sports stars that he has met. He believes that most of them live in “shithole” countries or rat infested inner cities perhaps in buildings owned by his son-in-law. People of color are less than human and the conditions in which they live are the fault of their own laziness, culture, and politicians. In fact people of color don’t just “live” they “infest” as he has said many times, in many contexts. This association of otherness with metaphors of disease has been used throughout many countries, at many times to justify the second class citizenship imposed on people of color. The blaming of non-white poverty on non-white behavior is a cornerstone of white superiority. His dog whistle racism is about solidifying his support among his base so you don’t hear similar things about the white poor who are the majority of the poor in this country.
At the same time by not mentioning race specifically he has been able to claim that his opponents are the ones who introduce race into the conversation of his racism. This is “blame the victim” at its finest and George Orwell’s “doublespeak” come to life. The authoritarian government in Orwell’s book 1984 says”War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength,” and now pointing out racism has become racism itself in the world of Trump. He goes further and claims that African American “leaders” like Elijah Cummings, Al Sharpton and even John Lewis, have not been able to improve conditions for black folk. He of course doesn’t mention the white institutions and politicians that keep them in poverty. He alludes to “corrupt” politicians (presumably but not exclusively black) who perpetuate their poverty. He doesn’t mention that he has done diddley-squat to help black folks specifically and doesn’t intend to do so. He takes credit for falling unemployment rates among African Americans when they actually began coming down under Obama. It is too soon to see the effects of his economic policies as they haven’t worked their way through the system yet, but they won’t create jobs and may in fact lead to recession. With his typical hyperbole he claims to have done more for African Americans than any other president. I guess he forgot about Lincoln freeing the slaves.
He is using race to get white support by not mentioning it and to get get nonwhite support by mentioning it. As the alien immigrant Mr. Spock would say, “fascinating.” His racism is that savage beast inside him yelling to the crowd and giving them license to release their own. According to recent polls most Americans realize that he is racist, though his supporters and enablers publicly deny it. The real question is not whether he is racist or not, he is, but what do we do about it.
I wondered why women continue to support Trump given his record of adultery, womanizing, misogynistic tweets, body shaming, and overall lechery. So I went online to look at statements from female supporters. I think I need a shower now. What I found was that women support him mostly for the same reasons men support him. They like the conservative policies he espouses, they don’t believe his critics in the mainstream media which they feel is biased against him, and they are willing to accept his character flaws because as one woman put it “he’s not dating my daughter.” They praise his bluntness, what they see as his candor, and the fact that he speaks directly to them. They believe he speaks the “truth” unlike the politicians who came before him. They excuse his “toxic masculinity” because they reason that all men, including their husbands, sometimes speak and think this way.
What to make of all this? First of all, anyone who believes that Trump speaks the “truth” is beyond arguing with. They are immune to facts, logic, different experiences, and anything that contradicts him. The Democrats think there is a spectrum of Trump supporters that range from the “true believers” to those who can be swayed and won over to centrist Democratic candidates. I do not think so. Secondly, his supporters agree with his racism even though some try to protest against the way he expresses it. I do not shy away from calling his followers racists although some argue that they are not all this way. Yes they are. Some deny it, some resent it, and some admit it when they are confronted with this label. Those who do not call him out on his racism, accept or condone it, or even deny it, are themselves racists especially when they do not admit it. Time and time again we see whites who feel that racism is a state of mind and if they do not have that state of mind then they are not racist. Racism is not just a state of mind, it is a series of actions. If you perform those actions, if you behave that way, you are racist whatever state of mind you are in. If you support Trump’s racism by inaction, silence, or looking the other way, then you are racist. How’s that for bluntness?
Some analysts believe that it is counter productive to call out their racism because it means they will stop listening to you. I would argue that they are not listening to you anyway. They see politics as a “holy war,” a moral crusade, with those who disagree with you as “the enemy” who must be defeated not compromised with. Normally I would try to reason with them, but that is impossible. The American political system is based upon the idea of a loyal opposition who will compromise with those in power to get things done, who believe in the same enemies, and will work for the country’s good. This is not the situation that we face. The “good” each side believes in is not the same. Trump’s lily white 1950 country with whites in charge is at odds with a reality in which people of color already outnumber whites in the under 15 age groups and will eventually do so in all age groups. The “good” the other side sees is a diverse America, where people of all races have opportunity, and live together in harmony. They differ in what will make America great and whether it was ever so. Working together for the country’s good has been replaced by win at all cost. This is a battle, a holy war if you will, for who we want to be as a country. The Trump supporters realize it, the Democrats need to understand that too.
One of the things that was so striking in these interviews was the the normalization of “toxic masculinity.” Trump’s female supporters give him a pass on his outrageous behavior because they feel he is like most men only more candid about it. Accusations against him and Brett Kavanagh for example are brushed aside and women are criticized either for coming forward too late or for coming forward at all. What saddens me is that this is accepted as just what women have to put up with now and in the past. The “Me too” movement is just women being overly sensitive and protesting too much. The resignation to this behavior in their husbands and towards their daughters is tragic.
Finally they feel that Trump’s policy have not only not hurt them, but have improved their lives and the country. This is white privilege at its finest. From the safety of their homes they criticize people who are running for their lives. They are not people of color who can be told to go back to their “shithole” home countries, they are not refugees who can be put in concentration camps, they are not illegal immigrants separated from their children, they are not the religious or ethnic minorities who they feel have gotten too much in the past, and they are not people who have to endure ethnic slurs, police intimidation, a biased court system, or high rates of incarceration. Trump supporters’ lack of empathy for non-whites is astounding. Instead they blame the victim, denigrate them as at best a different species, not human at all. This behavior calls for us to do some soul searching. Who do we want to be as people? Who do we want to teach our children to be?
As Washington D.C. prepares for Trump’s obscene 4th of July celebration with a military parade, tanks, and fireworks; attended by those fat cats who can afford tickets and make political donations; and witnessed by the millions in the Trump cult, I cannot help but think of the words and outrage in Frederick Douglass’s 1852 speech “What to the slave is your fourth of July.” Douglass was of course talking about slavery, but his words can be applied to other forms of bondage. There are those in bondage to poverty, those in the bondage of health needs who cannot afford medicine, treatment or private insurance, those in the bondage of being able only to get by rather than get ahead, and the detained immigrants, especially children, who are in literal bondage. Trump has turned the national celebration of liberty and freedom into something more akin to the Russian May Day celebration or parades to feed the ego of military dictators. Douglass’s words:
What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.
The celebration is of course to appease those for whom this is the greatness they seek, the greatness they voted for, the greatness that Trump promised them. It is the compensation that makes up for their fear of losing status in a country that is changing, and spiritual or physical the meagerness of their lives. It is a symbolic presentation of what W.E.B Du Bois called the “psychological wage” of whiteness or what historian David Roediger called the “wages of whiteness.” It is meant to distract from the economic inequality that we face by binding the country together in an “imaginary community” when everything Trump has done divides us. Like a magician he means to divert us while he and his cohorts enrich themselves by stealing us blind, deregulating industry, and ignoring climate change.
Those who see what is going on behind this smokescreen cannot allow his “celebration” to distract us. We have work to do. We have to see that for all its people America lives up to its ideals, surpasses its slave origins, and becomes that place that all the patriotic songs sing about. Accept nothing less. As Ella Baker said “We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.” That is what we should remember on the 4th of July and every other day.
I’d like to expand on something I said in the last blog post. If there is anything the electorate has been saying since 2008 it is that they are dissatisfied with the political system and both parties. Obama’s election in 2008 and 2012, Hillary’s loss in 2016, Trump’s victory in 2016, and the midterm elections in 2018, show that they are dissatisfied with mainstream politics and they want something else. These are votes against the usual suspects. There is no one ideology they support as those voters who switched from Obama to Trump attest. They want someone who will shake up government whether it be a young black senator, a talk show host, or a freshman congresswoman. This is happening on both ends of the political spectrum. Conservatives support Trump for his anti-abortion, anti-immigrant, and anti government regulation stands while he pretends to be a nationalist and a populist all the while being a clear part of the 1%. Trump may be a racist, narcissistic, misogynistic, poorly informed, inexperienced, dyslexic, ignorant, and disrespectful draft dodging son of a bitch, but he is their son of a bitch. He promised to drain the swamp yet his administration will go down in history as one of the most corrupt ever, when all is said and done. If he is what conservatives have to put up with to get their agenda pushed forward, then so be it.
It is happening on the left where a 76 year old democratic socialist has and continues to attract young voters in droves. Young, inexperienced Alexandra Ocasio Cortez was able to unseat an incumbent Democrat while incurring the wrath of not only apoplectic old fart conservatives and Republicans, but also the old fart mainstream of her own party like Dianne Feinstein and Claire McCaskill. Although Trump’s office is ripe for the taking, the Democratic Party shoots itself in the foot by not noticing that voters are rejecting the mainstream by voting for candidates who represent and promise change. The Democratic National Committee and its Code Blue funding arm have stated that they will not support candidates who challenge incumbents in primaries when that is precisely who the electorate is calling for. The mainstream supports Joe Biden whose long career in public service makes him exactly the person who voters will reject. It is waging a civil war against the progressive wing of its own party when it is change that poses the strongest challenge to Trump. It was the belief among enough people that Hilary Clinton represented more of the same old, same old that sank her presidential bid even though some saw her gender as a challenge to the status quo. It is change that will excite the base, attract those who were dissatisfied with Rodham Clinton, and bring people out to vote. It is the mainstream who don’t recognize that the political landscape has changed. They have gotten away from their concern with the working and middle classes to become almost as much the tool of their corporate masters as the Republicans.
My only hope for this mainstream is that the challenges within their own party push them leftwards. If you don’t like the soak the rich schemes of Warren and AOC, the Green New Deal, Medicare for all, relief from college loans, then come up with your own plans. I do not have high hopes for them however. They have become so addicted to one way of doing things that I do not anticipate that they will change much. They have been entrenched in power so long that maintaining it becomes its own imperative. Maintaining their hold on power however will eventually force them to confront the changes that the electorate is demanding, just as the Republicans have adapted to hold their noses and support Trump. It is now the Democrats who must evolve or die as people keep voting for “none of the above” whenever the usual suspects run for national office.
The affects of income inequality and economic instability are everywhere. Most people now do not think that their children will be better off than them. Even Wall Street is beginning to realize that Trump’s misguided and ill fated trade wars will eventually lead to recession. His refusals to abide by congressional subpoenas pose a potential constitutional crisis and threat to our democracy. His foreign policy has made the United States the laughingstock of the world and no longer the shining city on the hill that it once thought itself to be. The U.S. has become more of a threat to the world, its environment and its peace than ever before and that is saying something. It is therefore more critical than ever that the Democrats win this presidential election, but the question remains whether they will be able to get themselves together enough to do so.
The Trump presidency is ripe for coming to an end, but only if the Democrats can get themselves together to nominate a winning candidate. What should that candidate look like? I have no favorites in either the sense of “someone I like a lot” or “the most likely to win the primaries.” So I will design my own. Of course this doesn’t necessarily predict who will win the nomination, but it is just my musings on who should.
If the Obama and Trump elections tell us anything, they tell us that the electorate is looking for someone out of the ordinary. They are not looking for politicians who have been around long enough to be entrenched in Washington (sorry Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.) My candidate must first of all have a fresh face. They cannot have served more than six years in Washington. Kamala Harris was elected senator in 2016; Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren in 2013: Amy Klobuchar senator since 2007; Kirsten Gillibrand senator since 2009; Tulsi Gabbard congresswoman since 2013, Eric Swalwell congressman since 2013, Beto O’Rourke and Tim Delaney congressmen 2013-2019; Tim Ryan congressman since 2003. Those with political experience at state or local level but no elected Washington experience: Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Gov. John Hickenlooper, Gov. Jay Inslee, Mayor Wayne Messam, former mayor Julian Castro (HUD secretary under Obama.) Those with no political experience but running (hey, Trump won didn’t he?) Marianne Williamson, Andrew Yang. I may have left some out, more made enter the race, and someone else may have declared while I was writing this, but that seems to be the current list.
They have to be seen as the advocate for the working class. Trump was elected by and large because of the support in Key states he had among this group. That means addressing the issues that matter most to them: worries about job security, stagnant wages, health care, and other bread and butter issues. Trump has betrayed this group or offered them false solutions like blaming immigrants, saying he will prevent their jobs from being shipped overseas, or declaring that he will bring back the coal industry. They are still looking for a person who will be on their side. The Democratic candidate must convince them that he or she is that person.
The Democratic person must be the anti-Trump not just the non-Trump. Trump won by being seen as candid and combative. The candidate who defeats him will be seen not just as a nicer person but a warrior who can combat the entrenched corporate and special interest in Washington. Someone who will really drain the swamp and do the things that Trump promised to do but didn’t.
They must attract strong minority , LBGT, and female support while not alienating white support. This is less of a tightrope than you might think. Many things that are good for the minority communities are also good for the majority community. However, the candidate cannot be seen as pandering to either community. For example issues like reparations will not gain more African American support than it will lose white support. Issues like health care will gain support in both communities. Unfortunately, I am pessimistic that casting things as issues of social justice will appeal to enough Americans to elect a president. I have too often been disappointed that the American electorate will do things for others than themselves.
The candidate must re frame the binary as not left vs. right or Republican vs. Democrat, but as helping the common person rather than the 1%. For example health care cannot be called socialized medicine but rather health insurance for all. If they can reject the Republican frame of socialism vs. individual freedom and make the argument about real, concrete issues rather than ideologies, the most “progressive” policies can get popular support. The Democratic candidate cannot be seen as a left wing ideologue.
Each candidate will develop some Republican or media shorthand description and each must not allow that to be the only or predominant picture. Ask Hillary. The argument that a woman or a minority person cannot win is simply not true. If one such candidate can accomplish tasks like those I’ve set out, that person can win. Women especially fit the mold of “none of the usual suspects (candidates”) that the electorate that switched from Obama to Trump wants in office. We have seen that those pundits that make predictions or offer advice based on the old politics rather than the new ones, are often wrong and surprised by the outcomes. The issue is not whether the Democrats move toward the progressive wing of the party or appeal to the center. The issue is whether the candidate can woo people with real, concrete issues and inspiring rhetoric. Grassroots organizing and campaigning will be key and the Democratic candidate who can get a message across beyond the media narrative, will be in a strong position to win. For example, if the media’s representation of Elizabeth Warren as a hectoring schoolmarm is allow to stand rather than her protection of the consumer, anti corporate message, then she will not stand much of a chance.
Obama did it with hope and Trump did it with fear of more loss. We will see what prevails in 2020.
I am trying to get my head around this latest mass shooting in Christchurch (not ironic), New Zealand by trying to understand “why.” In most mass shootings the why is clear. Some loner thinks he has been wronged and so shoots up his place of employment, school, or public place. Or, some person feels that their country has been wronged by some other country and some act of terror is the only way they can strike back. This shooting doesn’t quite fit either of those explanations. All the details are not in yet, but it seems this shooter was an Australian who traveled to New Zealand to shoot up some mosques as a protest against all Muslims. He does not claim that he was keeping his family or country safe (after all he was in another country), that he was settling some score because he had been wronged by these particular Muslims, or that he was retaliating against New Zealand oppression of Australia. He was lashing out against the Muslim diaspora in defense of an imaginary transnational entity called “the white race.” One could argue that whoever commits these mass murders for whatever reason suffers from a mental illness that prevents him from having empathy or even sympathy for others. One could argue that they are sociopaths or even psychopaths. However that doesn’t get us very far. There are many sociopaths and psychopaths who do not commit mass murder. What makes these different?
As a kid I always was amazed that a minister could say some words over two people in a marriage ceremony and their child would come out looking like both of them. He must have been a powerful person. Suppose he said the words while some random people walked by or used his power for evil? Maybe it was the words themselves that had the power and anyone could say them with frightening consequences. This brings me to Donald Trump. The shooter mentioned Trump’s advocacy for “the white race” as a contributing factor in his decision to kill, according to the latest figures I have, 49 people, to wound scores more, and to plan to blow up others (a plot that was fortunately foiled.) Trump and his supporters will argue that he is not responsible for the actions of a mad man who twisted his words into reason to carry out a vendetta against some defenseless “others.” Yet the “threat” that Muslims pose to whites is part and parcel of his words and policies e.g. travel ban, harassment of even American born Muslims, fear of non-whites in general. It is of a kin to his denigration of Mexicans and plans to build a wall when no one except his base supporters want it and even Congress thinks it is a waste of money.
Has Trump’s use of the American presidency “bully pulpit” caused the number of harassing incidents towards “the others” to rise in the United States and now around the world? Are his words so powerful that people are being harassed or even dying because of them? I would argue yes. Many white supremacists other than the Christchurch shooter have said how they have been encouraged or emboldened by Trumps words, actions and tweets. Trump himself will never publicly take responsibility for any of this. I don’t know if privately he does nor whether he thinks it is a good thing, his responsibility, or just a ploy to rally his support. Perhaps it doesn’t matter what he thinks if he thinks at all before speaking or tweeting. What matters is do we think any responsibility can be traced back to Trump. Trump himself is unlikely to change and will continue to irresponsibly spout off whatever he thinks will get him re-elected no matter the cost to “others.” Trump supporters are unlikely to change as well or to even consider the idea or, if they do, to regret their responsibility in these matters. It falls to us who oppose Trump, what he preaches, and stands for, to stop his reign of terror against those who are different. I hope enough of us have the courage to do so.
In his closing statement to his committee’s hearing of Michael Cohen, Rep. Elijah Cummings said “We are better than this. … We really are. As a country, we are so much better than this.” Sadly we are not. I was disgusted at the sight of Republican representatives attacking the credibility of Mr. Cohen rather than trying to get to the bottom of what he had to say. The charges he made are serious ones for our president and our country. Congress should have been doing as Alexandra Ocasio-Cortes did and looking for the evidence that would prove or disprove Cohen. Instead of trying to protect us and our country the Republican committee members were trying to protect the president, their party and their own access to power, influence and money. They were about circling the wagons to protect their team and resorting to one of the oldest strategies: if you cannot refute the argument, attack the person who made it. In logic this is called an ad hominen argument. They embarrassed themselves by using a black woman as a “prop” as Representative Rashida Tlaib called it, and not even allowing her to speak. This demonstrated their racism rather than refuting the president’s. Was John McCain the last Republican with any integrity?
To disagree with Representative Cummings (who should have done more to defend Rep. Tlaib by the way) I quote Bill Parcells long ago statement”You are what your record says you are.” As an historian I know that the list of people who enrich themselves at the public’s expense, seek and abuse power, and will sell their souls for money, is an endless one. However let us just confine ourselves to the period since 2016. Trump advisers indicted, convicted or plead guilty in the Mueller investigation: Roger Stone, Paul Manfort, Michael Cohen, W. Samuel Patten, Rick Gates, Alex Van der Zwaan, Richard Pinedo, Michael Flynn, George Papadapoulos. Trump administrators alleged corruption: Scott Pruitt former EPA head, Wilbur Ross Commerce Secretary, Ryan Zinke former Interior Secretary, Tom Price former Health and Human Services Secretary, Mick Mulvaney acting White House Chief of Staff and Budget director, Ben Carson Housing secretary, Betsy DeVos Education Secretary, Steven Mnuchin Treasury secretary, Brock Long FEMA administrator, Elliot Broidy former RNC deputy finance chairman. To be fair some of these people have admitted abuses of power, but some have not and have not been convicted in court of wrong doing. However I think they are enough to prove Parcell’s realism and disprove Cummings’ optimism about what our government now is.
There is nothing wrong with taking Cummings’ statement as an exhortation to be better. To become better however we must “drain the swamp.” There was nothing more poignant in the hearings to me than when Cohen told the Republicans defending the president that he used to be right where they were. He said,
“I did the same thing that you are doing now for ten years. I protected Mr. Trump for ten years, …and I can only warn people the more people that follow Mr. Trump as I did blindly are going to suffer the same consequences that I’m suffering.”
Just as in the Watergate hearings the tide will not turn against the Republican president until Republican legislators admit that their president has done wrong. The bar to reach that point seems further away today than it has ever been. The 2020 elections are closer than ever, but as long as the Republicans can scare people into thinking they have something to lose from immigrants, people different from them, or “socialists,” they will continue to win public office and rob the country blind. CPAC, the conservative political action group, calls anything left of Attila the Hun socialism and too many people believe them. Most people who fear it don’t even know what it is. I just ask the 60 million Trump voters to vote not based on ethics or morality, I’m not sure our definitions of those would be the same, but based on the question “Has your life improved under Trump?” If no, don’t vote for him. It’s that simple. If you continue to live in fear then “you are what your record says you are.”
Whenever someone says they all look or sound alike to me they are really saying that they haven’t seen or heard enough to differentiate one from another. One race often says this of another, but it just means that they don’t know enough members of the race. The cure is obviously to meet more people of that race. The problem is that some people never take enough time or have enough opportunities to do this. This applies to other things as well. For example at first I thought that all jazz music sounded alike. As a child I had an uncle who was such a jazz aficionado that he could listen to the first few moments of a jazz record and tell you who was playing. I was amazed. After I had listened to enough I found that I could do the same thing. Sometimes it was the sound they made with their instrument or certain favorite licks they put in their licks or other idiosyncrasies they had. I remember a moment in high school when we were watching some short film that had a jazz score. My best friend at the time challenged me to identify who was playing the score. I listened for a few moments then told him. When the film credits confirmed my answer, it was one of my secretly proud moments.
I was reminded of this inability to differentiate this week as Cory Booker joined an already crowded, yet sure to expand, field of Democratic hopefuls for the presidency in 2020. Sure some have labels attached like “centrist,'”progressive,” “conservative,” but I do not have enough information to see the differences among them. I am sure that this will change as the candidates supporters find “opposition research,” Republicans wail, Wikileaks leaks, the media uncover things, candidates with higher name recognition enter the race, and of course as the Russian government secretly intervenes. In fact I am sure some of this has already begun. With 21 months until the election I expect we will be flooded with information and disinformation about each candidate as well as pundit and pollster opinions on who could win and who could not. Currently we have little more than stereotypes, campaign speeches, and cherry-picked moments from their pasts to go on. Personally I need more than that to choose who I will support with my time and money.
Race and gender play an enormous, some would say inordinate, role in United States politics. Will Americans vote for an African American, a Latino, a woman? Where will each candidate stand on the issues? Who will show or has shown the behaviors I desire in a candidate? Where does the money come from to support the candidate? How will I ever sort this all out?
I will be open to and listen to and observe all of the candidates not just the ones I have a predilection to favor. I will pay no attention to the pre-existing labels, try to see beyond the media presentations of the candidates and not react to the roller coaster, horse race analogies, nor “gotcha” moments, to see the consistencies that each has show. I will try to ignore the shrill shouts of supporters like the “Bernie boys” and the Republicans are wasting their time if they expect me to listen to their arguments. I will try to filter out “fake news” by running down the source of stories, checking with reliable fact finding sites like Snopes or Politifact, and using my historian training or my own common sense. I will not leap to conclusions because of things people post on social media or send me by email.
I will choose a candidate to support and I will work with all my heart to see that my candidate wins. However, if my candidate does not win I pledge to support whoever the Democratic candidate will be. I will become what they used to call a “yellow dog” Democrat. If the Democrats nominate a yellow dog I will vote for it. It is that important to end Trump’s reign.
This was the week that was: this week we had school shooting number 22 of 2018. This is week 20 of the year. Let that sink in for a minute. We have also had incidents where police roughed up an innocent black person, though thankfully haven’t killed anybody this week. I don’t know how many people of color that makes for the year. Another black man was exonerated and released for jail after serving a sentence for a crime he didn’t commit. White people have again called police when they see black folk doing innocuous things and businesses have accused innocent people of color of stealing. The president’s lies while in office have climbed into the 3100’s. A climate change denying politician has ignorantly claimed that the sea level is rising because rocks keep falling into the ocean. Congress hasn’t passed laws protecting “Dreamers” from deportation. The immigration police keep arresting people who have committed no crime except being here illegally despite Trump’s promise that they wouldn’t. The Israeli army killed over a hundred Palestinian demonstrators and wounded over 2,000. As Marvin Gaye sang “makes you want to holler and throw up both your hands.”
Bishop Michael Curry speaking at the royal wedding called for love and Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau called for acceptance of others in a college commencement speech. We are so far from either that their words seem laughable. Our politicians both Democrats and Republicans, are bought and paid for by corporations and the wealthy. They not only do not represent the people who elected them, they have become so partisan that even compromise on small issues seems impossible. Compromise on large questions seems out of the question. Progressive candidates have made small progress at the state level, but there are no signs that they will do so at the national level come November. Some polls indicate that Democrats have squandered whatever lead they had for the 2018 election.
What can we do about it? The first thing is not to give into despair and accept that this is normal or inevitable. Outrage overload, compassion overload, or whatever you want to call it is the first thing we must avoid. We cannot become numb to this onslaught. The second thing is that each one of us has to do something. When you are trying to get all the garbage off the beach it doesn’t matter where you start, only that you start. Different people can do different things, we all have different talents, personalities, and opportunities. It means not being silent anymore. It can be as simple as voting or talking to others about voting. It can simply be talking to your neighbors about the issues, donating to and working for political candidates, or writing blogs like this one. The more active among us can help organize groups to protest, write letters to Congress (although I don’t have high hopes that they will be effective,) or help get people to the polls to vote when the time comes.
There are some hopeful signs here and there. Gerrymandering is at least being challenged in a few courts. Progressive gains at the local and state levels may eventually work there way up to the national level although much work needs to be done before that happens. Change will not be quick or immediate. We will have to endure more weeks like last week and things may get worse before they get better. We may have to take many baby steps and learn how to walk before we run. We may have to look in the mirror and acknowledge unpleasantness about our own behavior. We will have to face inconvenient and uncomfortable truths about ourselves, our friends and loved ones. We might have to challenge long and closely held “truisms” about our country and society. Remaining patient while we slowly move forward is not easy, but we must be relentless.
I have lived long and fought many fights, winning some and losing some. Whenever I feel myself getting too weary to continue, I see my little granddaughter and worry about what kind of world she will grow up in. If I didn’t do what I could to shape that one into a better one even if it is not the beloved community Dr. King, Bishop Curry , former president Obama, or even Justin Trudeau can envision, I would feel I let her down. I’ll be damned if I’m going to let her down.
In my final blog entry on the George Yancy situation I will presume to take a stab at analyzing America’s current situation. My analysis is free, take it for what it is worth. It’s just my two cents added to the conversation. What we have seen since the end of the 1970’s is twofold:Â a belief among many folks that we are living in a zero sum game where if someone else is winning they must be losing; and a loss of a sense of community that people outside of our “tribe” are part of our community. “Tribe” can be defined many ways and most anthropologists are loathe to use the word because it is so slippery. I am using it to describe the group a person identifies with at a given time. As we have several crosscutting identities we can in a sense belong to several tribes at any given moment. We can define that tribe by class, skin color, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual preference, politics, nationality, or region among other things. In any case it is defined by “us” versus “them.” By “community” I mean those within our orbit including those who are not part of our tribe.
To over-simplify, the civil rights movements of the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s was really a clash of two senses of community. Segregationists wanted to include African Americans as a subservient part of their community because of the belief that they were subhumans who were fine as long as they knew their “place.” Enough other white Americans felt that blacks were part of the larger community and deserved the same rights as all Americans. Other groups like women or gays started movements to be included with equal rights in the larger community. There has always been opposition to the idea that people not members of our tribe should be be included in our community and many rationalizations as to why they should be excluded. Over time this backlash against the expansion of the idea of community has grown with a sense that as other groups have gained rights one’s tribe (if different from the groups that have won rights) has lost something. Tribes have become more insular and more defensive. At the same time America has grown more diverse because of changes in the immigration policies and demographic change thus exacerbating the problem.
All of this has put the brakes on the granting of equal rights which has not progressed much past the stage of removing discriminatory laws and policies plus condemning those who overtly use derogatory terms. We have barely begun to examine how racist policies are built into the structures of America so that we have been unable to do the sort of self reflection that George Yancy recommends. The most we have done is to pursue “diversity” to offset the “tribal” effects of the deep structures within America.
We are now facing a situation in which the tribal exclusion of others has reached the point where a president of the United States can be elected solely because of his defense of the white tribe. The exclusion of derogatory words or actions towards non members of the white tribe is derided as “political correctness,” instead of common decency. The non-members of the white tribe be they excluded by race, religion or country of origin, have become an enemy to be feared, attacked, or killed. Juries keep acquitting cops who kill black people because they believe the defense “I was in fear for my life” for they too fear the outsider who is not a member of the tribe. “Make America Great Again” is dog whistle code for rolling back the advances by non white groups so that the white tribe can feel safe again. The vehemence of the reaction to George Yancy’s piece is just a sign of how nasty the defense of the white tribe has become for some people.
Let me be clear here. I am not saying that this disease only affects whites or that all whites exhibit it. I have met plenty of people both black, white and other colors, who are working to eradicate any such feeling within themselves and others. I am saying there is work to be done before we have a society as a whole that has enough such people in it. I’m not as sure as Martin Luther King that we’ll get to the promised land though I’m pretty sure I won’t get there with you for we are far away from it. My hope is that my little granddaughter will see it or a version closer to it than we are now.