Out of the Closet

For the last 5-10 years overt antipathy and bigotry toward members of the LGTBQ+ community had seemed to be steadily declining. To be sure, no one believed that it (like racism) has ceased to exist, but it became unacceptable in polite society to advertise such attitudes, and those who held such views found themselves, ironically, in the closet, so to speak.

Just as President Trump’s wink and nod to the neo-Nazis and white nationalists encouraged racists to crawl from their ratholes, so has Governor DeSantis’s plan to base his campaign on gay-bashing (to wit, the recent ad* from his campaign that essentially says, “No one hates the LGBTQ+ community more than me, especially that enabler Trump.”) encouraged his Ameristani acolytes, like the Taliban after the U.S withdrawal from Afghanistan, to come forth from their dark caves and reveal themselves. Not only are they openly and proudly proclaiming their bigotry, they’re advertising and reveling in it. I take no solace that the recent sign-burning in our purple dot of a community was done under the cover of darkness.

I’m a big fan of unintentional irony (and karma), so I’m not sure what to think about some right wing groups making Chick-fil-A a boycott target for having dared to create an EDI (Equity, Diversity & Inclusion) Office and then even hiring someone to lead it. DeSatan is trying to make such EDI programs illegal in what he hopes will become Floridistan. So much for “local control” and “free” enterprise.

Many people, me included, are bemoaning divisiveness in the United States. I’d like to be optimistic, hopeful that this is just part of the pendulum cycle. Instead, I’m afraid. Populist politicians encourage the rift because it suits their power-hungry purposes, but if someone you love is a member of the LGTBQ+ community, this is a fearful time. As the t-shirt slogan proclaims, “Be careful who you hate. It may be someone you love.”

*Finding the actual ad link is beyond my skill set, but just click HERE and you'll get the picture.

July 4 and The Importance of History

I have neither the intellectual rigor nor academic credentials to claim the label “historian,” or really even “history buff.” Still, I do know stuff, a lot of it history from teaching and preparing to teach various courses. Maybe I can claim “history dilettante,” which kind of fits my approach to so many things.

Nevertheless, on the 4^th of July, I am disturbed by the number of people willing to ignore history, the number of people willing pretend history doesn’t matter, the number of people willing to twist history to fit their world view and agenda.

This holiday in particular seems to inspire people.

Conservatives proudly wave their flags and tout their beliefs, failing to recognize that the history of conservatism is the story of people swimming against the tide. In their time, conservatives opposed declaring independence and the American Revolution (Tories), ratifying the Constitution (anti-Federalists), abolition, passage and enforcement of the Civil War Amendments, women suffrage, organizational rights for workers, social security, social integration and Brown v. Board, the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, civil rights protections for all people…. Change is scary and conservatives play an important role in making people slow down before adopting ill-conceived (even if usually well-intentioned) proposals without considering the inviolable Law of Unintended Consequences. But conservatives have consistently been on the wrong side of history. You can’t truly own your political philosophy without also owning its historical roots.

When you don’t know your history, you adopt slogans like “America First” without knowing its provenance. The slogan was used by the Ku Klux Klan in marches as early as the 1920s and as late as David Duke in 2016.

It was also used as an argument by Woodrow Wilson to keep us out of World War I and opponents of the League of Nations after that war. It was resurrected by Nazi sympathizers, anti-Semites, and isolationists, including Charles Lindbergh, during the 1930s to try to keep us out of World War II, or from even helping our (eventual) allies, and the short-lived AFC (America First Committee), formed in opposition to FDR in 1940, but disbanded for obvious reasons after Pearl Harbor. Pat Buchanan (who notoriously called WW II “an unnecessary war”) used it in his run for office in 2000 on the Reform Party ticket. Do you know who also tried to get the Reform Party nomination in 2000? Donald Trump (who called Buchanan a “Nazi-lover”). Although his campaign style may be consistent, apparently he forgot the origins of his now favorite slogan.

   And then there’s the just plain “bad” history. Although I reject that the Civil War, at its core, was about anything other than preserving and expanding slavery, I recognize the deep roots of the “lost cause” school. I also “know” that its goal was to transform sedition into nobility, but understand why others might reject that view. Today, however, someone said slavery was incidental and the true cause was taxes. Fortunately for my self-esteem, I do not know and did not teach this person; and my goal here is not to create a lesson on the cause(s) of the Civil War. I’ll just end with what I was tempted to say, the variously (and apparently often incorrectly) attributed quote, “It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool than to talk and remove all doubt of it.” I obviously do not always heed my own advice. 

Happy July 4, 2018.

Shit Holes and Shit Heads

Disclaimer: I generally work to avoid this kind of language in my writing (if we're having a conversation, well, fair warming, that might be a different story and I make no promises), but in the spirit of the current occupant of the White House, "He started it. Nyah, Nyah, Nyah."

I have been fortunate to travel a lot since my retirement, including to some “shit holes,” as well as some places that apparently are more worthy to send us their citizens. Like there’s a lot of Norwegians who would give up their universal health care for our crap shoot system.*

It doesn’t take much, if any — what do call that process of investigating for facts to back up an opinion? Oh, yeah, research — research to compile a list of successful people from the so-called “shit holes” who have enriched our lives, country, and culture. One of the great things about the USA is that we never know when or where those contributors will emerge, (immigrant or not) or what their back story will be. It’s impossible to predict. 

Recent case in point: Two weeks ago a 26-year old soldier raced repeatedly into a burning Bronx apartment building, saving four people before he died in the flames. His name was Pvt. Emmanuel Mensah and he immigrated from Ghana, a country Donald Trump apparently thinks produces very subpar immigrants. (source: neo-conservative Bill Kristol – editor of The Weekly Standard)

That’s the danger of stereotyping and over-generalizing: it is not a reliable predictor of, well, anything for any individual. Pretending some level of superiority based on birthplace (and I’m not even specifically referring to country of origin, here; it could be a municipality or even a neighborhood) is incredibly arrogant, as well as wrong-headed and unrealistic. And probably, in many but not all cases, racist.

 It truly irks me when President Trump and the other drum-beaters for “American Exceptionalism” fail to realize that most people, or at least those with a sense of country, believe that their country, too, is exceptional. Those same, exceptionally loud, voices are also critical of the trend to eliminate winners and losers, the trophies for all attitude. “We can’t all be winners.” That may be true, but in the drive to make this world a better place for all of us and our children, we can’t afford losers. We do, in fact, need to find a way for everyone to, if not be a winner, have a fair chance at winning at some point.

Comparing my country to yours isn’t even a good parlor game, and what rules there may be come from those who want to stack the deck so that their homeland becomes the winner.  (The winner of what, exactly?) National pride can’t only be good when it’s ours. Who is to say that we’re better than anyone else? If we cannot have a sense of national pride without it involving crushing others, then I would suggest such pride will definitely “goeth before the fall.” (Proverbs 16:18; you might make note of a blog post from me that cites both the Bible and a pre-eminent neo-con. Time to start prepping for the apocalypse!)

I’d suggest we’d be better off with an attitude toward our country like most of us have toward golf (or any other solo activity), and working on just being the best that we can, knowing there is always room for improvement, without the need to “beat” some other country or person. In the unlikely event that I could beat you (or anyone) in a golf match, it still wouldn’t mean I was any good.

Being better than the competition doesn’t mean you’re good. Being louder than the other side doesn’t mean you’re right. Bob Dylan long ago (1965) got it right when he said, “Not to climb up any higher but rather drag you down the hole that he’s in.” (Restoring order to the universe: It’s Alright Ma, I’m Only Bleeding) We should be cheering (and helping, when possible) these countries as they work to develop their economies, education, social services, etc., even if not always by the methods we would prefer. Instead, American Exceptionalists seem to want to put a ceiling on others’ ambition so that we can continue to wave our flags and foam fingers and shout, “We’re #1!” to justify any action we take. Let’s at least not be offended or surprised when we get a different finger in return. Your foam finger doesn’t make some other country a “shit hole,” but it kind of does make YOU a shit head.

* Apparently, despite the fact that most young Norwegians speak English and virtually no young Americans speak Norwegian, there is a net migration imbalance TO Norway from the USA; in other words, more Americans move to Norway than vice versa.

No Fan of Big Buts

I’m not a fan of big buts, because “but” contradicts the initial premise. Have you ever heard, or perhaps even said:

• I’m not prejudiced but …

• I’m not a racist but …

• I’m not sexist but …

• I don’t want to hurt your feelings but …

• No offense but …

• I don’t have anything against gays but …

• I believe in freedom of religion but …

But… Wait for it …. You are now going to hear (or say) something prejudicial, racist, sexist, hurtful, offensive, homophobic, anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic, etc., etc., etc. So, in fact, whoever starts with that phrase is, in fact, what they just said they’re not.

The “Big But” is an easy trap to fall into, trying to deny reality when it’s inconvenient. We’ve all done it, although I hope not in exactly the ways described above. A disturbing number of people have used, and continue to use, the “easy way out” by sharing, liking, retweeting, etc. to express racist views. Most would, of course, deny being prejudiced; after all, they’re just nodding at or reposting something someone else said. 

Sorry, not sorry: if you endorse a position you are also, by extension, endorsing the person(s), for better or worse, who offered the opinion. You can’t take a single quote from Adolf Hitler (or Vladimir Putin) and pretend that nothing else he said or did matters.

Charlottesville is my Rubicon. I’ve tried hard, really hard, to give people the benefit of the doubt for the last year and a half. No more. Put me in coach, I’m ready to play. Appropriating an appropriate phrase, “Never again.” Because, when you say, “I’m not defending the Nazis but….” and it’s followed by deflecting to another group or minimizing criticism of those hateful people and groups, wait for it, YOU ARE DEFENDING NAZIS. No, there are no good Nazis, there are no good people who accept or associate with Nazis. Those who defend Nazis are Nazi collaborators and no better than Nazis themselves.

I’ll go even further. I will never again use the phrase “alt-right,” because it’s nothing more than a euphemism to sanitize evil. Instead I’m going for the more accurate phrase: “fucking Nazis.” Because that is what the alt-right is.

If you, in any way, defend the the bullies of the so-called alt-right, you dishonor my father who fought them in World War II and was wounded working to defeat that evil. You threaten people whom I hold dear and are part of my soul. You threaten society as we know it. If you defend, or rationalize, or mitigate evil, you, too, are evil and stained in the same way.

I will, tepidly, and fighting back nausea, defend your first amendment rights (as well as those who use those same rights trying to block or counter the hatred you spew – and should you show up in St. Louis, I will be there with them), but know this: you are a despicable human being and I won’t bat at an eye or lift a finger when karma pays you a biting visit. There is no big but. I’m done.