I can't act surprised to see a similar fear and loathing phenomenon pervading my Florida neighborhood. No shots are being fired, but it's hard to come away from any social gathering without that sick, sinking feeling in my stomach resulting from some offhand remark about Mexicans. What must they be thinking of me? Is anyone really a bigot as concerns only one group? I think not. Is such bigotry confined to the uneducated? Hardly: the Beck Brigade contains the majority of millionaires I know and none who have anything to worry about from some undocumented day-laborer hanging around the Home Depot parking lot. Yet they do. They worry themselves sick that our government is being taken over by Black people who will make sure that no other black people will have to work for a living any more. They worry themselves sick that American Muslims will somehow institute Sharia and set aside the constitution, while they themselves see that tattered document as an impediment to Christian sovereignty.
"Islam is not a religion. It is a worldwide political movement meant [sic] on domination of the world. And it is meant to subjugate all people under Islamic law...."reads an anonymous e-mail tied to a California Tea Party group. Where I live, such a thing is likely to be as sermon to the converted. It's a tenet as firmly adhered to as that "Obamacare" depends on "death panels" to keep costs down and that the US constitution is meant to subjugate all people under Christian law. But there are no Mosques here, not Islamic community centers as there are in other parts of the country. In California, in Tennessee, in New York and elsewhere, the bigoted scum that is America is being called upon to disrupt prayer with loud protest and being encouraged to bring dogs: because Muslims "hate dogs."
When I was a young man, traveling and studying in Europe, I heatedly defended my country against pervasive charges of racism and bigotry and imperialism, pointing to the strides being made in the 1960's. I was wrong, I was a fool and I wish I had not been. We have been jailing people for their political thoughts since the beginning, we replaced slavery with repression and subjugation, we've had laws reducing the rights of one ethnic group after another. We've denied entry and we have expelled citizens for their racial origins. We whine about invasive government while we use it to invade the lives of millions. We've made a straw devil out of those who have worked to undo the intrinsic hatred that is American culture. We have, save for a few glorious moments, been cowards, bullies and barbarians as likely to tear our own countrymen apart as the enemies, real and imagined, from without. There is no patriotism, no sense of a common goal, only flag waving and warriors at war -- and fear, always the fear.
Have we forsaken our ideals or did we ever really have any beyond "every man for himself" and "fuck you?"
I'm firmly in the camp that there never were any "good old days" from which we as a people have lost our way.
ReplyDeleteThe nation was established by male wealthy white property owners to ensure the continued success of their own personal interests.
They got on with slavery, exterminating the aboriginal population and invading sovereign territories from their neighbors to add to their conception of American empire.
Progress in worker rights, racial equality, and economic benefit have only been won through hard fought battles.
And the situation has always been dynamic. The powers that be resist at every turn any real reform and fight tooth and nail to maintain their privilege.
And the beauty is they have always able to persuade US into doing their bidding. Using fear of the other, economic threats and the occasional foreign war has always worked in keeping the muckity-mucks in power and the rest of us at one another's throats, happy to be of service in keeping the wealthy and powerful on top of the heap.
Well gentlemen, in spite of my efforts to get in touch with my gentler, optimistic self, I have to agree that the noble America is but a carefully nurtured myth. I think that one of the most dangerous statements spouted by the majority of Americans is, "America is the greatest country on earth." We don't want to seek out our commonalities as to acknowledge them would destroy our myth of superiority. I think the reason that I cling to the joy of childhood innocence that my grandnephew brings and the beauty of art and music is because they are my lifeboat and without them I would drown in an ocean of despair.
ReplyDeleteI have been watching the right wing since the mid sixties, and I want to strongly second something you said- views that seemed like no more than something to laugh at back then have bit by bit been legitimized by demagogues on the right, with the tacit acquiescence of the press, until things that would have horrified us a few decades ago can now be spoken as truth, even by Senators and Congressmen. How far this can go, I just don't know, but there is stuff in the wingnut world that is still pretty much beyond the pale- in ten or twenty years will these things- calls for extermination of Muslims, open demands for the destruction of our country, support of slavery and a host of other ugly ideas- be just as acceptable as climate denial and hatred of gays, for example, are now?
ReplyDeleteWow a little harsh but understood. For the most part it's always been us against them. The have and have not.
ReplyDeleteThe one that I remember from when I was a kid, do unto others before they do it to you. Yeah parts of this stuff have been true.
It was a bit before my time but I've read the Country put it's petty grievances behind them during WWII. I'm told by survivors of that time,The Country came first and people were united under one cause.
Perhaps that's what made them the greatest generation. Maybe what we need to do is figure out why. Just saying.
Arthurstone,
ReplyDeleteNo doubt about it -- things never were the way they used to be.
What was once nearly unthinkable can and does eventually become sayable; the moment it becomes sayable, it's just a stone's throw from becoming doable.
Note: I wrote a comment that I think that I lost. This is the replacement comment.
ReplyDeleteSorry Tim, but were any of these people with the nostalgic memories of the 1940s black? I'm a little young for that era but my parents recall the era. My father remembers having to ride in the back of the city bus in Wilson, NC and pondering what the lettering on the back of the white males meant. My dad was 12 years old and unfamiliar with the term POW. The men who were riding at the front of the city bus accompanied by military police were Nazi soldiers being transported to a new location. During WWII, southern states including Gergia and the Carolinas housed German POWs. The POWs rode at the front of the bus; after all, they were white. My dad also talks about riding across country in his Marine uniform a few years later to report to base before being sent to the Korean war. He still had to ride at the back of the bus. Rosa Parks hadn't made her sitdown stand yet. Jim Crow laws were at their peak in the 1940s. Women's rights were nonexistent. It was the best of times for some but the worst of times for others. The same signs that read "no Colored allow," in the Northern states often added, "no Jews allowed." Bigotry wasn't strictly a southern habit. Before we gloss over any age, we have to remember that the past is generally viewed through a lens generated by our personal experiences. The best generation was no better or worse than humankind has always been.
Amen, Sheria. I bring those "bad old days" up whenever I hear people speaking nostalgically about the post-war '50s.
ReplyDeleteFor white Christian heterosexual males, that was a great era. For women, African Americans, Jews, homosexuals, and other minorities, those days were okay if you kept in your place and did not challenge the status quo.
'The Greatest Generation' makes for an excellent tag line for selling a television mini-series and the ancillary products attached to this particular bit of over-polished kitsch but it's a lousy description of what really happened.
ReplyDeleteStill it resonates deeply among those unwilling to have a closer look at our history beyond the fanciful notion that 'America saved the world'.
Lots of people are invested in that view and hate like the dickens to see it coming to an end. Tea Partiers shouting the slogan 'take back our country' are explicit in just who the good guys are and who 'they' are who stole the country.
View any of the footage. It isn't a pretty sight. You'd think the United States was comprised solely of the Beav, Tony June & Ward Cleaver updated by tattoos, worse clothes and several extra pounds.
Happily it isn't. The country is a far richer and more wonderful place than they care to admit.
I have 7 dogs. That equals 7 trips. Then again I would have to drive to Florida because Muslims are not allowed in the Deep South. Great post.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that the entire history of the country has been a pitched battle between our ideals and our interests. Ideals are declared the winner by the locals and the rest of the world knows that our interests always deliver the knockout punch.
ReplyDeleteI'd be in a padded cell right now - or perhaps in some distant country if it weren't for comments like yours. Thank you.
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