Can you imagine someone stepping out on the stage at the Democratic national convention, wearing, say a baseball hat with "Live Free or Die" on it and maybe a plaid shirt and blue jeans or even blue jeans overalls and looking around and saying,
"I hate America!"
Pause for effect, allow for the gasps heard round the amphitheater.
"There, I said it. And you gasp. But isn't that what we've been hearing for the last few years from all those HUGE crowds cheering on the Republican candidate?
These folks SAY they LOVE America, but really, they hate their countrymen.
And what is a country, but it's people? Oh, sure, its borders and values and laws and armies and all that, but, ultimately, when it comes right down to it, a country is its people. Without the people, you've got nothing.
"But you've got America, this grand experiment and how have Americans treated other Americans?
Well, if you look down in Mississippi, you see a 14 year old Black boy hanging from a tree by the neck because he whistled at a White woman.
That's America, too.
When you see all the soldiers coming home from World War II, flooding back into the new homes they could buy with cheap government loans, unless, of course those soldiers happened to be Black.
That's America, too.
And you've got the Ku Klux Klan saying nobody belongs here but White Christians and you've got the secretary of state of Kansas saying essentially the same thing, saying there's hordes of dark skinned Mexicans straining to flood across the border and do ethnic cleansing on America and people in Kansas vote for him.
And you've got a sheriff in Maricopa County, Arizona rounding up dark skinned people and throwing them in jail and marching them down the streets in pink underwear to humiliate them and people voting for him and cheering.
That's America, too.
Of course, rounding people up and throwing them in camps because of the way they look is nothing new in America. Just ask the Japanese who got hauled off to internment camps in the West. We called them internment camps, not concentration camps and they were more humane than the camps the Germans had for the Jews, but still, America.
And then there's just the great American capacity for hate: Hate the Muslims. Hate the Blacks. Hate the Hispanics. Hate the Jews. Hate anyone who doesn't look like you. Hate anyone who doesn't worship your God the way you do.
All that is America. Land of the free, home of the haters.
But then, again. There's that other America.
Martin Luther King saw it, when he looked over that huge crowd standing before him in front of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, and in a line you almost never hear quoted he said:
The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.
We cannot walk alone.
King knew that even in Alabama, there were some white people who were horrified by the lynchings and the hate. He knew that even in Kansas, there were people who did not fear Negroes but were willing to give them a chance. He saw beyond the haters to that other sort of American.
That was an important moment in America, and it's had precious little attention. When you looked out over that crowd, it was just as White as it was Black.
There were white men from New York, freedom riders, getting murdered in Mississippi. And there were a few White people in Georgia and Alabama who had a special kind of courage because they spoke for Civil Rights and they could not get back on the bus and go back home up North. But they marched and spoke and voted.
I've seen that America firsthand, the America which resists hate. I went to a cook out once in deepest, darkest Hume, Virginia, the kind of place you had to stop at the country store to ask directions and all you had to know was it was the Connolly farm you were looking for, and the owner directed you there.
Sitting out by the backyard grill, one of the guests said, "You know the thing about the Negroes is they are like stray dogs. You don't want to feed them 'cause they'll follow you home."
This was a lovely looking lady in a broad brimmed straw hat and a yellow summer dress which showed her pink décolletage to good advantage and her host said, "Now, Peggy Sue, you know that's unfair, not to mention sort of racist. We've come farther than all that."
That, too can be America.
It is that idea we ought not be determined to walk through our national life alone.
Oh, there's that fantasy of living off the grid, beholdened to no man, independent, strong and proud.
But that's an unhealthy obsession. No man survives alone. We are all born dependent on others and while we strive to be as independent and self reliant as we can be, we cannot build our houses, electrify them, plumb them, alone, not if we want to live more than a subsistence life.
There is no glory in the mean, precarious subsistence life.
Most of us cannot safely deliver our children into this world alone, nor save them when they are injured or sick without help. We cannot care for our aging parents alone. We can try, but it's a fool's errand. Much as we may recoil from the idea, we need other people, or, at the very least, we do better when we connect with other people.
All those rugged individualists who fancy themselves as independent, truck right over to the emergency room when they are injured or sick. Then they don't seem so proud. They need help, and if they are even a little smart, they ask for it and live to fight another day.
People talk about American exceptionalism, as if it's some sort of magic blessing from on high. I don't know about American exceptionalism, and I am no student of world history, but tell me: Has any other nation on the face of the earth ever fought its most costly war to free an underclass, a disparaged group?
If there is, I'd like to know about it.
The Civil War may not have started to free the slaves, but as the war ground on, that's what it became about. Lincoln, who was in the best position of any man in history to know, said as much in his Second Inaugural, when he spoke of that "peculiar interest" which the slaves constituted and he said, "and we all knew, somehow, that was the cause of the war." White men died for four years to free Black men, is what it came down to.
So, yes, I hate America. I hate what it has become under the "Make America Great Again" banner. The fact is, America has been great and when it was great it was when it turned away from hate. Hate makes us smaller, meaner, and diminishes us all.
Yes, we have to figure out how to manage our borders, how to deal with those who desperately flock here because we are the richest nation on earth.
We can rejoice in our riches, although we do not share them among our people in any sort of fair way. Our billionaire class hordes the riches while the eighty percent fight among themselves for their droppings.
But even if we figure out a way to correct that injustice, we will still have to deal with those who are outside our borders, wanting to come in.
As we do this, we have to remember it is possible to gain the world, and to lose your soul in doing so."
Thunderous applause.
"I hate America!"
Pause for effect, allow for the gasps heard round the amphitheater.
"There, I said it. And you gasp. But isn't that what we've been hearing for the last few years from all those HUGE crowds cheering on the Republican candidate?
These folks SAY they LOVE America, but really, they hate their countrymen.
And what is a country, but it's people? Oh, sure, its borders and values and laws and armies and all that, but, ultimately, when it comes right down to it, a country is its people. Without the people, you've got nothing.
"But you've got America, this grand experiment and how have Americans treated other Americans?
Well, if you look down in Mississippi, you see a 14 year old Black boy hanging from a tree by the neck because he whistled at a White woman.
That's America, too.
When you see all the soldiers coming home from World War II, flooding back into the new homes they could buy with cheap government loans, unless, of course those soldiers happened to be Black.
That's America, too.
And you've got the Ku Klux Klan saying nobody belongs here but White Christians and you've got the secretary of state of Kansas saying essentially the same thing, saying there's hordes of dark skinned Mexicans straining to flood across the border and do ethnic cleansing on America and people in Kansas vote for him.
And you've got a sheriff in Maricopa County, Arizona rounding up dark skinned people and throwing them in jail and marching them down the streets in pink underwear to humiliate them and people voting for him and cheering.
That's America, too.
Of course, rounding people up and throwing them in camps because of the way they look is nothing new in America. Just ask the Japanese who got hauled off to internment camps in the West. We called them internment camps, not concentration camps and they were more humane than the camps the Germans had for the Jews, but still, America.
And then there's just the great American capacity for hate: Hate the Muslims. Hate the Blacks. Hate the Hispanics. Hate the Jews. Hate anyone who doesn't look like you. Hate anyone who doesn't worship your God the way you do.
All that is America. Land of the free, home of the haters.
But then, again. There's that other America.
Martin Luther King saw it, when he looked over that huge crowd standing before him in front of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, and in a line you almost never hear quoted he said:
The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.
We cannot walk alone.
King knew that even in Alabama, there were some white people who were horrified by the lynchings and the hate. He knew that even in Kansas, there were people who did not fear Negroes but were willing to give them a chance. He saw beyond the haters to that other sort of American.
That was an important moment in America, and it's had precious little attention. When you looked out over that crowd, it was just as White as it was Black.
There were white men from New York, freedom riders, getting murdered in Mississippi. And there were a few White people in Georgia and Alabama who had a special kind of courage because they spoke for Civil Rights and they could not get back on the bus and go back home up North. But they marched and spoke and voted.
I've seen that America firsthand, the America which resists hate. I went to a cook out once in deepest, darkest Hume, Virginia, the kind of place you had to stop at the country store to ask directions and all you had to know was it was the Connolly farm you were looking for, and the owner directed you there.
Sitting out by the backyard grill, one of the guests said, "You know the thing about the Negroes is they are like stray dogs. You don't want to feed them 'cause they'll follow you home."
This was a lovely looking lady in a broad brimmed straw hat and a yellow summer dress which showed her pink décolletage to good advantage and her host said, "Now, Peggy Sue, you know that's unfair, not to mention sort of racist. We've come farther than all that."
That, too can be America.
It is that idea we ought not be determined to walk through our national life alone.
Oh, there's that fantasy of living off the grid, beholdened to no man, independent, strong and proud.
But that's an unhealthy obsession. No man survives alone. We are all born dependent on others and while we strive to be as independent and self reliant as we can be, we cannot build our houses, electrify them, plumb them, alone, not if we want to live more than a subsistence life.
There is no glory in the mean, precarious subsistence life.
Most of us cannot safely deliver our children into this world alone, nor save them when they are injured or sick without help. We cannot care for our aging parents alone. We can try, but it's a fool's errand. Much as we may recoil from the idea, we need other people, or, at the very least, we do better when we connect with other people.
All those rugged individualists who fancy themselves as independent, truck right over to the emergency room when they are injured or sick. Then they don't seem so proud. They need help, and if they are even a little smart, they ask for it and live to fight another day.
People talk about American exceptionalism, as if it's some sort of magic blessing from on high. I don't know about American exceptionalism, and I am no student of world history, but tell me: Has any other nation on the face of the earth ever fought its most costly war to free an underclass, a disparaged group?
If there is, I'd like to know about it.
The Civil War may not have started to free the slaves, but as the war ground on, that's what it became about. Lincoln, who was in the best position of any man in history to know, said as much in his Second Inaugural, when he spoke of that "peculiar interest" which the slaves constituted and he said, "and we all knew, somehow, that was the cause of the war." White men died for four years to free Black men, is what it came down to.
So, yes, I hate America. I hate what it has become under the "Make America Great Again" banner. The fact is, America has been great and when it was great it was when it turned away from hate. Hate makes us smaller, meaner, and diminishes us all.
Yes, we have to figure out how to manage our borders, how to deal with those who desperately flock here because we are the richest nation on earth.
We can rejoice in our riches, although we do not share them among our people in any sort of fair way. Our billionaire class hordes the riches while the eighty percent fight among themselves for their droppings.
But even if we figure out a way to correct that injustice, we will still have to deal with those who are outside our borders, wanting to come in.
As we do this, we have to remember it is possible to gain the world, and to lose your soul in doing so."
Thunderous applause.
Preach, Brother!!
ReplyDeleteFrancis Underwood did it better, but we take inspiration where we find it.
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