Part of growing up is learning to distinguish real from superficial threats.
Our nation has faced serious threats, including the Depression and World War II. I was born the year after WWII ended. During my childhood, there were reasonable and unreasonable arguments about the significance of the USSR as a threat, and about how we should conduct ourselves. As school kids we regularly went out into the hallway and sat against the wall covering our heads, and I can recall envisioning a Russian plane headed our way, and trying to will it to turn around.
All my life and before, security-obsessed conservatives have gotten terribly exercised over things I didn’t see as threats. (To be fair, my parents’ generation had experienced the Crash, the Depression, and Pearl Harbor, and knew of the Nazi Concentration Camps and the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and knew the USSR had such weapons.)
There were radicals (often immigrants) around after World War I, and we violently persecuted them, in the Palmer Raids and otherwise, though some were merely labor organizers; there were genuine national leaders seeking genuine independence for their people (as Washington and Jefferson had done), such as Ho Chi Minh, Mohammad Mossaddegh, Salvador Allende, Jacobo Arbenz, Joao Goulart, and Fidel Castro whom our fear of the USSR led us to classify (mistakenly) as enemies and attack or assassinate. We cleverly pushed the survivors into the arms of the USSR, and earned the angry resentment of their peoples.
There were U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry whom we forced into camps, to live there for years then return home to find their houses, land, and businesses taken over by others. There were actors and writers such as Charles Chaplin, Paul Robeson, and the Blacklisted Hollywood talents, whom we persecuted, jailed, or exiled for freedom of thought. There were skinny young Negro boys “sitting-in” at southern lunch-counters in the late 1950’s.
I didn’t see any of these as existential threats, and rather admired some of them; and still do. History has shown that they were not threats. Their persecutors mumbled “national security” and argued they acted not from prejudice or intolerance, but to protect U.S. citizens. I wondered.
More recently, we’ve seen conservatives exaggerate the problem posed by illegal immigrants and seekers of refuge. Seen a president – whose (light-skinned) wife and her family got into the U.S. through abuse of legal loopholes – rail against (not so light-skinned) immigrants as “all thieves and rapists.” I’ve known plenty of sweet, devout, hard-working non-citizens, without papers, who do not appear threats to anyone, though some are inspirational.
But now we have a real enemy, more implacable than Joe Stalin, that can change itself to adjust to our defenses and has no compunction about killing even the finest of us.
Why are so many who rail so loudly against questionable threats AWOL now? There are very clear difference-makers that are as effective against this enemy as tanks and machine-guns against Nips and Nazis: vaccination, minimizing large gatherings, and wearing masks when in groups, particularly indoors and particularly if unvaccinated.
Folks who’d advocate capital punishment for those who aided and abetted “the Communists” are actually trying to prevent companies, schools, and cities from rules keeping employees, students, and citizens safe from this enemy. The Hell with safety of country, community, and family!
History won’t look kindly on these Quislings; but saving lives now is what really matters.
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[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 25 July, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website and KRWG's website. A related radio commentary will air during the week on KRWG (90.7 FM) and KTAL-LP. (101.5 FM – http://www.lccommunityradio.org/), and will presently be available on demand on KRWG’s site.]
[Interestingly, there’s currently some movement by national Republican leaders to support the vaccination effort. As Republican states such as Florida where COVID-19 isn’t taken so seriously, and the vaccination rate remains low, recent outbreaks are finally waking up some folks. I hope the change is real, if belated, and not posturing for 2022 electoral purposes; but above all I hope it helps up states’ vaccination rates in.]
[It sure does seem that folks' perceive threats more easily and feel more motivated to fight them when there are human beings to hate or jail or otherwise mistreat to "defend ourselves." However, there are other factors at play here. As time passes, are we as a people markedly less concerned about community and county than we once were? Less self-disciplined? I believe we are far more inclined to question authority; but that skepticism is a good thing. Folks who think about such things should take even health professionals' urgings with a grain of salt, and do some independent research. Here, science supports the view that masks and vaccination are good for self and state.
Of course, "disinformation" hinders that research. Folks are out there, for ideological reasons or profit motives, pontificating persuasively about bullshit. Russian trolls may even be adding to the noise.]
Northern European Americans: We came, we conquered, we legislated hegemonic racist and xenophobic laws, we reproduced, we thrived, we criminalized dissent, we jailed and/or deported threats to our nationalist agenda, we cleverly disguised the so-called 'war on drugs' which was really a war on minorities and liberal thinkers who questioned our political agenda.
ReplyDeleteAnd we failed at all of that political manipulation. We failed Native Americans. We failed at forced segregation of black and brown people. We failed and lost the so-called war on drugs. We failed at building a border wall that could never stop humans from boring tunnels underneath it and which border states largely said was unnecessary. We failed at regressive 'Make America Great Again' efforts to reestablish white nationalism even as we recognize the demise of our collective racist agenda.
We are angry. We want the South to Rise Again and maintain biased, prejudiced and legislate against non-white people who vote against our white nationalist agenda. We hate that gerrymandering and political oppression isn't working; that black and brown people vote against us and for their own political, economic and social justice interests.
We cannot accept defeat. We proudly broadcast our narrative as the logical result of 'conservative values' that maintains the racist status quo public policy purposely intended to subjugate 'the lower class'. We exploit cheap, undocumented guest labor to which we as a society are addicted and resist efforts to pay a fair living wage and reject the provision of affordable healthcare insurance as socialism.
Finally, we don't care about the pandemic because we are protected by the vaccine and so we passively lobby against CDC guidance that will protect the very population we desire to suppress at the polls. Yes, certain people need to get sick and die of COVID-19 so we can blame the current administration from failing to protect those certain populations who don't look like or think like us. We don't like civil rights at all because we don't believe all people are created equal; we are better than most. We support our fascist, failed, three-time loser, twice-impeached former president because we actually believed that 'he alone can fix America's problems'. Those 'problems' have black and brown skin. They're LGBTQ. They support socialism and equality under the law. And despite our best efforts to turn back the clock through violent means such as a failed insurrection on Jan. 6, we will continue to oppress and oppose any social progress that resists the advancement of America's White Nationalist agenda; our agenda.