Hateful to me as are the gates of hell, Is he who, hiding one thing in his heart, Utters another. —Homer
We’re quick to find fault in others, but we are hiding from the truth
An entire professional sports team took a knee during the national anthem last night. Notice, as often as we’ve seen people using the national anthem as a means of protest, it’s always been limited to a few members here and there. This was the entire Indiana Fever WNBA team, on a knee. Why? Because they’re tired of us hiding the prevalence of institutionalized violence against black people.
Charlotte, North Carolina is still rioting this morning. The governor of that state has called out the National Guard. Hiding the systemic hate and violence against black people in that state is no longer an option. The sins of the state and its cities have come out of the shadows where they have existed for the past 160 years and good folks down there are taking to the streets to end the nonsense.
Meanwhile, the Republican nominee told supporters at a rally yesterday that he supports a stop-and-frisk policy, illegally detaining people simply because a police officer doesn’t like the way they look, or the way they walk, or the color of their skin. Only one person walked out. The room should have been empty, but we’re still foolishly trying to hide our racism.
We, Americans, have become quite talented at hiding our sins, especially those we commit toward people groups that are different from us. We have created institutions to perpetuate those sins and even ingrain them in our educational methods that ignore the presence and contributions of marginalized people. As the light dawns, however, those sins become far too clear.
Hiding Behind Tradition
“We’ve done things this way for years and no one’s every complained before.”
Maurice Maeterlinck, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1911, wisely said: “At every crossroads on the path that leads to the future, tradition has placed 10,000 men to guard the past.” We don’t give up on tradition easily, no matter how horribly flawed we know it to be. We hang on to these “sins of our fathers” as though they were some kind of sick birthright to which we have no choice but to uphold.
Hiding behind tradition is a lazy excuse, though. We dump tradition in a heart beat when it suits us. When we say, “It’s always been that way,” what we are in fact saying is that we want it to always stay that way. We invoke tradition because we are comfortable with our sins. The traditions are so much a part of us that we even try to claim them as part of our culture and heritage. Yet, we know damn good and well we’re wrong.
Remember this song by Bruce Hornsby and The Range from 1986? Even then, as the song pointed out the sins we are trying to hide by saying, “That’s just the way it is,” we listened to the song and just dug ourselves in deeper. Here, let me refresh your memory.
Hiding Behind Religion
Talked about entrenched. When people have been misinterpreting a writing they’ve declared holy, whether intentionally or through ignorance, the shadows created for hiding our sins run deep. We find it all too easy to excuse our behavior, and often our indignation and intolerance, with the simple phrase,”The Bible tells me so.” Conveniently, there are plenty of places throughout the holy texts of multiple religions where deity instructs us, or someone eons before us, to behave like complete assholes. That whole “go here and kill those people who don’t believe in me” concept is something we’ve translated into an excuse for hate, discrimination, abuse, imprisonment, wars, and other atrocities too horrible to mention.
Ironically, while providing these deep shadows for hiding our sins, religion simultaneously tells us we are supposed to love each other, to be tolerant of the strangers and foreigners among us, to embrace those who are different. This is the message that makes us feel good on a Sunday morning. We look around the congregation at the end of the service and proclaim, “I just love everybody.” Yet, before you’re even out the door you’re casting side glances at old Mrs. Talkstoomuch so you don’t get stuck listening about a lonely old widow’s aches and pains. You drive past 15 perfectly good restaurants to get to the one whose wait staff has the right color skin. Then, after dinner, you sit in your easy chair to watch a ball game and complain about how “those people” are ruining the game. Tell me again, please, just exactly who it is your religion told you to love?
Hiding behind religion is inexcusable. If you think your religion tells you that some people are inherently worse than others, you need a new religion. No holy book covers your sins. You’re guilty and you know it. You want to clap your hands about that?
Hiding Behind Ignorance
One of the greatest sins of my generation is that we have intentionally institutionalized hate by only teaching history from the perspective of a white, anglo-saxon protestant existence that was never more than horseshit in the first place. For far too long, everything we taught in school was based on a white-washed, brain-washed, hand-sanitized view of the world designed to marginalize, criminalize, and oppress anyone who wasn’t white and middle class. While the textbooks have changed in some places, there are still plenty of instances where the secession of Confederate states is justified, where the holding of slaves is taught as an economic necessity, and the Ku Klux Klan is referred to as a religious civic organization.
We were raised with readers that only contained illustrations of white children with names like Dick and Jane. We were taught that the extermination of native peoples was necessary to “advance the frontier.” Even in television programming and movies taught us that the “indians” were always the bad guys, nothing more than blood-thirsty savages. With such ignorance being taught in schools is it any wonder we’re now faced with situations such as the Dakota Access Pipeline where far too many people don’t seem to have any problem with polluting tribal water or desecrating tribal land? We justify our sins with the claim that, “we didn’t know,” or even worse, “I don’t understand why they’re so upset.”
One member of the Oglala Lakota Nation said yesterday:
“We’re not just some hashtag out there just making a scene. We want to be heard. We want you guys to understand that we are fighting for our lives, for our children, for our people, the way we have, our culture, our identity.”
There is no excuse for our ignorance and that shadow is insufficient to hide our sins.
We Are In The Wrong
Let’s get real: If you can justify police murdering an unarmed man in Tulsa, you are wrong.
If you think that police have a reason to be afraid of a person just because of the color of their skin or the neighborhood in which they live, you are wrong.
If you think it is okay to take away the land and culture of an entire tribe in the name of profit, you are wrong.
If you think that it’s acceptable to spit at, hurl insults toward, or even commit acts of violence against someone because they are gay, lesbian, bi, or transgendered, you are wrong.
If you think that people who profess a religion different from yours should be barred, banned, or given a different set of rules, you are wrong.
These are the sins that justify the protests in Charlotte. These are the sins that have thousands camping and protesting at Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. These are the sins that, if allowed to linger in the shadows, will most certainly become the justification for an uprising of marginalized people who just aren’t going to take our horseshit anymore.
Maybe we should step out of the shadows, confess our sins somewhere other than a fucking closet, and change the situation. Don’t wait for anyone else. We must be our own leaders.
End this nonsense now.
Reasons To Protest
From pipelines to walls, the reasons to protest keep coming
The Short Version
Yesterday, the 45th president invited those behind the Keystone XL pipeline to resubmit a bid for the controversial construction blocked by the Obama administration. He then signed a directive for the US Army Corp of Engineers to expedite studies related to the Dakota Access Pipeline effectively stopped by protestors last year. Today, he will sign orders paving the way for the construction of a wall between the US and Mexico as well as limiting immigration from seven countries. Everywhere we look, the new administration is providing us ample reason to protest.
Down & Dirty Details
Remember all those protests that took place up in North Dakota last year? Thousands of people took part in a standoff between the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and the government over the Dakota Access Pipeline. While momentum was initially slow to build and media attention often waned, protestors stuck it out until President Obama intervened and instructed the US Army Corp of Engineers to consider alternative routes for the pipeline.
No one was dumb enough to think that the matter was settled, though. A new president had already been elected and had gone on record as favoring more domestic oil and gas drilling in addition to the construction of pipelines from the North. Any victory won back in December was only going to be temporary. Sure enough, the president signed a memo to the Secretary of the Army instructing the Corp of Engineers to:
The full text of the memo can be found here.
Again, no one is surprised; this is exactly what was expected from the new administration. However, the memo is like a wake-up alarm going off for all those who were unsure when their protests might be needed again.
Within the same document-signing session, the president also signed a document inviting the company behind the Keystone XL pipeline to resubmit a proposal. The Keystone XL project had been fully blocked by the Obama administration back in 2014. This move opens the door for the project to be reconsidered. The memo, which is largely full of legal jargon that comes with anything composed in Washington, not only invites TransCanada to resubmit their bid, but authorizes the Secretary of State to approve the bid and the US Army Corp of Engineers to facilitate the construction. The full text of the order can be found here.
Obviously, we’ve not yet seen the orders regarding immigration, but we do know some of the following matters are to be addressed in the signing at the Department of Homeland Security today.
While there is a reasonable chance not all the orders regarding border security and immigration will be ready for signing today, they are almost certainly to be signed at some point this week.
Why Protests Are Necessary
Every last one of these issues establishes an anti-humanitarian foundation for the entire administration. As pipelines have a proven propensity for leaking, they endanger the health and welfare of anyone who lives downstream. Immigration is a necessary humanitarian need for innocent people driven from countries at war as well as those simply looking for a better way of life. The president is so anti-humanitarian that he has even threatened to deny federal funding to the more than 200 Sanctuary Cities scattered across the US. [A current list of the Sanctuary Cities can be found here.]
This is a case of silence yielding consent. When the people of the United States do not speak up on a matter, when we stay in our comfortable chairs and warm houses and do absolutely nothing regarding an issue, Washington then proceeds to do whatever the hell they want. While protests are not always successful, they do at least remind members of Congress that they are answerable to their constituents in the next election. We can replace every last one of them if necessary.
While regular communication with your members of Congress is good, protests emphasize to them just how important an issue is to the American people. Sitting in Washington, D.C. day after day can be numbing. Members of Congress not only lose touch with their direct constiuents, they lose touch with the realities of the nation they represent. They need us to remind them that we’re not only paying attention, but that we actually care about specific issues.
Choose What You Can Do
I know not everyone can do every thing. No one can be at every march. Some of us can’t march at all. The number of issues we care about is larger than we have time to address. A friend posted a link to this article on Medium.com regarding how to #StayOutraged. There is a lot of good advice in that article. It’s going to be a long four years and issue fatigue is going to set in quickly.
Consider what you care about. Find an effective form of protest that works for you. Then, make your opinions known. Loudly. Forcefully.
Let us constantly remind this administration that they do not have a mandate. Despite what the president claims, they lost the popular vote soundly. There is no legitimate evidence of fraud. We need to prove just how strong we are in our opposition to his presidency and, especially, his policies.
Resist.
Dissent.
#StayOutraged
Share this:
Like this: