Big Government Be Damned?

OK. So Nancy Pelosi says Republicans are anti-government ideologues. My question: So why do they run for office?

If one does not believe in government, then what do such political candidates believe in? Why spend literally millions of dollars to be elected to office? Why are they there?

What do these anti-government ideologues want? They don’t want the government to do anything for the underdogs of our society. They prefer for the private sector to do that, some kind of way. But doesn’t the private sector, businesses, want to make money most of all, and are pretty much not concerned with the well-being of those who do the work?

President Calvin Coolidge said that the business of government is business. Some have said that democracy and capitalism, as two belief sets, are not compatible. Democracy as we have come to understand it, or the way many interpret it, is supposed to be “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” We who believe in democracy have internalized that to mean ALL people.

But capitalism is different. Capitalism seems to adhere more to the line of thought which promotes the “survival of the fittest.” Capitalists scorn those who cannot “make it,” and do not believe that democracy is supposed to mean that everybody can and should get the same benefits. Capitalists promote the thought that the only reason some people don’t make it is because they do not try, especially in America.

True, there are more opportunities for attaining the so-called “American Dream” in these United States, but some people really try to make it and just cannot. Maybe it’s because of extenuating circumstances or personality flaws, but maybe it’s because of something called discrimination. Surely that cannot be ruled out, no?

If it were not for government, people who have dealt with discrimination wouldn’t have had any protection, it seems. Blacks, browns, women …have all had to call on government for help and fairness when business and/or society would not budge. Government acted …albeit slowly …to insure a more level playing field for those who had been essentially pushed off to the sidelines.

So, there IS a need for government.

So, if there was no “big government,” what would happen to those who are making their way to center field now? Would there be a repeat of post-Reconstruction, when blacks, who had made political and economic gains were essentially pushed back into legalized slavery in the system known as “convict leasing?”

The federal government really stayed out of the Southern states after Reconstruction got underway, and slowly, state governments began to return their society to the way it had been before. The powers that be didn’t want blacks, and certainly not women, to have the opportunities that white men had. They didn’t even think blacks should have been freed from slavery.

Big government, then, has its place, it would seem. When people are trying to make money, they want to make money, not babysit or placate people who are having a hard time making it. They want the most work for the least buck, period. Without a big government that cares about people, many ordinary folks would just be out of luck.

That’s not to take away the fact that some people are extremely skillful at pushing against the resistance that comes with pursuing any dream. Some people just will not quit, and they deserve to move ahead. Vince Lombardi once said “winning isn’t everything but it is the only thing.” That is the mantra for many people and it works.

But some people with a little less chutzpah, or a whole lot more discrimination working against them, need help. Heck, even the most tenacious people need help. So if that help comes from big government, that should be OK.

Of course, this conversation is kind of superfluous. Everybody calls on government once in a while, whether or not one is pro or anti-big government. Everyone has a sense of entitlement when something catastrophic happens; then we want our government to kick into gear, and be BIG. If the government does not, we get indignant.

But we tend to only understand, as human beings, our own needs, and cast the needs of others aside. We don’t even want to think about the “have-nots” too much; we avoid really getting to know why they are where they are, because to see their suffering makes us uncomfortable. That’s human nature. Nobody wants to see suffering.

So we work hard to make sure we are comfortable, and criticize big government it attempts to do things that will make the lives of some legitimately suffering people a little easier. We shut our eyes to the real barriers which spring up in a capitalistic world and society and instead blame those who struggle for the situations in which they find themselves. We regard those who cannot make it as moochers.

Some of them are, and some of them are not. We just don’t want to take the time to make the distinctions and give help where it is needed. We are content to charge the poor and blame the poor for being poor, thus helping to keep them poor, and we defy the government to try to change that reality. We in America have little regard, it seems, for the burgeoning population of older Americans who barely have enough to live on once they can no longer work. And so, many older Americans are living in deplorable conditions, and we will not look that harsh reality in the face.

What does it take to make people in a democracy do what democracy purports to do – to make a society where all people are created equal? Those who do not like such a notion say that to want that is to be socialist. OK, but really, that’s what our United States Constitution says – all men (people) are created equal.

We have a problem in our formative ideology. It seems that there is an untenable tension between capitalism and democracy, and capitalists are criticizing the very political system which has made their wealth acquisition a reality.

A candid observation …

Black Men, Dying

Some time ago, the late playwright James Chapmyn wrote a play entitled, Our Young Black Men Are Dying and Nobody Seems to Care. The play highlights the struggles African-American men face in this country and shows how it affects their very psyches, their spirits, their will to go on …

I thought about that as I read about the latest incident of a black man being shot and killed in Chicago. The 30-year old father was sitting in his home when a shot rang out from a passing car. It went through a window of his home, hitting him in the head and instantly killing him.

Ironically, his mother was visiting a friend not too far away. The two of them were talking about another son of hers who in April of this year was killed by gunfire. He was 25 years old. When she heard the shots fired while she was visiting her friend, she immediately bolted out to see what had happened. To her horror, her second son lay dead.

The rate of black men dying by homicide is high and has always been high; the homicide rate in the city of Chicago for the month of November was 49 percent. Black men are dying, either on the streets or in prisons, and nobody seems to care.

There has been legitimate outrage over the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, allegedly by George Zimmerman earlier this year, and just a couple of weeks ago, a young, unarmed African-American teen, Jordan Davis, was shot after a white man, irritated because the music in the SUV in which a group of young black men were riding was too loud, allegedly fired eight shots into the vehicle, killing Davis. Again, there is outrage as the accused man, Michael Dunn, may try to use the same “stand your ground” law that Zimmerman is using as justification for his actions and that outrage is legitimate.

But where is the outrage over the fact that black people keep killing…black people? Is there outrage and the media simply does not cover it, or has the African-American community grown numb to the widespread violence in so many of its communities?

There are a few isolated souls who protest against the violence that rips through too many African-American communities. Fr. Michael Pfleger, pastor of St. Sabina Catholic Church. leads an annual march against violence in Chicago. Other pastors have been known to lead protests and hold conferences to address the issue.

But their efforts get little national attention. It is as though the country has fallen asleep on this issue, not caring about the young men, dying…

This issue is difficult to even write about. Dr. Robert Franklin, the outgoing president of Morehouse College, said in passing last week that our young black men need much help. Marian Wright Edelman, head of the Children’s Defense Fund, has identified the so-called “cradle to prison” syndrome. Tony Harris, a former CNN anchor, recently did a documentary about the plight of young black men living in Baltimore. He, too, said that there is so much to be done.

Violence often comes, writes Dr. Joy Degruy Leary in Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America‘s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing, because of anger, and anger in African-Americans is directly linked to legacy of chattel slavery in this country. She asks, “Why is it that anger is such a large part of the experience of most African-Americans?” Her answer, quoting Dr. James Samuels, is that “anger is the normal response to a blocked goal. Often, if a person’s goal remains blocked over time, they will begin to consider the possibility of failure and so experience fear, and when we are fearful, we also lash out with anger.”

Young African-Americans are faced with feeling “less than” and “not worthy” early on in their lives. They are parented by parents who wrestle with feelings of failure, and then they go to school which are often in bad physical shape, with substandard teachers, huge classes, outdated books, and far too little of what they need to receive a quality education. Jonathon Kozol writes that he has seen little black children enter school excited about being there, but by third grade, their excitement is gone; they have internalized that they are “not so special.” They stop trying. They fall into a mindset that is ripe for the anger that produces violence.

Dr. Leary says that African-American parents continue to raise their children “in the face of a multitude to indignities, disrespect and blocked goals. Their frustration is passed on to their children…

And so, black men, black youth, black boys are dying, either on the streets, or they end up in prisons and die spiritually while they are caged up.

More of us need to care. The 49 percent homicide rate in Chicago for the month of November is scary, and Chicago is not the only major urban area experiencing this kind of violence. If we in the African-American community have fallen asleep in order to numb ourselves to the constant pain of our young men, dying, we need to wake up and look at the issue in a new way…and do something. White America needs to understand that much of the violence in our country is due to young people feeling hopeless and frustrated due to the shock waves of slavery and its child, racism; Michael Dunn, accused of shooting and killing Jordan Davis, is a victim of racism, too. Nobody, black or white, can afford to ignore or escape the problem.

Author James Baldwin said in an interview with Studs Terkel in 1961 that he was no longer angry with America. He said he is very worried about it…because the “country has no notion whatever of what it has done to itself.” The price of keeping blacks and whites separated, stepping on one race while lifting up the other, has had disastrous effects on both races. Both races are violent.

But the violence in urban communities comes too often from black people hurting black people. Too many African-American communities are sleeping and too many white communities are point accusatory fingers and shaking their heads about “those people.”

There is not “those people.” There is “us people,” and “us people” need to all be concerned and working against the epidemic of black men, dying.

A candid observation …

The Gift and Power of Struggle

I will never forget the struggle of my sister, who fought against cancer with a nobility and grace that was inspiring and humbling, both at the same time.

She had been diagnosed years ago, was on the brink of death, but fought it then. After she passed the crisis stage, and was gaining her strength, I asked her if she ever thought she was going to die. All of the doctors, after all, had thought she would …but she looked at me, straight in the eyes, and said, “no, never.”

She went years in remission before the dreaded disease returned two Thanksgivings ago. She was not happy it had returned, but she was ready for the battle, and battle she did. Several times doctors thought she had played her last card, but she rallied each time. It was as though she was saying that she might be going …but she would go on her terms, not on the terms of the doctors.

She died last year, but I cannot say she lost the battle. She fought and won, I believe, because she stopped fighting when she was ready.

Elbert Hubbard wrote that “there is no failure except in no longer trying; there is no defeat except from within, no really insurmountable barrier save our own inherent weakness of purpose.” My sister was not a failure because she never stopped trying, she never felt defeated from within, and she had an inherent purpose to live for a long time. Her focus and willingness to struggle gave her not only more days but quality days. She refused to give in. It wasn’t denial; it was determination and faith and hope that kept her going. She knew very well how sick she was, and yet, she “looked to the hills from whence came her help” (Psalm 121) and held on with the expectation that she would be able to hold on.

She was willing to struggle.

Sometimes, when it comes to race in our country, I wonder why it is we are not willing to struggle and to come face to face with our very personal disease. I have read much of the vitriol that has been spewed since President Obama won last week’s presidential election, and have been saddened. It is all so clearly race-based, but nobody will say it. Nobody wants to admit and face and deal with our issue. As opposed to my sister, who, invaded by a deadly disease, engaged in the struggle to fight it, America runs from the disease called racism and denies it exists. And so we are being consumed, even today in the 21st century, by this ever-present reality. It is like an autoimmune disease of our society, affecting our central nervous system and thereby affecting the very things we need for a full and vital life.

Why in the world do we run from it? Well, a big reason is because we, America, are not a community. We call ourselves the “united” states but we are not. We are far from it. Post-election, several states are circulating petitions to secede from the United States. There is no community. We are a conglomerate of different races and ethnicities, but we are far from having the commitment necessary to be a community. We do not respect the differences of each other; in fact, we live in ignorance about who each other is, and so, far from commitment and community, we live in ignorance and therefore, in fear of each other. M. Scott Peck, author of several books including The Road Less Traveled and The Different Drum, says that commitment is the willing to co-exist, and says it’s crucial in order for there to be true community.

We don’t have that in our country, and so, in this 21st century, racism is as ugly and as potent as it has ever been. People are referring to President Obama as the “n” word; they are calling him “monkey” and worse, and they feel all right doing it. Racism has never lost its place as an accepted way of thinking in America and since we are so unwilling to struggle, it seems highly unlikely that it will ever go completely away.

In any struggle, we have to see ourselves as we are, not as we would like to believe we are. Real struggle begins then, because with the admission that we have some faults and some issues, we have to do some real work. We don’t want to do that …and so bad, toxic emotions and feelings fester within us as individuals and within this nation as an entity.

The gift and power of struggle is that if we are courageous enough to engage in it, we come out stronger. We are no longer afraid of what used to frighten us. We are able to stand in the face of adversity because in the process of struggle, we learn our own strength. America likes to talk about being strong, but she is not. She is a nation divided, and therefore, is weakened more than we would like to believe.

We don’t want to struggle because we don’t want to hurt, but hurt is a part of the process of life, says Joan Chittister in her book, Scarred by Struggle; Transformed by Hope. It is in having the courage to struggle that we learn to feed on hope, and in that feeding, we become stronger.

I wish America would be willing to struggle. I wish she would stop being afraid and stop living in denial. It is so past time for us to be talking about the virulence and presence of racism here. To struggle with it genuinely would be painful, yet after the pain, there would be a new America. We would be able to move on to other things, which we must needs do, but we limit ourselves just because we do not want to struggle. We do not want to change. And because we do not want to struggle and change, we won’t, not anytime soon.

A candid observation …

Why the Hatred?

What I have been trying to figure out for the longest is why there is so much hatred directed at gays and lesbians.

By now, everyone has seen the absolutely horrid “sermon” of Charles Worley, a North Carolina pastor, who preached that if he had his way, he would put gays and lesbians in fenced in electrified pens, and drop food down to them. Sooner or later, he preached, they’d die off.

He said, “The Bible’s agin (sic) it, God‘s agin it, I’m agin it and if you have any sense you’d be agin it, too!”

He said he’d keep the lesbians, homosexuals and queers in these pens, and sooner or later they’d be gone because they wouldn’t be able to reproduce themselves.

He said that the thought of same-gender loving people (that’s now how he said it) made him puke.

His words made me want to puke.

The hatred directed toward the LGBT community cannot simply be because religious people think that same-gender relationships are a sin. There are a lot of sins and a lot of sinning people, and there is not this hatred, spewed from pulpits, and claiming God’s will is being done in the words of hatred being spoken.

If it’s not because they deem homosexuality to be a sin, then what is it?

Is it ignorance? Arrogance? There’s not so much venomous religious speech when women are abused, sexually and/or physically, by their husbands. We don’t see it when children are molested, too often by fathers, uncles, brothers or close friends.

There’s not such venomous religious speech when people commit adultery…and that should arouse some passion, shouldn’t it, since opponents of anything LGBT will say that marriage is supposed to be between “one man and one woman.”

There are no such hate-filled outbursts when women are raped, or when innocent people are put to death for crimes they didn’t commit.

There used to be such vitriol when it came to Christians supporting racism. The Rev. Worley said he wouldn’t vote for Mr. Obama because he was a baby-killer and a homosexual-lover. Used to be if one stuck up for the civil rights of African-Americans, he or she would be called a nigger-lover.

So, race and sex, not any sex that is truly immoral, but only homosexual sex – are the only things that arouse this kind of hatred. Why?

Supposedly the hatred against the LGBT community is worse in African-American communities. I’ve been trying to figure that one out, too. I have read the historical context of the opposition of religious African-Americans to homosexuality. I understand how, since African-American males have been historically emasculated by this American society, that anything that further feels like a continuation of that would be objectionable.

But I do not understand how what one man may do with another man can affect the masculinity of a heterosexual man or woman.

It can’t be just that “the Bible says” it’s a sin, that “the word of God” says it’s so…because the Bible and the word of God say that lots of things are wrong, and we just don’t get that uptight about it.

The hatred spewed by Christians against anyone is antithetical to Christian theology, a theology that says that God is love. The “Great Commandment,” found in the Hebrew scriptures and then repeated by Jesus himself, says that we are to love God with all our hearts, all our minds, and all our souls…and we are to love our neighbor as ourselves.”

I especially do not understand the capacity of African-Americans to hate or discriminate against another group of people, as we have been so discriminated against ourselves.

I do not believe the hatred is supported by “the word of God,” or by “the scriptures.” I think the hatred is a uniquely human reaction to a fear and ignorance about sexuality in general. I think the hatred directed outward is a reflection of the self-hatred many feel as they struggle with their own sexuality. While sex is beautiful as an expression of love between two committed adults, the fact of the matter is that too many people, especially religious people, have treated it as dirty and bad. I have heard some Christian women express remorse when they’ve had good sexual relationships with their husbands, because they’ve been taught that sex is bad.

So, if people have issues with committed heterosexual sex, then it’s not hard to understand that they might struggle with “sexual fantasies” or with any sexual activity they might deem “unnatural,” but which they might really want to try themselves.

Sex is not what makes a loving relationship; it’s the commitment between the people that makes a relationship pleasing to God. There clearly is a lack of commitment in heterosexual relationships, as evidenced by the ever-increasing rate of divorce in this country.

I would feel less uneasy about the objections to homosexuality spewed by religious people if I felt like it was genuinely rooted in the will and word of God, but God is not hatred, God does not condone hatred, and God does not cause hatred. Rev. Worley, in my opinion, ought to be worried, using the pulpit, a holy space, to spew unholy rhetoric. God would not want anyone to put “gays, lesbians and queers” in electrified pens, with people, religious people at that, “dropping food” down to them until they died.

That kinds of sounds like something Hitler would advocate. (It is estimated that nearly 200,000 homosexuals were murdered during the Holocaust…)

These words of hatred are, in fact, anti-Biblical, statements of ideology and personal belief which ought to be called such… There is no God and no Jesus in any of what these words convey.

A candid observation …

Wikipedia: queer definition: worthless, counterfeit. →

Anybody Want Healing?

Sometimes, I need help to understand why some things are as they are…like this: why do some white people think it’s racist to acknowledge that racism exists and to talk about it?

I have been chewing on that ever since I had an online chat with a white friend who was furious with me for saying that, at the beginning of the GOP race for the presidential nomination, Newt Gingrich was “playing to his base.”

That base was in the South, and consisted primarily, as far as I could tell, of white people. Many of them resonated with Gingrich’s assertions that black people and their situation in America were surely to be considered; in a speech in New Hampshire he made in January he said “… the African-American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps.” (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/05/newt-gingrich-paychecks-food-stamps_n_1188193.html)

That comment, along with others, such as “President Obama is the food stamp president” are no less disparaging and inaccurate about the lives of African-Americans than was President Reagan’s creation of the “welfare queen” which fed into the belief by many whites that black people are eating up the economy; their access to entitlements are a big part of the blame for the shoddy economic condition of this country, many will say, and any attempt dissuade people of those beliefs usually meet with rabid and bitter opposition.

OK, so I get that …but why, if one talks about the reality of racism in this country is one branded a “racist?” Why is the worst thing to talk about in America race, when our sick racism is at the base of so many of our problems?

In a book entitled To Ask for an Equal Chance, author Cheryl Lynn Greenberg talks about the state of African-Americans during and leading up to the Great Depression. She cites United States Supreme Court decisions few of us know anything about, like Grovey v. Townsend (1935), which said that electoral parties are private groups and can exclude African-Americans from membership and participation, and Norris v. Alabama, (1935) which allowed for the routin exclusion of African-Americans from jury duty. She talks about the “Atlanta Six” who were arrested in 1930 under a slave statutes against inciting insurrection for organizing protest. In The Worst Hard Time, by Timothy Egan, an amazing book which describes the dust bowl of the 1930s, there is a description of signs put out advertising scant employment opportunities, but signs which clearly said “colored need not apply.”

The foundation of America was sewn with racist and with sexist threads…so why can’t we talk about it without being called “racist?

I cringed when, after Trayvon Martin’s case garnered national and international attention, and President Barack Obama made the statement that if he had a son, he’d look like Trayvon, the accusations of him playing the race card flew as though the card game had been set upon by a great, unexpected wind. Those protesting said he was not only playing the race card, but that he was sowing division amongst or between the races, because this is an election year.

The truth of the matter is that racism has been brewing just under the surface of our American political scene since the president was elected. Congressman Joe Wilson’s rude “you lie!” outburst at the president’s first State of the Union speech was beyond comprehension; the tactics of the Tea Party, including some who reportedly spit on revered African-American leaders, was steeped in race.

The truth of the matter is, not talking about race has only made the situation worse. Everybody wants to pretend that “it” isn’t racism that is driving some of what we are seeing and hearing today, but it is…We can’t keep agreeing to be silent. We need to face it and shake out the blanket of American democracy. The wrinkles caused by racism need to go…but if we keep the blanket all balled up, the wrinkles will only become deeper.

A candid observation …