The Spirit of America, Compromised

I am an African American woman who has studied the history of racism in this country, has watched the products of systemic racism ruin lives, from black and brown and poor children getting inferior educations, to the continued slaughter of unarmed black people by law enforcement officers, to qualified black people being passed over for good jobs.

I have watched mothers of slain children find strength from somewhere to keep on walking and working. I have watched young African Americans weep in frustration and anger caused by the tormenting pain that racism causes. I have cringed over policies passed by local, state and federal government, including voter suppression laws, health care and the refusal to expand Medicaid, to slashes in regulations which were put in place to protect the environment and therefore, the people who are adversely affected by a polluted ecosystem.

I still feel outrage over the way Puerto Rico was treated after Hurricane Maria devasted that tiny island; the image of the president throwing paper towels to people who needed electricity, medicine, food and American support still evokes a reaction within my soul. I have watched the rise of white nationalism – which has never been gone but has merely remained below ground for the most part – arrogantly flouting its belief system and daring anyone to say anything about it.

I have watched the treatment of immigrants, called all kinds of names by this administration and supporters of it; I have listened to stories about lawmakers who have had the gall to criticize and put down young students who have decided they are tired of the specious argument that “good people with guns” can keep crime down, even as madmen and women storm public spaces with semi-automatic weapons to literally mow people whom they do not know down, like they are pesky weeds in the garden of human life, unworthy of staying alive.

The name-calling, the blatant arrogance shown by government officials even as corruption is uncovered, the apparent devotion to protecting the “good ol’ boys” club – all of it – has been disturbing and troubling.

I have watched lawmakers – Democrat and Republican alike – pass a tax bill which has made corporations smile, but which promises to do little to nothing to ease the plight and the pain of the poor in this country.

The America I knew is gone. With all of its faults, that America at least had lawmakers who respected the legacy of the country and the office of the presidency, but what I see now is a president who seemingly wants absolute power and an impotent Congress which is letting him do what he wants. They say it’s because they respect him. I think not. I think they are operating as they are because there is abject bullying in the White House and they are afraid.

The American electorate voted this president into office. In spite of what seems to be certain Russian meddling in the 2016 election, the Congress has seemed not to care. The president certainly seems unconcerned with the fact that this country underwent a cyber-attack by the Russians. The obsequiousness of this president to Vladimir Putin has been nothing short of disgusting; in all of his rants, Putin is the only one who has not been called an insulting name, even though plenty of American civil servants have been totally humiliated by the name-calling. Not only does this president call names, but he lies with abandon, and few of his supporters say anything about it, at least publicly.

Guided by words found in the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution, this country has felt like a democracy, even though in practice it really has not been. But leaders up to this point have seemingly respected the notion of democracy and have valued the structure of government put in place by the Founding Fathers that were supposed to insure that this nation would never descend into fascism.

That structure, whoever, is crumbling. This country’s spirit of freedom is being crushed by a lurking spirit of authoritarianism. According to Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, authors of How Democracies Die, there are four indicators off authoritarian behavior which appear when democracies are in trouble: 1) Rejection of (or weak commitment to) democratic rules of the game; 2) denial of the legitimacy of political opponents, 3) toleration and/or encouragement of violent, and 4) a readiness to curtail civil liberties of opponents, including the media. (pp. 23-24)

Though Mr. Trump’s behavior is troubling, his behavior is not as troubling as is the lack of “democratic” or “patriotic” response to what he is saying and doing. A large swath of Americans are apparently fine with what he is doing; they seem to be unaware that the democracy we have all loved for so long is in mortal danger.

We in America seem to feel that our democracy is fail-safe, but no democracy can claim that classification. Democracies have broken down (in favor of authoritarian regimes) in Argentina, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Ghana, Greece, Guatemala, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Thailand, Turkey and Uruguay. The breakdown of democracy in those countries came about as a result of violent coups d’état.

But democracies in other countries broke down as the result of people voting autocratic leaders into power. That happened in Venezuela, Georgia, Hungary, Turkey, Ukraine, Poland Russia and Germany.

Both Levitsky and Ziblatt, and Professor Tom Snyder who wrote On Tyranny say that the breakdown of many Democracies begins at the ballot box.

It used to be that I and many others had confidence in the government put together by the Founding Fathers. In spite of flaws, that very structure was comforting. That we had “freedom of the press” was a godsend that many, including myself, never thought would be challenged.

But our freedoms, our capacity to be free are compromised and the trajectory of the attacks on basic American freedoms seems to be increasing in a negative direction, away from the guarantee of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” that our organizational documents tout as being a mainstay of American life and citizenship.

The lawmakers are quiet. The restless white nationalists are loud and getting louder, more arrogant and bolder in their attacks on everything that is not white. “We the people” live in perpetual anxiety about what this president will and will not do. This country does not feel safe; the underclasses seem less protected than ever before as the president and his minions are making America a laughing stock all over the world.

It is scary and troubling.

A candid observation…

America Has the Flu

If one of the main problems of influenza is that it attacks the body’s respiratory system, leading to pneumonia and other pulmonary issues which ultimately cause death, it would seem that America, under this president, is on life support, unable to breathe. This president and his administration have shown us our disease and instead of leading us to ways to heal it, is ignoring everything that would “make America right again.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), pneumonia is one of the most common and serious complications of the flu. Pneumonia caused by the flu can be viral or bacterial, but both can be deadly and in fact, do cause many deaths. (https://www.cdc.gov/pneumonia/index.html)

America’s racism has been its chronic illness – its flu, if you will – since its inception; English people came here to escape British oppression, but also to make this “New World” a land created by white people for white people. They immediately began to oppress Native Americans and soon, black people. They declared Native Americans as being savages and brutes and justified their treatment of them on those beliefs about them. Racist ideology was included in nearly everything that these very religious people did from the 1600s on and was built into the United States Constitution.

Black and other oppressed people have fought the racism and sexism, anti-Semitism and many other “isms” for generations. Gains have historically been made and are then lost because angry white people have risen up and worked to undo the gains made by the oppressed groups, almost always violently.

Under this administration, the white backlash is serious and toxic; the venom of white nationalism is filling the lungs of America’s capacity to breathe in “liberty and justice for all,” while simultaneously breathing out racism, sexism, Xenophobia and all other forms of oppression.

Whenever blacks have made gains and fought racism, whites have done everything they could to undo those gains, furious that the federal government has at times supported the quest for freedom, justice, and dignity of people who are just as American as are whites.

America’s influenza – its racism – has not only been toxic but contagious. We are seeing white nationalists boldly declaring and boasting about their racism; Steve Bannon the other day said that whites should wear the badge of “racist” proudly. (https://www.thedailybeast.com/steve-bannon-racist-label-is-a-badge-of-honor) while the GOP-controlled Congress and Senate sit idly by and let the president do and say what he wants, as well as his followers. There is no outrage about the violence being perpetrated by White Nationalists; there are no efforts to stem the tide.

America’s capacity to be a just nation – a place where there is true “liberty and justice for all” – is being hindered by her lungs filling up with the deadly bacteria which causes cultural pneumonia. The safeguards of liberty and justice, morality, and goodness do not apply in the minds of those who believe that this nation should be a nation of white people. Our very plurality – something which other nations have celebrated – is what the White Nationalists abhor, and neither the US Constitution nor the Holy Bible or the religion called Christianity protect those who are attacked and discriminated against simply because of who they are.

Historian Forrest G. Wood in his book The Arrogance of Faith notes that Christianity has been “fundamentally racist in its ideology, organization, and practice.” Christian idealism apparently means that the dominant ethnicity or race of this country must be homogeneous and puritanical, Wood says.

To hear and to watch this country backslide into a blatantly racist and sexist “norm” is disheartening, but worse, it is ominous because pneumonia damages the lungs and makes it impossible for a person – or in this case, a nation – to breathe. Empires fall. America, the Empire, is in the intensive care unit and its lungs, filled with the bacteria of hatred, are getting more and more weak.

A nation which despises, ignores, and casts aside “the least of these” is destined for death.

A candid observation …

Black Military Veterans, Racism, and Taking a Knee

Ever since former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick first “took a knee” in 2016 during the playing of the National Anthem to protest racial inequality and police brutality, there has been a group of people, led by and including the President of the United States, to denigrate the act and to complain that “taking a knee” is a sign of disrespect of the American flag and the military.

The president has been bold in his criticism of players acting on their First Amendment right to protest, saying at one of his rallies that he wished NFL owners would take a stand against anyone “disrespecting our flag,” saying, “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when someone disrespects our flag, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field now.’” ( https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/sep/22/donald-trump-nfl-national-anthem-protests)

The narrative supporting the belief that the protest is somehow unpatriotic has only grown among those who support the president’s views, but the fact of the matter is that this country has a history of disrespecting black men (and women) who have fought in America’s wars. The history is not pretty.

The story of Isaac Woodard, who in February 1946 was attacked by white people while still in uniform, is just one of the many cases of black military veterans being beaten by whites. In Woodard’s case, he had just been honorably discharged and was on a bus headed to South Carolina from Georgia. When he asked if the bus driver would allow him time to use the bathroom during a stop, the bus driver got angry and cussed at the still-in-uniform Woodard – and Woodard said later that he cussed back. The bus driver called someone while the bus was stopped, and further along in the trip, the bus made another stop. It was met by police, to whom the bus driver told the story of Woodard wanting the bus to wait for him to go to the bathroom and about Woodard cussing back at the bus driver. Police began beating Woodard right there. They arrested him and took him to jail, where they continued to beat him until he was unconscious. When he awakened, his uniform now bloody from the beating he had endured, he could not see. The police chief reportedly had used his nightstick to pound Woodard in his eyes. He was charged with disorderly conduct and was made to pay a fine. Someone drove him to a hospital where doctors told him he would be permanently blind.

The truth is, in spite of African Americans being willing to fight for this country, this country has not been willing to treat them with dignity and afford them the full rights of American citizenship. According to a report prepared by the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), “Lynching in America: Targeting Black Veterans, between 1877 and 1950, “no one was more at risk of experiencing violence and targeted racial terror than black veterans. White America, notably in the South but elsewhere as well, had no respect for the men and women who had joined the military but were instead afraid of them, and they were unwilling to abandon their belief in white superiority over black people. The report quotes Mississippi Senator James K. Vardaman said that black veterans returning to the Shout would “inevitably lead to disaster.” Whites in America, who wanted to preserve the white supremacy way of life and of thinking, were worried that while in Europe, the soldiers might have gotten confused, thinking they were due human and civil rights. Whites were determined that no such new thinking on the part of blacks would be legitimized. (https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-tragic-forgotten-history-of-black-military-veterans)

The EJI report said that often “the only provocation” for a black in uniform to be attacked was just that – the wearing of the uniform, but the violence meted out against them did not stop blacks from enlisting in the American military. The report says that 1.2 million black men enlisted during World War II. When they returned home, they were subjected not only to violence but were denied benefits offered to white veterans. The GI bill was written in such a way that most of its benefits, including money to purchase homes and/or to get an education, were denied to black soldiers.

While all of the stories of black soldiers being abused, discriminated and ultimately lynched, some stories stand out more than others. Johnson C. Whittaker, the first black to receive an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point was found unconscious in his dorm in 1880. While he was sleep, he was attacked by three white cadets, who beat him in his head, choked him and cut his earlobes doublev_hc_cat . West Point administrators blamed Whittaker, saying he had staged the attack, and they court-martialed him. He was convicted and expelled from West Point. (https://eji.org/reports/online/lynching-in-america-targeting-black-veterans)

The disrespect of blacks who served in the military has not stopped. On Veterans Day in 2016, Ernest Walker, wearing his Army uniform, went to a Chili’s restaurant in Texas where veterans were being offered free meals. Walker says t an elderly white man, wearing a “Make America Great Again” cap, approached him at his table and said that he had served in Germany and that “blacks were allowed to serve there.” The man told the manager that Walker was not a real soldier “because he was wearing his hat inside.” The manager approached Walker and in spite of Walker showing his military credentials, his leftover free food was taken away. (https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/chilis-apologizes-veterans-day_us_58297fe7e4b0c4b63b0d47d1)

The fact that in spite of being so badly treated in this country that African Americans have continued to enlist in the military to fight for this country says something about the perception of what “taking a knee” is about. Far from showing disrespect for the American flag and for America’s military, “taking a knee” is a protest against the system that allows, sanctions, ignores and perpetuates the discrimination against black people. If there is a “son of a bitch” in this scenario, it is not the players who kneel; it is the system which, because of its injustice, forces them to kneel. It is a legal way, an action in compliance with the tenets of the United States Constitution, to bring attention to the lack the rights of full American citizenship for people of color.

Now the president wants to have a huge, expensive military parade. Whatever his reasons are, I am sure he is ignorant of how the military has treated some in their ranks who have died or been permanently maimed while fighting for a country which does not fight for them. Wouldn’t it be nice if the president and his crew would read the history of what African Americans have contributed to America’s military efforts …and themselves, “take a knee” to show solidarity, support, and understanding – and a willingness to change what is wrong?

That would be just, I think.

A candid observation…

Searching For My Country

images-15 I don’t know this country anymore.

It used to be that I felt safe here. I felt like this country had a government which at least had the tools for us, the people, to work for justice. I used to think that the three branches of government were the safeguard that whatever had happened in other countries, shifting them from being democracies to being autocratic dictatorships.

I used to think that Americans really did cherish all of the “rights” guaranteed in the Bill of Rights, and I believed that Americans would fight for their country, no matter what.

I used to think that evangelical Christians had integrity. No, I didn’t agree with them, but I believed that they had integrity. I believed that they had a moral foundation that could not be shaken.

But then came the 2016 presidential election. I have long considered politics to be distasteful; the political ads, the lengths that politicians go to in order to achieve power, always bothered me. But we got through political seasons, some more brutal than others, and we went on being Americans in a two-party system, a government which guaranteed that we would never have a dictator and a constitution which allowed us who had issues with the government and its policies, to protest, safely.

But the corruption in the 2016 went beyond the pale. The rhetoric, the lying, the name-calling, the overt racism and sexism – all of it – was troubling. I kept going back to my “safe place,” i.e. we had a government “of the people, by the people and for the people.” We had Christians who believed in the Christ, who called us to love and to serve each other.

Those reassurances made me believe that when things got too raunchy in the campaign, that those who loved democracy and those who loved God would rise up. They wouldn’t let their country be embarrassed and they wouldn’t let their God be minimized. My confidence was blown away, bit by bit, as the candidate-now-president violated every principle of government and religion I had come to appreciate. My confidence was shattered even more, however, by the huge amount of public support he had.

Who were these people? What was/is this country, really?

I thought Americans were patriotic, but I learned that my conception about patriotism was different than many of the followers of the GOP frontrunner, who put down Sen. John McCain, a man who fought for this country and became a prisoner of war. I thought “the American people” would rise up in indignation and rabid anger that anyone could say such a thing about a war hero.

But what the candidate said did not matter. It didn’t matter that he lied. It didn’t matter that he called names, or that he put down and insulted women in the most crass of ways. It didn’t matter that people heard those Access Hollywood tapes where he talked about what he liked to do to women. It was disgusting and I thought Evangelicals would rise up – against him – but they did not. They looked the other way. They still supported this man who said that he didn’t regret that he has never asked God for forgiveness for his sins. (http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-on-god-i-dont-like-to-have-to-ask-for-forgiveness-2016-1)

Because of the rhetoric of this president, we are on the brink of a nuclear war with North Korea. We have a president who seems to go out of his way to be nice to dictators and authoritarian leaders, like Duterte of the Philippines and of course, Vladimir Putin. The supporters of this president do not care! When I was growing up, “the Russians” were to be loathed. People called them “commies” and worse, but today, it’s all different. The president’s supporters don’t care about the Russians. They do not care if the Russians were engaged in a cyber attack against the United States.

His venomous character is spreading. Now we have a lawmaker, Roy Moore, who is running for senator in the state of Alabama, and it happened that a woman came forward to accuse him of improper sexual behavior toward her years ago, when she was 14. While I can understand the a politician thinking the timing of the publicizing of the accusations is meant to destroy one’s chances for being elected, what I cannot understand is people saying that it doesn’t matter if Moore is guilty or not. The statement that they would rather vote for him – who may have sexually assaulted a then-child – than vote for a Democrat made my heart sink.

They could choose not to vote at all, rather than vote for a Democrat.

Meanwhile, some Republicans are demanding that Robert Mueller, who is investigating what happened in the 2016 campaign, be fired. I am stunned.

There is no desire for truth or justice – or real democracy.

I don’t know this country. I don’t know these “American people” seem to have no moral compass. They do not care about truth or lies; they do not care about women or children or Muslims, or immigrants. They do not care about the things I thought American Christians cared about.

I am searching for my country but I am having a hard time finding it.

The President Without a Soul

Today, White House Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly spoke before cameras. He assured reporters that he was not going to quit his job and also that, as far as he knew, he was not about to be fired.

Donald Trump

He said that what the president said about FEMA and the military not being in Puerto Rico forever was precise – but he said that only after he assured the people of Puerto Rico that FEMA would be there for as long as it needed to get the ravaged island back on its feet.

He was clear; when there is a disaster, he said, organizations like FEMA and the military “work very hard to get themselves out of a job.” That is true. Organizations like those mentioned do have a specific job and those jobs are temporary. Everyone understands that.

But the difference in what Gen. Kelly did and said, and what this president has done and said, represents the difference between having a soul with the capacity to emit and share compassion, and not having a soul.

The president, in my opinion, has shown far too many times that he has no soul, or at least has a soul that is full of holes. He has a personality and a demeanor which is mean and heartless. He is unabashed in showing his favoritism of some people, or groups of people, over others, and his lack of sensitivity, caring and compassion is heartbreaking.

This president may not consider himself to be a racist, but his actions and lack of actions at times say something different. He took two weeks to visit Puerto Rico. He “joked” that their dire situation was affecting the American economy – apparently forgetting or choosing to forget that Puerto Ricans are Americans. He gave no heartfelt promise that the mainland would do all it could to make sure the Puerto Ricans got the food, water and help in rebuilding that they need. Instead, he made crude statements. He attacked the mayor of San Juan because she criticized America for not doing more, sooner, and he ignored her when she approached him in San Juan.

And then he threw paper towels to a crowd of Puerto Ricans – claiming later that “they loved it.” The optic was horrible. He looked like a spectator in a zoo, throwing peanuts to animals in cages, and he sounded like slave masters and white supremacists in general who claimed that the “nigras loved” slavery.

He has no soul, not when it comes to black people specifically, and people of color in general.

He called white supremacists who stormed Charlottesville, Virginia carrying weapons and torched “very fine people,” and completely ignored what their presence and their methods said to a people who have been fighting for dignity and rights in this country for generations. He has turned the “take a knee” silent protest being engaged in by players in the National Football League (NFL) and now, other organizations, into a phony campaign which he says represents a lack of patriotism, forgetting, or probably never knowing that African Americans have fought in every war this country has fought, only to be treated like second-class citizens once they returned home.

He is playing the American media and the American people like a fiddle. Running this country is a joke to him. He is putting the lives of people in this country and around the world by playing little boy macho games with North Korean President Kim Jung Un. He seems unaware of what he is doing and what his words have the capacity to cause. A nuclear war – the possibility of which is what he is dancing with – would destroy the world.

But he doesn’t care. He has no soul.

His attacks, his name-calling, his sanction of and often dog-whistle use of white supremacist rhetoric shows that he only cares about his “base.” He didn’t get the memo that says that, once elected president, that individual is to be the president of all of the people.

Not him.

His heartless policies are dismantling the work not only of President Obama, but also of women, black and brown people, environmentalists and those in the federal government who have worked to keep the world intact. In his quest for a victory as concerns the “repeal and replace’ saga of the Affordable Care Act, he has shown that he doesn’t care at all about the millions of people who, under the ACA could get health care, and who will lose that care if what he wants finally gets passed into law.

He is intentionally working to sabotage the ACA. The only thing that counts is himself and his relationship with his “base.”

Many, many American people are supporting this man. Neither do they care about the masses, but they were not elected to care about them. The president was. The job of the president is to see and hear everyone, but this president does not, will not, and doesn’t care who criticizes him about the way he governs.

Some say he is mentally ill; others say he is unfit to be president. The GOP has shown its cowardice and says little overall. The legislative branch of this American government is letting this spoiled brat, this rich bully, have his way, without much resistance at all.

America was great, I am told, because of its democracy which insured freedoms, which this president seems not to care about except for the Second Amendment. The man who vowed to “protect and uphold the Constitution of the United States” has had the gall to suggest that freedom of the press should be curtailed. He forgets, or perhaps he just doesn’t care, that it has been our democracy which has made us the most admired nation in the world –a democracy with flaws, to be sure, but a democracy nonetheless.

He doesn’t care about democracy. He wants to be a dictator and he wants us to take whatever he dishes out.

He has no soul and this country of cowardly lawmakers and “angry white people” are working very hard to make sure this country as we have known it becomes a speck, a memory. If they have their way, this country will be no better than the dictatorships it has criticized over the decades.

He has no soul. He does not care.

A candid observation …