In the first few years of this century, I wrote about the death of American college student Rachel Corrie, at the razing of Palestinian homes in Gaza. The demolition site had been declared a combat zone in the ongoing hostility between Hamas gun-runners and the Israeli army. Eventually, the bulldozer driver who ran Rachel down was proclaimed innocent by an Israeli military investigation, her death ruled accidental. That was a long time ago, as politics go, but it was a moment that severed the first strings of unquestioned loyalty to Zionism.
At the time, I was advocating for an end to settlers encroaching on land that had long been held by Palestinian families, and another grim and punishing intifada by the Israeli government. With the majority of Americans unquestioningly supportive of Israel, I was, essentially, spitting into the wind at the time; but my concern was not just for the situation at hand but for the generational signature that warring produces.
When one is raised in war, anxious from the cradle, subjected to violence and death, steeped in heated rhetoric and injustice, one’s internal gyroscope will be set to survival, resentment, hatred. We see it everywhere we look when we peel back the ‘what’ and examine the ‘why’.
We see it in Africa, where child soldiers seem inured to death and killing. We see it in Syria where those fighting on the ground, including both the U.S. Pentagon and CIA, are connected so incestuously to one another that we can’t tell the players without a score card — sometimes, not even then. We see it wherever ISIS works its dark mojo, merciless, drug-addled and mindless in its attempt to punish those not pure enough to suit its brutal version of God.
This kind of psychological imprint doesn’t need declared war to warp our children. In Colombia, in Rio, in Yemen and in most every third-world country we can think of, poverty has locked the population into a culture of tyranny and victimization by war lords or drug cartels. In the farthest reaches of the jungle, corporate bullies take without permission, confident in international trade laws that favor them.
And let’s not forget that America has its own versions of Rachel Corrie, run down by the machinery of authoritarianism and race hatred. They have names like Trayvon and Tamir and Sandra, and they stumbled into danger unwittingly, with even less awareness than did our idealistic young peace activist. Now, the movement to convince us that their lives do, indeed, matter is under attack by those who have decided they don’t.
I’ve read several articles lately informing me that now the cat’s out of the bag: America is a racist nation. The irony that Obama, as the first black president, would have become an even more hated (possible?) individual, his authority ignored and obstructed, if he’d attempted to lift up his own race can’t be lost on us.
Truthiness has won the debate. Statistics show that over half of conservatives in general, and Republicans specifically, believe Obama to be a Muslim born in Kenya, strategically placed to further the Democratic agenda. How this devious plot occurred, and authored by whom, is neither asked nor answered; it’s simply believed wholeheartedly by those who want it to be true.
This week, George Zimmerman — poster child for race hatred and vigilantism — decided to put the gun he used to kill Trayvon Martin up for sale to the highest bidder. It was, he declared, “a piece of American History,” and he would use some of the money to fight against government injustice, Black Lives Matter and Clinton’s anti-gun rhetoric.
We allowed this man to get away with murder, proclaim himself a hero against the frightening (and largely illusory) specter of faceless troublemakers everywhere, and now we’re allowing him to make a Holy Grail of the weaponry he used to do it. Thanks to the founders who MUST have known what a can of worms they’d opened, we have no choice.
The First Amendment of our Constitution gives Zimmerman the liberty of free speech, so long as he isn’t yelling fire in a crowded theater. And yet, while some of us are sure beyond a doubt that that same Constitution asks us to weaponize and defend ourselves against the dreaded ‘outsider’, others of us wonder if open carry and belligerence bordering on provocation aren’t the very equivalent of yelling “fire!”
That’s where we find ourselves today, on either side of a divide that can be quickly identified by party affiliation, shifting back toward their earliest roots. It bears repeating that we are still arguing over states’ rights and the power of the federation.
The quasi-historians who say we fought the Civil War over states’ fiscal matters, not slavery, fail to mention that — thanks to Eli Whitney’s cotton gin — the cotton-dependent economy of the south required a massive influx of cheap labor. So, with black folks considered ‘farm implements’ — as one old boy around here likes to tell it — the entirety of the southern economy rested on the broad shoulders of continued human ownership.
Freeing the slaves was about as popular in the Confederacy as phasing out coal is to mining investors in West Virginia today. Just as mining regularly kills its workers off through environmental hazards, slavery had a similar effect due to strenuous working conditions and harsh treatment. Yet the south will still defend their battle flag and cultural station as superior to those they’d previously — with God’s approval, mind you — owned.
They can’t help themselves. This is their mythology; without it they believe they will lose their cultural identity. These are the historical bones of their very tribe, now endangered by the mixing of racial identity and the laws that require equality. This is their un-won war, quietly played out in decades of pent-up resentment against a government they despise.
This un-won war against government removed them from a class distinction they have romanticized over the years, as powerful and potent as the conspiracy theories they favor over truth. That elevated class distinction has almost faded from sight now, leaving them mere mortals, subject to ‘liberal’ law. This is the basis of their war mentality, with Trump their new General mounted on a white charger.
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When someone like Donald comes along — playing to their bias in school yard taunts, beating tribal drums and promising what he’ll never deliver — he replaces FOX News in their minds, the contrived source of information they bathed in to cleanse themselves of all outsider influence pulling at their tattered self-image.
That most of what they were fed were lies built on innuendo and based on fantasy didn’t hit home until the pipe dreams failed to manifest. Trump is their brightest hope since Goldwater, and the Klan rallies of the 1920s before that.
If they were better students of history, they’d be less enthused by Donald and his big wall, braggart’s tone and doody-headed name calling. They had a less crass and craven example of similar energy with George W., and we know how that turned out.
In fact, if they were better students of history, they’d have licked their wounds, hitched up their knickers and moved on from their pity-pot long ago. And be warned: those of us on the other side of the political spectrum need to police our own sensibilities for this kind of destructive self-pity. Our lives have been tossed by the current energies as well — just yesterday’s news, if we don’t drag it along with us.
Blaming isn’t productive, nor is gaining from someone else’s loss. The notion that some of the millennials will cross over to support Trump may be true, but if so, these voters were never progressive to begin with, and really were after “free stuff.”
We must be mindful of what we build next. Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh tells us:
“We have the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast. But in the name of freedom, people have done a lot of damage. I think we have to build a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast in order to counterbalance. Because liberty without responsibility is not true liberty. We are not free to destroy.”
What we see in Trump — in the Trumpeters, et al — must be met with a compassionate heart. Our brothers and sisters are the product of that same generational programming I saw at work in Gaza years ago. Much as pit bulls are taught to fight to the death, racism and classism are passed along like a virus, one generation to the next.
To defeat Trump — and all those like him — we need to remember, as Thich warns, “Hatred and fear blind us. We no longer see each other. We only see the faces of monsters, and that gives us the courage to destroy each other.”
When we look into the eyes of those across the breach and behold the child within them, it will give us the courage to forgive and choose the way forward in calm and clear intention, to find the way of peace and love.
Very moving essay Jude. Very Plutonian. I like the idea of a Statue of Responsibility.
I like the idea of humanity in abstract too, but find it difficult to like many “real” individuals. Things like U.S. Presidential Election seasons are just one of many sets of circumstances that allow a certain set of human foibles to manifest in glorious abundance. How much suppressed loathing can a human being contain until he or she explodes. How much of civil behavior is just a façade barely containing a torrent of rage and resentment I wonder. Is it even conscious?
It is not in the nature of the (human) beast to look within Itself to find answers to its suffering. It is much easier to find the perpetrators of pain outside oneself; they are plentiful. We all do it. Admittedly, I was as unconscious as the average Trumpeter before life’s experiences gave me ever-widening perspectives. It was as if I had been inside an egg, waiting for the right time to hatch. It would seem then that some shells are tougher than others and many fellow human beings will even suffocate and die without ever seeing the light of day outside their own little shells.
I will continue to look for the child within others thanks to you Ms. Jude, but I can do it only in small doses without succumbing to physical suffering myself. Perhaps it is transiting Neptune in my natal 12th house, but bad vibes can rub off and require much alone (down) time before resurfacing so that once again, peace and love can be expressed outwardly.
If it weren’t for astrology’s beautiful synchronicity there would be no calm and clear way forward for me. Without the patterns provided by the planets to explain things, the surrounding insanity would push a lot of my tired old buttons and I’d be of no help to anyone. When you have no value or purpose to other fellow humans (goddess help us all) then what’s the point of being here? Surely I am not the only one here that feels this way.
As one with a Taurus south node I can tell you I like things that make me feel good. But it’s not enough when those around you are hurting, yet we see it happening all the time. Those with much to make them feel good (in material ways I speaking of) often seem oblivious to others who are deprived or suffering.
That kind of ongoing unconsciousness is not a life well spent. We are in such a special time when horrendous situations seem to go unattended and yet, magically, remarkable and beautiful people step up to the plate and force an opening into the all-shielding eggshell and others fall behind these beautiful people and lead us out of the dark. Thanks for being one of the beautiful people Jude.
be
Some shells ARE tougher than others, Ms. be — you nailed that. And I’m sure that the lessons being absorbed, even though they seem simplistic and brutal, are appropriate to the soul growth of those involved. I always keep in mind the Michael Material, from years back, and the varying degrees of soul level, not just in people, but — as in astrology — nation’s as well.
America with it’s Gem/Cancer cusp mentality is a young nation, full of young souls who panic unless told what to do. That explain a lot, I think — but we are in Shift now, and EVERYONE takes a leap. I’m depending on it!
And life does seem overwhelming, although as I remember it, not ALL of my years were this confounded; even in the 60s. We are all, at this point, dealing with OURSELVES. Those who choose hatefulness and small-mindedness, close their minds to Light, will have to live with the narrow band of experience they’ve chosen until they figure out they’re living a loop; those who choose a bigger perspective, will find expansion and positive growth all around them.
We can’t fix the world, you and I, Ms. be, but we can do OUR best, and that, added to the best of those around us, will move the energy upward. Here’s a thought that puts me in peacefulness, from Swami Vivekananda: “Condemn none: if you can stretch out a helping hand, do so. If you cannot, fold your hands, bless your brothers, and let them go their own way.”
OUR way, if we construct it lovingly, will have so much to offer the world, they MUST, eventually, lift their eyes to notice. Build a better mousetrap, i.e., a better plan … like Bernie’s is, moving those of us still unafraid to dream of a better day to step up and begin to create it!
Bless you, my friend, thanks for the input and — as always — kind words.
Jude, a few months ago I had the great fortune to be introduced to an amazing young Palestinian woman who grew up in Gaza, and is now working in Rome for the UN organization I work for. When I complimented her on her incredible English, and asked her how she learned the language – she told me that when she was given the use of a computer (she grew up in a refugee camp, where her family still live), she used it to teach herself English. Unlike many of her female colleagues, who are often aggressive and deeply self-centred, she is amazingly sweet and open. She told me that she would love to let people know that refugees’ stories can also be very uplifting. I’ve been swept away by family circumstances since I met her, but I hope to get to know this lovely person better, and maybe help her to take her up on her wish some day. Thanks for bringing me back to this with your piece, Jude.
That’s a lovely story, Lizzy, and I urge you to pursue it, because I KNOW you’ll find it very healing.
In a lifetime long ago (seems like,) I managed a Math/English Remediation Center at a Community College in the Northwest. We had a lot of returning vets — and, at cross-point, a lot of boat people, the Hmong.
The vets were the worst to deal with, their experience (this was before there was any treatment or acknowledgement of PTSD) and bias making them real ass’s to the Asians, especially since the Hmong were our allies, forgotten as we departed Indonesia.
The Hmong’s language skills were pretty good, they’d interacted with American’s for a long time. Their written skills, however, were a problem, which brought them to the center. In an effort to improve, we had them write their own personal stories — and they about broke your heart to read.
Homes destroyed, relatives lost, killed, drowned — family members raped, brutalized, victimized, including themselves. They were often doctor’s, teachers, professors working at whatever job they could get — cutting up veggies in Chinese kitchens or doing dishes, yard work or menial labor. Most lived packed together in small apartments, but I know some were homeless, still managing to do the school work that they hoped would lift them into a better life.
All this and yet I found them patient, sweet, generous and kindly. Even more than that: trusting. America hadn’t done well by them but they were, at least, not in the cross-hairs of the Viet Cong (if still in the bad graces of the GI’s that only saw them as ‘gooks’ and ‘Charlie.’)
This was not a particularly easy period in my life, but I took daily inspiration from contact with this souls. When we need to count our blessings, we just need to look around to see how much worse life can be. And giving voice to those who need one — or a helping hand, if we can — lifts us into new energy and dharmic vibration.
Thanks for sharing this today, Lizzy — be well, my dear, we appreciate you!
“All this and yet I found them patient, sweet, generous and kindly. Even more than that: trusting.” Yes – this is exactly what I have found with the wonderful Somali refugees I teach English to, dear Jude, and it gives me exactly the same inspiration and sense of perspective that your teaching gave you. Thank you for sharing your experience here, so eloquently (as always), and bless you for your love and support – means a lot to me. (((()))))
PS Jude. I imagine you already know the amazing book, ‘Healing invisible wounds’ by Richard F. Mollica? So recommend it.
And as most of us are deeply aware, there are lesser known stories, less dramatic incidents, that are no less the product of the insidious undertow of greed, indifference, and hate–and propped up by our political system.
I’m now officially primary defendant in a class-action against my daughter’s school, whose illegal housing practices were an immense contributing factor to her death.
Pluto was key to her death, if astrology has a say…..I too, enjoy picturing the Statue of Responsibility. For me, I see it standing proudly looking out over the San Fran Bay. It may never be there materially, but perhaps at least one or two people will have to stand up to their given responsibilities soon, and stop taking advantage of those in a position of less power.
Glad to hear you’ve found an outlet for some of your justifiable outrage at an irresponsible, if not criminal, bureaucracy, kiddo. We need people standing up for what’s right and just, so you have my support and prayers in this endeavor.
Again and again, we see examples of those who feel it’s just ‘too difficult to pursue’ justice, so they throw up their hands and walk away, which only makes matters worse down the line. In your case, your heart won’t allow that … which makes you my hero.
Hugs to you, aWord, and much Light on your path.
Jude’s words say it all, dear aWord. Much love and light and hugs to you.