Toxic Times

I returned to Indianapolis after a week of being blessedly unconnected to “the usual suspects”—otherwise known as the media/chattering classes/punditocracy—to find that the National Organization for Marriage had been through town. Some forty “pro-marriage” demonstrators had promoted loving relationships with signs suggesting that gay people should be murdered. One particularly nasty poster featured a picture with two nooses.

Lest the gay community feel singled out, our local Tea Party crackpots have added anti-Semitism to their toxic brew of pique and racism, handing out materials about the Jewish Bankers Who Control Obama, among other pleasantries. And I won’t even revisit the much-publicized and despicable effort by Andrew Breitbart and Fox “News” to demonize Shirley Sherrod, the African-American civil servant with the Agriculture Department by twisting her words to make a plea to get beyond racism sound like an endorsement of racism.

In short, these are not the best of times.

I know the drill: we are hurting economically, and at such times, intergroup tensions tend to be high. There is a desire to find someone to blame for what ails us, and that must be the person or persons with the different color, religion or sexual orientation. Choose your “Them.”

I have my own pop psychology take on what ails so many people these days. As I noted in last month’s column,  I think a lot of people who have fewer resources—emotional, intellectual, fiscal—find themselves a bit like Rip Van Winkle, waking up to a world that has changed while they slept. Suddenly, there is a black man in the White House. There is a woman (a strong one) running Congress, another one heading up the State Department, and it looks like there will be three women on the Supreme Court, all time-honored bastions of male privilege. Turn on a television set or go to the movies, and there are all these openly gay people acting as if they were entitled to be treated like everybody else. The local weatherman or news anchor has a name like Huang or Sanchez, and at the office, there are brown and black coworkers of various genders and orientations.

The whole world is different, and those without the ability to cope with the changes—or even understand them—are fearful and angry and confused.

What we are seeing right now is analogous to the tantrum a two-year-old throws when he is tired and frustrated and not getting his own way. That’s why the Tea Party doesn’t have a coherent complaint or policy agenda, why Fox “News” and the right wing blogosphere disapprove of anything Obama does—even when it is the same thing they approved when Bush did it—because that usurper did it!

Most of the anger and hateful behavior we are seeing is really just lashing out at a world that isn’t behaving the way it is supposed to—at least, in the reality inhabited by those who are angry and frightened. It doesn’t help that there are political actors with a personal stake in fomenting that anger and stoking those fears.

The question we are left with is: what do we do? What do those of us with a more inclusive worldview and a less apocalyptic agenda do to tamp down the ugliness and defuse the hate? I wish I had a quick and pithy answer to that question, but I don’t.

I do know one thing. Until our political landscape settles down, until cooler heads prevail, we all need to speak up: to call the hatreds out, to advocate for understanding and acceptance, and to remind the people who are still able to reason that all people are entitled to be treated as individuals and judged on their behavior, not their identities.

Game-Playing

When I was growing up, parents and teachers used to tell us “it isn’t whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game.” Honor was a higher goal than winning. Playing fair, displaying sportsmanship, generosity in winning and gallantry in losing were the goals. Adults worthy of our admiration and respect were those who modeled such behaviors.

Need I say that times have changed?

There has been a great deal written about the Shirley Sherrod fiasco, and plenty of egg for all the faces involved. A right-wing blogger and Fox News favorite, Andrew Breitbart, was evidently offended by the NAACP’s demand that the Tea Party denounce those among them who had exhibited racism. In another echo from my childhood—nah, nah, you’re a bigger one—he posted a videotape purporting to show a speech by Sherrod, an African-American employee of the Agriculture Department, in which it appeared she was sharing anti-White sentiments after receiving an award from the organization. The tape, it turned out, had been doctored—when viewed in its entirety, it was a heartfelt plea to get beyond racism of all varieties.

The elderly farmer who was the supposed object of her bigotry emerged to protest the smear; his wife told how Sherrod had actually saved their farm. Fox News, which had heavily promoted the Breitbart version, backpedaled. Before the whole story emerged, however, the Obama Administration demanded Sherrod’s resignation. No due process, no fact-checking, despite Sherrod’s long and distinguished tenure with the agency.

Let me suggest that none of this was really about accusations and denials of racism. It was about game-playing.

American politics has become so rancid, so sordid, that lying to advance one’s party is evidently considered a perfectly acceptable tactic—so acceptable that even those of us who try to follow the news and separate fact from convenient fiction find it increasingly difficult to know what is true and what isn’t.  Organizations like snopes.com and factcheck.org can help, but most of us haven’t the time to sit at our computers double-checking every “fact” uttered by self-serving politicians.

Historically, we relied upon the mainstream media to do our fact-checking. But in the mad dash for eyeballs and audience share, in the era of the 24-hour “news hole,” even the outlets trying to practice legitimate journalism too often fail to check the accuracy of the charges and countercharges that have all but entirely replaced principled policy debates.

And what about those we have elected, ostensibly to run the agencies of government? The saddest feature of contemporary politics is the wholesale abandonment of seriousness and policy expertise for game-playing.  And what an ugly game it is, where control of a day’s news cycle is more important than the destruction of a lifelong public servant’s reputation. 

It’s bad enough that these political operatives never learned the lesson that how you play the game is more important than winning or losing, but what is really depressing is that self-government has degenerated into a game to be played.

Us versus Them, Redux

When I was growing up in Anderson, Indiana, Jews were often viewed as an alien species. I can remember being asked—in all seriousness—whether Jews had tails, and whether we lived in houses, like “real people.” In addition to these innocent if disconcerting questions, I also remember being called a “dirty Jew” for the first (but not last) time, when I was in second grade.

Fast forward. I was in my late teens and in college when John F. Kennedy ran for President. I vividly recall fellow students assuring me that Catholics were stockpiling arms in the basements of their churches (presumably to be used if he lost, but that was unclear). Those with less vivid imaginations nevertheless muttered darkly about “popery” and warned that a Kennedy Presidency would mean American obedience to Rome.

America has largely moved beyond those particular bigotries, and it would be comforting to believe we’ve matured enough as a society to avoid that sort of crude stereotyping of whole groups of people.

Apparently, many of us haven’t.

Recent news articles have reported on efforts in several cities—including supposedly cosmopolitan New York—to prevent Muslim congregations from building mosques. Opponents of those building permits have characterized Muslim places of worship as “terrorist cells,” and the religion as an incubator of anti-Western, anti-democratic values. Here in Indiana, where perennial candidate Marvin Scott is running for Congress against Andre Carson, one of two Muslims serving in the U.S. House of Representatives, ugly anti-Muslim sentiments are regularly posted to Scott’s Facebook page.

Are there Muslim terrorists? Sure. There are also Catholics whose devotion to the Church trumped their American duty to report child molestation to the authorities. There are Jews who engage in “sharp” business practices. There are lazy black people, emotionally volatile women and gay pedophiles. There are also all-American Christian terrorists like Timothy McVeigh, WASP crooks like Enron’s Ken Lay, strong women like Hillary Clinton and innumerable lazy white guys and heterosexual pedophiles. Judging people on the basis of invidious stereotypes doesn’t get us very far.

One of the foundations of the American value system—embedded in our legal system and culture—is this recognition that people deserve to be judged on the basis of their individual behaviors, not on the basis of their race, religion, gender or sexual orientation.  

We are living through some very tough times right now, and it is understandable that many of us are looking for scapegoats—someone to blame for a world that seems increasingly out of our control. It is human instinct to look askance at those who are unfamiliar, who look different, who come from other places or who follow different customs. There are also genuine issues that arise when groups new to the American landscape are in the process of assimilating to that landscape.  But we dishonor the American principles of equality and fair play when we treat any community as monolithic.

 Muslims—like Protestants, Jews, Catholics and other believers and nonbelievers—are just “real people.”

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Paradigm Shift

In a recent column about urban relocation, Neil Pierce noted that “for humans, displacement from their known settings may be exceedingly painful…the psychological impact of forced removal from a familiar neighborhood is like a plant being jerked from its native soil.” He went on to acknowledge that holding neighborhoods static isn’t practical.

Of course, it isn’t just neighborhoods that cannot remain static. The whole world is in a state of flux, what scientists might call a “paradigm shift,” and the pain and discomfort that undeniable fact is causing is manifest in our communications, our economy, and especially our politics. (How else do we understand the angry and frightened voices insisting that they want “their country” back?)

Most of us do manage to handle social change and the discomfort it brings without taking to the streets or indulging in paranoid conspiracy theories. We learn to accept new technologies and discard old prejudices, and to recognize the benefits that accompany the dislocations. But even those who welcome the new paradigm need to recognize its challenges, and that is especially true for those of us who care about our cities.

Let me offer just one example. When I was a young professional, civic leadership in Indianapolis was provided by people like Tom Binford and P.E. MacAllister, people who did not hold—or want—public office. They had deep roots in this community and believed they had a civic obligation to nurture it. Many leaders were drawn from locally-owned banks and industries—enterprises that depended for their viability upon the health of their city. Whatever the benefits of globalization and nationalization, those trends have largely robbed us of the corporate headquarters and local banks from which we used to draw people committed to the civic enterprise.

Political actors and elected officials can’t fill these roles. Furthermore, elected officials are less able to be effective without the help of a cadre of civic leaders who are committed to the long-term health of the community and who are not constrained by political considerations. (Long term to a politician, understandably, is ‘until the next election.’)   

The challenge we face is to simultaneously embrace our roots and our wings: to cultivate a city with a quality of life that rewards our allegiance on the one hand, and to welcome the opportunities that come with increasing globalization on the other. To meet that challenge, we need to figure out how we will cultivate the next generation of civic leadership.

A couple of years ago, a television commercial proclaimed “This isn’t your father’s Oldsmobile.” Today, of course, it isn’t your Oldsmobile either—it is no longer manufactured, and the American auto industry no longer dominates the economy. This isn’t your father’s Indianapolis or America either. If the old saying is right, if change is the only constant, we need to do what previous generations did: accept reality and inhabit the world as it is.

Our job isn’t to whine about the inevitable—our job is to make it better.

Beam Me Up, Scotty

I should probably be ashamed to admit it, but my TIVO is set to copy episodes of Star Trek—mostly, the “Next Generation” but also the Deep Space Nine and Voyager spinoffs. I’ve watched some of these so often, I can repeat the dialogue. Verbatim. And although I like most science fiction, I vastly prefer those that—like Star Trek—depict a future more utopian than dystopian.

Which brings me to a seemingly unrelated topic: my unsolicited correspondence file.

I rarely get hate mail from readers of the Word (although I do seem to prompt the occasional bitchy post from local gay bloggers), but my columns for the Indianapolis Star generate quite a number of nasty emails and snail mail. Some of these are one-time rants about my elitism, liberalism, lack of common sense or morality and general unworthiness to occupy the planet; others are predictable messages from persistent “pen pals” who evidently believe that the fortieth time they explain to me that God doesn’t like homosexuals, a light will finally dawn and I’ll suddenly agree with them.

One of those persistent correspondents was the man I referred to in a 2009 column titled “Dear Nutjob.”  (I know—not very civil. I was steamed.) This is the guy who keeps sending me “research” proving that my son can be “cured” of his gayness. In the previous column, I vented; after receipt of his more recent correspondence, I have taken to wondering what possesses him and people like him—what leads them to insist that difference equals less than and otherness is to be feared and/or hated (or “cured”)?

It isn’t just GLBT folks who generate this response. Look around at the “teabag” folks who are constantly proclaiming that they want “their” country back. It’s not difficult to figure out who they want it back from: African-Americans, immigrants, uppity women who no longer know our place. Look at the hysterical efforts to keep Muslim-Americans from building a Mosque in lower Manhattan, and the claims that all Muslims are terrorists. How dare all these outsiders consider themselves equally American, equally entitled to civil liberties, social status and political office?

I have my own theories about what motivates all this. (You’ve probably noticed that I’m never short on theories—how valid they are is, I know, debatable.) The world is changing, and if that change isn’t really more rapid and disconcerting than ever before, the internet and the 24-hour news-hole certainly make it seem that way.

For some of us, that change is exciting, and much of it is welcome, but for others, it is profoundly destabilizing. In a way, they are all like Rip Van Winkle, waking from a 20-year sleep to confront an alien reality. I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised if experiencing change that way pushes some folks over the edge. The good news is—at least, if polls are to be believed—most of the ugliness of our current public discourse is the product of us older Americans. (As I tell my students, once my generation is dead, things should improve!)   

All of which brings me back to the Starship Enterprise.

I know it is more than fiction—it’s probably an impossible fantasy—but part of me really wants to believe that we humans will eventually learn to behave the way they do on the bridge of the Enterprise, respecting and cooperating with a wide variety of human and alien comrades, and turning our combined energies to the task of exploring and understanding the mysteries of the universe.

Oh well. A girl can dream.