End the Cycle
"The soft bigotry of our deep exhalations." - Anand Giridharadas
1977, 1993, 2009, 2021
The soft bigotry of our deep exhalations. - Anand Giridharadas
We don’t have time for that. Joe Biden is a good man and will, no doubt, be a good president, but he’s a placeholder. A stopgap. A last minute reprieve.
Winning the game by a Hail Mary toss into the end zone does not give you the right to scream “We’re No. 1!” for any longer than it takes for the custodians to clear the stadium.
There is work to be done.
America - home of the free, land of the brave - has a complicated history not all Americans are willing to acknowledge. America is innovative and, at the very same time, orthodox as hell. America, founded by immigrants, wrenched away from natives and built on the backs of slaves, becomes increasingly diverse with each passing decade and yet, stodgy, old white people - predominantly men - cling to power.
The ideas of stodgy, old white people dominate the discourse.
I come back to this same dog-eared, shopworn sermon because over the second half of the 20th century and the first two decades of the 21st century - the entirety of my lifetime - as a nation, we have been spinning wheels. And now that we have the means to have our voices heard, the people are too silent, too timid and too apathetic while the forces that do not have your best interests at heart are essentially turning the firehoses and unleashing the dogs on all of us.
Those firehoses and dogs being the various forms of media manipulating the course of the country.
Teddy Roosevelt said, “A great democracy has got to be progressive, or it will soon cease to be either great, or a democracy.”
The years I listed above are the years where voters ousted a conservative for a person less conservative. In every instance a crisis had been left behind for the leader who was less conservative to have to manage and rectify.
Here’s the deal, as our new president likes to say, America’s leaders are inherently conservative. They hew toward being conservative because it is what they believe is best for their pocketbooks and what is best for the coffers of the corporations that call the shots. Trickle-down economics does not work for ordinary Americans, but it works fabulously for those at the apex of the pyramid scheme.
No one in power has any reason to not be conservative. No one in power is going to venture far from neoliberalism, or whatever you want to call it, unless we give them no choice.
We need to turn the firehose and unleash the dogs on them.
Remember Elizabeth Warren’s stand against the appointment of Jeff Sessions as Attorney General? “Nevertheless, she persisted.” Elizabeth Warren is a hero of mine. I believe, in her heart, she is a fellow traveler. She might have fought that fight no matter what, but I think it was partially due to the ‘wind at her back’ from thousands and thousands of people making their voices heard. Spoiling for the fight.
A friend asked if I was relieved about the election results. I said, “Yep. I am.” But I am deeply concerned about the future.
I’ve seen enough to know that everyone on the upper decks of the Titanic are too distracted ballroom dancing, snipping Cuban cigars and networking to do anything about the impending collision. It’s going to take those of us in the hold to make ample noise so that they are at least aware there is a calamity unfolding. (Bad analogy, I know.)
The resistance will still have a purpose going forward and it shouldn’t be arguing with the residuals of Make America Great Again, or QtheNonsense, or Bible-verse-spouting Congresspeople. The resistance needs to concentrate on bringing the weight of our beliefs, cares, desires, hopes and suggestions to everyone we’ve hired to represent us in government.
Health care for all. A better pandemic response. Universal basic income. A tax structure that helps us meet the needs of our citizens. Livable wages. Sustainable, renewable energy supply. Making education meaningful. Making education affordable. (And not “affordable” in the way conservatives always talk about in regards to health care). Taking real steps toward mitigating climate change. Tackling systemic racism through education or outreach or a reallocation of funds. Put the best minds to work on immigration. Draining the goddamn swamp for real.
Choose one pet peeve and harp on it endlessly. Or choose several dozen and use them in an endless loop. Persist.
When someone asks, “How are we going to pay for it?” Say, “How did we pay for the past two decades of war in the Middle East? How did we pay for the last bazillionaire tax cut? How do we find the money to sustain the World Trade Center Memorial?”
We will have succeeded when every person in government reports to the media that they feel as if they are drinking from a firehose due to constituents contacting them. When every person in government reports to the media that they feel constituents are snapping at their heels to act.
We have the power to do that. Our tax dollars bought and built the vehicle with which we can do that. We need to wield it. Put it to some ‘good trouble’ use.
We’ve earned the deep exhalations, for the time being, but we can’t let it lull us back into complacency or indifference or soft bigotry.
###
I follow a guy named Michael Harriot on Twitter. He’s also a writer for a publication called The Root. Yesterday he had one of his fascinating threads about Black history. This particular one was about how he knew someone who knew the last Black slave in America. For him, it was a reminder of how recent slavery was practiced in America. It is a longish thread and I was tempted to publish it in full here. It includes a video from the USDA about “Negro” farmers which was included in Michael’s thread because the woman interviewed in the film - a “Sally Smith” - was the last person to have been enslaved in America.
Also, here’s a wiener dog playing soccer with a tortoise. The tortoise truly appears to be ‘in the game’! Enjoy!
