I was watching the Democratic National Convention (strictly speaking, I was listening to the Democratic National Convention). I was not necessarily believing what I heard, but I was fervently hoping that it was all true.
Nine years is almost a decade, nearly half a generation—that is long enough. Enough time to spend on hate and prejudice, mean talk and just plain rudeness. Enough time wasted with name-calling and diminishing fellow humans’ worth.
Was my concern for the oppressed groups? Sure, but no more than for the rest of us. Rich or poor, Black or white, Islamic, Christian, Catholic or Jewish, foreign or home grown—we all lose when we wallow in hate and lose sight of the truth.
For example, the United States of America needs immigrants. Whoever is advocating for closing the borders and keeping all of them out of our country is sadly uninformed or brazenly deceptive. If they were to get their way, our economy would collapse, flatten, perilously depress.
Never mind all the contributions immigrants have made to our culture. Never mind that we are all immigrants except for the aboriginal tribes. A lack of immigration would destroy the American economy—poof! Is there actually someone who wants that, or do they just talk to shock or offer opinions without information or understanding?
Antisemitism, really? Who wants to live in a world without Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Bobby Zimmerman, and The Fonz? Who wants to live without Irving Berlin, Paul Newman, and Madeline Albright? Anybody? Who wants to live without Seinfeld and Streisand? How about Leonard Bernstein and Marilyn Monroe—albeit the latter is a convert like Sammy Davis Jr. Still, would we be happy if they were in camps waiting to be gassed?
Just sayin’—what are we doin’?
You really think Harry Bellefonte, Sidney Poitier, and Michael Steele are dumber than the rest of us? You know they are better looking than all of us, right? Who would we quote without Martin Luther King Jr., Maya Angelou, and Oprah?
What about women? Is it really a good idea to suppress them? Because without them, we only have the extant population, and then the end of the human race. Did we really figure this out? What we want is to create a group that is disenfranchised, without the rights of autonomy or privacy, a group that is underpaid and over assaulted without consequence; then we assign that group with primary care and educating of the next generation. Is that all the better we can think the problem through? How about if the women decide absent birth control, abortion, and protection against domestic violence there will be no sex?
Speaking of sex, do we know why, all of a sudden, folks don’t know which sex they are? Why there are more than two choices? How is the correct response to ban books and bully children? Did anyone just ask them: How ya doin’? Whatcha doin’? What’s goin’ on? Study what is different or confusing and have a conversation.
Who else is out there to dislike and misunderstand? Latinos? Latinas? The LGBTQ+ community?
Yes, I know, we were never promised a perfect Union, only “a more perfect union.” Better than the other forms of government. As Winston Churchill explained, democracy is the worst form of government except for all the other forms. OK, but we were also assigned the obligation to keep working on it, figure out ways to improve. So, on what have we been wasting the last nine years?
On the first Supreme Court decision that removed rights from the people rather than granted them?
On politicians promising to keep it up and remove more rights and withhold more benefits?
On the untethered greed that foists a monkey-wrench in all our machinery.
Government can be a force for good. Really. Its primary purposes are the distribution of goods and protection of the tribe. If it does the first equitably and the second with respect for all the members, well, simple as that, government becomes a force for good.
