Rant – Defeating The American Politics of Hate

I’m reposting an edited version of this rant from last year. It seems more relevant today than it did then.

I’d like to think I’ve mellowed, but lately I’ve succumbed to the other side of old: disgruntlement. With all this unbridled hate from so many Americans based on skin color and religion, I have to hold back a loud screaming, “A pox on all your houses!” Some houses are worse than others, despite the fact that many of them claim to be God’s house.

Unfortunately God, in all his or her guises, has been imagined re-imagined, co-opted, adopted politicized, interpreted, and reinterpreted to serve mankind’s baser instincts. The so-called “word” has been translated into so many languages so many times no one really knows what was intended, not even the folks who claim to have heard the word directly from God’s mouth and transcribed it for posterity. Then again, what do we usually think about people who hear “voices?”

What’s going on here and around the world really is a battle of people afraid of knowledge and science, bound instead to superstition and paranoia. They form gangs of often violent followers who demand you believe in their made-up story, not the other guy’s. There has been and will be torture and torment in nearly every land in the world because someone says Mohammed is the greatest, another says Christ, another Buddha, another Ganesha (my personal favorite).  Moses fits in there somehow. And then there’s that whole Zeus-Jupiter dispute, not to mention the sun Gods. And let me add: I think pantheists are vastly under rated.

There is enough confusion just in Christian circles. When I was growing up, I was curious about the seeming unexplainable.  A Catholic kid who lived a couple of houses away learned that my family was Lutheran and told me matter-of-factly that I was definitely going to hell. Only Catholics went to heaven.  I told a young friend of mine, an evangelical Christian, what my other friend said and he told me to stay away from Catholics because all Catholic schools had guns in their basements and planned to kill us all when the time was right. In my formative years I went to various churches, places where bodies were dunked in water, eventually sputtering, coughing, choking to the surface suddenly saved or reborn. I could do that at home, in the bathtub, I thought. I’ve always had an independent streak. I could save myself, thank you. I also listened to those souls who testified, in a state of mind just short of a voodoo trance.  

In high school, a group of us regularly met in a basement to discuss such matters without resolution or agreement, but with mutual respect and the enjoyment of a hearty discussion.  In college, nearly every night of my freshman year, often while playing euchre, we discussed the meaning of life, and sorted, with my friends, through various philosophies, Eastern and Western. Despite my focus on theatre and journalism, over the years I took elective courses in Western Philosophy, Buddhism and Hindu. And like most folks of my generation, I dipped into the popular and mysterious literature of the times, from Hermann Hesse to Carlos Castaneda.

After sitting at a bar in Bloomington, Indiana with still another group of intellectually curious friends, a young man whom I’d never met and never saw again said that everyone searches for an epistemology. I sensed truth here. Perhaps it was like hunger or sex. Something built in.  I asked about him later and no one in our little group heard from him again.  Perhaps he found his epistemology or perhaps he went off on a search. A third possibility was that he thought the whole idea was foolish and that his comment was far from an endorsement, more of a futile, disappointing observation.

He may have been puzzled at the notion that we need a rulebook at all.  At the time, I thought that by epistemology, he meant people needed a set of rules to live by. Most religions had them, it seemed. That would explain this extraordinary and to me silly dependence on so-called sacred text, no matter in what part of the world, or when it originated. Nearly everyone may be looking for the official rulebook, the one that would guarantee him or her not only an afterlife, but a damn fine one at that.  So imagine if you think you’ve found it and you did your best to live by it, then someone comes along and says you’ve been reading and abiding by the wrong rule book all your life. You are going to get pissed. Why not just try to live a good life?  You know how to do that. Do you really need a book to tell you not to do harm to others?

There are more than 4,000 religions on earth, and more than seven billion people, (a few more than can fit in a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco). So maybe we, at least here in the U.S.A., need to listen to our founders who fled religious persecution and wanted religious freedom for all. That’s who we are as a nation. Work to protect all our freedoms and not be pro one religion and anti-another. So believe what you will, live as you like as best you can in a just manner, and keep your rulebooks to yourself.

Incidentally, “epistemology is the study of knowledge and justified belief,” according to The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. So we might want actual science to play a role in the outcome of our endeavors.

A final note: We, in the U.S., are approaching elections to determine who will represent American interests at home and abroad. Lately, we are experiencing a major candidate who seeks office by tapping into our fear and ignorance of other cultures and religions.  He takes advantage of world events, reshapes their meaning to ride the fear they have created. He skews statistics and blatantly lies. His party would revisit the tactics of the Nazis and use them on certain people they erroneously consider dangerous or inferior. His party would reinstate pre-Selma voting laws that would prevent certain Americans from voting. They would deny full rights to minorities based on little more than unverifiable folktales.

Let’s put the bluster of modern–day Mussolinis to rest.  Let’s keep the old-style Klan-inspired segregationists a footnote to history. Let’s ignore those who believe this is a nation that holds a single religious or philosophical belief.  I don’t regard pride as something to seek, necessarily.  However the United States of America should be proud of being a melting pot of the world. It has been our single, most outstanding accomplishment. It has been the source of our entrepreneurial energy and the inspiration for invention.  With the possible exception of native Americans — and they likely came from somewhere else, only much earlier — we are a nation of immigrants.  Many colors, many languages, many faiths. Let’s not get caught up in the cynical attempts to scare us into hate and discrimination.  

Rant — The Bullies Among Us

I could promote one of my books or I could go off on a rant.  Rant it is. The subject is the police.   Now I’m going to put in all the appropriate, honest and heartfelt words before the word, “but.”

I think cops, firefighters and emergency room staff are heroes. These are people who, all day long, deal with humanity’s most dire circumstances. Today, speaking of cops in particular, I can’t imagine how difficult it is to deal with not just the worst of us on our worst days but with the violence, heartbreak and always-imminent danger. I’m not unselfish enough to have taken on that challenge and, perhaps, because of this I should be cautious about my criticism.  I believe I am.

But there are some seriously bad cops out there. And because they are cops they, unlike any other professional, should police their own.  In too many cases they are not doing a thorough enough job of it. And in too many cases, they protect their own. This is nothing new.  But as we find some of the current presidential party nominees wanting to replace the constitution with the Bible, profile neighborhoods based on religion or ethnicity, deny rights based on sexual orientation, or have this immigrant nation round up immigrants and, without due process, send them back to what may be a deathtrap, it is clear that authorities, including police, are taking advantage of their power to support their personal prejudices while some police are required to enforce illegal (read unconstitutional) policies set up by small minded governors, state legislators and mayors.  North Carolina and Mississippi are prime examples. So is my home state, Indiana, whose governor, Mike Pence, has taken his personal and bigoted opinions and signed or tried to sign them into law.

Recently, an Indiana state trooper (after a couple of lawsuits) was finally fired for stopping motorists for legitimate traffic infractions, asking the drivers if they accepted Jesus Christ as their savior and what church they belong to. Reading this reminded me of an incident in 1970 when I was stopped in Carmel Indiana, a ritzy suburb of Indianapolis, for having a peace symbol decal on my Karmann Ghia.  I was told to peel it off or face the consequences. The Carmel cop wore what seemed to me to be a pretty big gun on his belt. Sitting beside me was my lover, who was fearless and who, when pissed off, became angry in a stereotypically, intentionally queenish way, sometimes with a "snap" at the end of his tirade. I begged him to remain silent while I, losing any shred of dignity I might have possessed, scraped off the peace symbol.  My thinking was if a decal made this cop belligerent, what would two gay guys do to his tiny reptilian brain. I didn't’ tell the cop I was a veteran, including a stint in Vietnam and as well as being constitutionally entitled to my opinion. He had already appointed himself sole arbiter of what rights he thought I should have and no doubt any other “hippies” who crossed his path. One of my regrets is not doing something about this. I can only tell you it was 1970, and I wasn’t as brave as some cops who put their lives on the line to protect us no matter who we are or what we believe. I wasn’t as brave as those drag queens at Stonewall in 1969, demanding equal rights in the face of armed opposition. Had I made a row, I would likely have lost my job and our home. It was a battle I didn’t think I could win. I was cowardly but pragmatic. Even with my small humiliation, I dreamt of ways to get back at the cop. To get revenge, even if it made me an outlaw.

Yes, this is all minor compared to the inordinate number of deaths that un-armed African Americans endure at the hands of police in various parts of the U.S., the number of African Americans who are stopped, searched and questioned without probable cause, or the percentage of African Americans who populate our prisons.

However, if we tolerate police officers who feel empowered to enact their prejudices or turn a blind eye to those police among them who do, we have a society that perpetuates inequality and its offspring – bitterness and violence.  It is how abuse of the law by those who are supposed to enforce it fairly can create criminals and terrorists.

Rant – Food For Thought And The American Politics of Hate

I’d like to think I’ve mellowed, but lately I’ve succumbed to the other side of old: disgruntlement. With all this unbridled hate based on skin color and now religion, from so many Americans, I have to hold back a loud screaming, “A pox on all your houses!” Except that some houses are actually worse than others, despite the fact that most of them claim to be God’s house.

Unfortunately God, in all his or her guises, has been imagined re-imagined, co-opted, adopted, politicized, interpreted, and reinterpreted to serve mankind’s baser instincts. The so-called “word” has been translated into so many languages so many times no one really knows what was intended, not even the folks who claim to have heard the word directly from God’s mouth and transcribed it for posterity. Then again, what do we usually think about taking advice from people who hear “voices?”

What’s going on here and around the world really is a battle of the superheroes, each with their bands of often violent followers who demand you believe in their made-up story, not the other guy’s. There has been and will be torture and torment in nearly every land in the world because someone says Mohammed is the greatest, another says Christ, another Buddha, another Ganesha (my personal favorite).  Moses fits in there somehow. And then there’s that whole Zeus-Jupiter dispute, not to mention sun Gods, which kind of makes sense to me. And let me add: I think pantheists are under rated too.

There is enough confusion just in Christian circles. When I was growing up, I was curious about the seeming unexplainable.  A Catholic kid who lived a couple of houses away learned that my family was Lutheran and told me matter-of-factly that I was definitely going to hell. Only Catholics went to heaven.  I told a young friend of mine, an evangelical Christian, what my other friend said and he told me to stay away from Catholics because all Catholic schools had guns in their basements and planned to kill us all when the time was right. In my formative years I went to various churches, places where bodies were dunked in water, eventually sputtering, coughing, choking to the surface suddenly saved or reborn. I could do that at home, in the bathtub, I thought. I’ve always had an independent streak. I could save myself, thank you. I listened to those souls who testified, in a state of mind just short of a voodoo trance.  In high school, a group of us regularly met in a basement to discuss such matters without resolution or agreement, but with mutual respect and the enjoyment of a hearty discussion.  In college, nearly every night of my freshman year, often while playing euchre, was spent discussing the meaning of life, and sorting, with my friends, through various philosophies, Eastern and Western. Despite my focus on theatre and journalism, over the years I took elective courses in Western Philosophy, Buddhism and Hindu. And like most folks of my generation, I dipped into the literature of Hermann Hesse and Carlos Castaneda.

After sitting at a bar in Bloomington, Indiana with still another group of intellectually curious friends, a young man whom I’d never met and never saw again said that everyone searches for an epistemology. I asked about him later and no one in our little group heard from him again.  Perhaps he found his epistemology or perhaps he went off on a search. A third possibility was that he thought the whole idea was foolish and that his comment was far from an endorsement, more of a futile, disappointing observation.

He may have been puzzled at the notion that we need a rulebook at all.  At the time, I thought that by epistemology, he meant people needed a set of rules to live by. Most religions had them, it seemed. That would explain this extraordinary and to me silly dependence on so-called sacred text, no matter in what part of the world, or when it originated. Nearly everyone may be looking for the official rulebook, the one that would guarantee him or her not only an afterlife, but a damn fine one at that.  So imagine if you think you’ve found it and you did your best to live by it, then someone comes along and says you’ve been reading and abiding by the wrong rule book all your life you are going to get pissed. Why not just try to live a good life?  You know how to do that. Do you really need a book to tell you not to do harm to others?

There are more than 4,000 religions on earth, and more than seven billion people, (a few more than can fit in a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco). So maybe we, at least here in the U.S.A., need to listen to our founders who fled religious persecution and wanted religious freedom for all. That’s who we are, as a nation. Work to protect all our freedoms and not be pro one religion and anti-another. So believe what you will, live as you like as best you can in  just manner, and keep your rulebooks to yourself.

Incidentally, “epistemology is the study of knowledge and justified belief,” according to The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

I was looking for an epistemology, something that would give meaning to life, but something that also made sense. Whoever he was, he was right, I think.

A final note: We, in the U.S., are approaching elections to determine who will represent our interests at home and abroad. In the last few days we have experienced a slew of candidates who seek office by tapping into our fear and ignorance about other cultures and religions.  They take advantage of world events, reshape their meaning to ride the fear they have created. They skew statistics and blatantly lie. Some would revisit the tactics of the Nazis used on certain people they considered dangerous or inferior. Some would reinstate pre-Selma voting laws that would prevent certain Americans from voting. Some would deny full rights to minorities based on little more than unverifiable folktales.

Let’s put the bluster of modern–day Mussolinis to rest.  Let’s keep the old-style Klan-inspired segregationists a footnote to history. Let’s ignore those who believe this is a nation that holds a single religious belief.  I don’t regard pride as something to seek, necessarily.  However the United States of America should be proud of being a melting pot of the world. It has been our single, most outstanding accomplishment. It has been the source of our entrepreneurial energy and the inspiration for invention.  With the possible exception of native Americans — and they likely came from somewhere else, only much earlier – we are a nation of immigrants.  Many colors, many languages, many faiths. Let’s not get caught up in the cynical attempts to scare us into hate and discrimination.  

Happy Thanksgiving.