A Lament in Springtime
April 2022
Copyright, Joe Baker, Boiling Springs PA
I haven’t been writing about politics much since late 2019. I haven’t changed my mind or undergone any epiphanies I’m aware of (I can barely spell the word, so I don’t have them very often). To be honest, I’m just tired. Doing my little part to make Trump disappear was a heavy lift and combined with an epidemic and lots of dumbass behavior that made it worse, I’m just shell shocked and strung out. But I’ve been thinking a lot. It’s a combination of hitting 65, having a brush with cancer, and taking a lot of walks. Something has been germinating, and now seems to have popped out of this pensive soil.
Like most everyone else, this is the most divided I’ve seen this country. About a third of us now believe something that is empirically and demonstrably untrue like they believe the sun rises in the east. A lot of folks on both sides of the political spectrum view folks with opposing views as less than themselves, which is the first and most critical step to violence. There are lots of historical precedents: Germany in the 30’s, Russia in the late 19th century, this country in the 1850’s, China many times. This always end badly. Maybe the violence is inevitable, I have no way of knowing, but I feel like I should say something.
I am not interested in changing anybody’s mind. That’s a fool’s errand. I just want to point a few things out for anyone interested enough to listen. Maybe it will help. Maybe not…
A lot of the judgement that’s going on right now is based on long-standing mythology and collective historical amnesia. In the little rural town I live in, we had an angry school board meeting over history curriculum. The loudest people were vocally opposed to critical race theory being taught here in little old Cumberland County Pa. That’s fine, because it’s not taught here, nor in any other US school district I’m aware of. There’s a link below to a nice scholarly article about it from Education Week. People can read it if they want to. The yelling and screaming didn’t interest me that much, but one comment I heard gets to what I think is an important point. One of the loudest people in the room expressed her frustration at being “…made to feel ashamed that I’m a white Christian woman!”
This was uttered in a room completely full of white mostly Christian folks, but these days irony is apparently quite dead.
Historically and demographically speaking, the problem here is: she ain’t “white”. To put a finer point on it, nobody is. The idea of “race” from a biological perspective is just horseshit. It’s the original fake news. If you want to know more about it, there’s a link below to a popular level article you might read.
Judging by her blond hair, fair complexion, and surname, the nice lady at the school board meeting is a descendant of Scots Irish Presbyterian and German Anabaptist immigrants who arrived in this corner of the world in the 18th century. I assume she knows next to nothing about the experience of these immigrants. A detailed recital is beyond the scope of this little Jeremiad but suffice to say it was unpleasant. Her forbearers arrived here poor, persecuted, speaking funny languages, and practicing odd religions. The waves of immigrants who preceded them called them strange, dirty, dishonest, dangerous, and so on. This was mostly due to the wealthiest folks encouraging this behavior and using the recent arrivals as scapegoats for everything from price gouging to low wages. After a generation or two, the descendants of these very folks visited the same bigotry on succeeding waves of immigrants. My own mom was an immigrant from Italy in the 20’s, so she got to find out what wop and guinea and dago meant in elementary school.
I think it would be a very good thing indeed for everyone to do a little study of their own family history. Genealogy is fascinating work, and among the many sometimes astonishing discoveries one encounters is almost always evidence of hardship, mistreatment, and bigotry visited on your own people. You will encounter stories of your ancestors overcoming this crap, and doing noble, amazing, admirable, brave, extraordinary, and mundane things. You will also inevitably find evidence of some of your own family doing absolutely awful things. That’s OK and it’s to be expected. I have a great grandfather who was not Mother Theresa.
To quote Henry Louis Gates “Guilt is not inherited.” There are truly good, salt-of-the-earth people on this earth whose ancestors include Nazi’s, Klan members, Fascists, Stalinists, slave traders, mercenaries, and various kinds of scary criminals. But they’re not them. All lives are self-made. A deep dig into your own family can take you to some pretty dreadful places, but they can inform you and impart wisdom and understanding.
My point is this: learning history, including and maybe especially unpleasant history, is good for you. Understanding other people’s experiences and pain and accomplishments is good for you. Learning your own family history, including the shitty parts, is good for you. Knowledge and experience really is power.
De-fanging the anger and tribalism in this country is mostly a matter of understanding where your neighbors are coming from and how they think. Those things are largely a product of their history and of what happened to them, sometimes generations back. If you want to see why your neighbors and friends think or vote or act in ways you don’t understand and maybe don’t like, a lot of the answers are in their roots and in your own, and you’ll have to dig a little to find them. Failure to do so impoverishes you and leaves you vulnerable to quacks and crackpots and creeps who have a vested and usually financial interest in keeping you ignorant and angry.
This is important. We are on the precipice of real violence. I live about a half hour from Gettysburg Battlefield. There you can walk among the endless rows of white gravestones and contemplate the reality of being at your neighbors’ throats. If you would avoid that, the path forward lies behind you. Go find it.
On critical race theory
https://www.edweek.org/leadership/what-is-critical-race-theory-and-why-is-it-under-attack/2021/05
On race and biology
https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/race-is-real-but-its-not-genetic
