A "New Yorker" State of Mind

Chosen...But why?

I had an interesting letter show up in my mailbox last October.  It came from The New Yorker, offering me 26 issues of the magazine for the incredibly-low price of $26 (plus an extra $2 for my state's sales tax.)  After thinking it over, I decided to go for it.  Two weeks after sending off my check, the first issue arrived.

Now, four months later, I have decided not to renew the subscription.  Because really, it just isn't my thing.

Okay, don't get me wrong....

There is nothing wrong with The New Yorker.  The reporting is almost BBC in its calm staidness.  The humor is often provincial (meaning, if you aren't from New York, you may not get it), but the cartoons are cool.  And it always has something to expand my mind about some subject.

It's when it starts talking about the "arts" that it loses me.

There is a way of talking about art, whether it's literature, cinema, theater, dance, music, or visual art, that makes you want to learn more about it.  A way that assumes that some readers may not be familiar with So-and-So, but here's why this person, play, movie or album is worth a listen or look.  A way that uses common language to express those sentiments.

The New Yorker doesn't talk about the arts in that way.

Not a non sequitur, I promise!

I cannot stand Ann Coulter.  She's a mean girl, especially when she's talking about people and situations that she's never met or experienced.  But after reading almost 16 weeks of New Yorker reviews of new plays and profiles of trendy artists of various and sundry kinds,  I found Ann's brand of mean words infesting my thoughts:  Rarified air.  Ivory tower.  Out of touch with the norm.  Liberal elitism.  Bleah!

So what the hell does that mean?

Well, after a great deal of thought, I found that what it means is that The New Yorker (or at least its arts section) isn't written in my native artistic language.  My Language of Art boils down to a single phrase:  "I may not know much about art [of any sort], but I know what I like."  The New Yorker's Language of Art boils down to a different phrase:  "You should like (or hate) this."  The reviewers never seem to really give their own reasons for liking or hating a film or exhibit or whatever;  instead, the reader is made to feel as though they ought to like, or hate, the art or the artist--but the reasons given are so esoteric that only the "in-crowd" of artistically-fluent people will understand them.  I'll be the first to agree that art is in the eye of the beholder, and that this is not only okay but necessary;  but I refuse to let someone else define art for me...no matter how "ironic" or "iconic" it's supposed to be.

So I guess I'm not trendy enough for a magazine like The New Yorker.

Two different cities.

There are two different New York Cities that share space in my head.

The first is the one that N.K. Jemisin and other authors (and filmmakers) made me fall in love with.  That NYC is a mixed bag of folks from all ethnic backgrounds and walks of life, trying to live, love, and make a living;  a whole lot of little communities balled together in one city.  That was what I was hoping to see more of by subscribing to The New Yorker.

The other NYC is the one from The New Yorker, and I don't like it much.  I don't speak the language, and really, I bet that if I actually went to the city, a lot of real New Yorkers wouldn't speak it either.

The Trouble With Jason...

I've Heard This Song Before...

Back in May, a new track by Jason Aldean entered the 10-song rotation on the "Modern Country" channel that we play at our store.  It was called "Try That in a Small Town," and it sounds a lot like several other "country good, city bad" songs that have appeared from time to time...same jingoistic "respect the flag or else"-"the gummint's comin' for my huntin' rifle"-"good ol' boys are the only decent people" straw-man claptrap that I have heard before.  In this case, though, it all appears in one song, sung in heavy-duty aggro mode.

Jason says that the song is about helping your neighbor and having a sense of community.  But there's already a perfectly good song with that theme:  "You Find Out Who Your Friends Are" by Tracy Lawrence.  The best part of that song is that anybody, anywhere who has ever been down and out and been rescued by true friends can relate.  But "Try That" is a definite threat, not only against big-city criminals who might try to bring their mess to Jason's town, but also anyone who might be raising awareness of police brutality, mass shootings, or the evils committed under the aegis of the American flag.

This was my problem with the song as it is, mind.

Then Came the Video!

I owe much to NPR, the Washington Post, and the "Now This News" YouTube channel for filling in the blanks for me on why everyone started calling the video--and by extension, the song--racist.  I already mentioned the implied "country good, city bad" vibe;  I could see that all the crime backgrounds in the video were urban.  The implication was that stuff like that never happens in small towns.  (This is complete bullshit;  I'll get back to this statement a little later.)

But what I did not know was that when it shows Aldean singing, the background is a courthouse where a lynching took place.  In 1927, an 18-year-old Black kid named Henry Choate was accused of attacking a 16-year-old white girl;  allegedly, he confessed, even though the girl never named him as her assailant.  A mob grabbed Henry from his jail cell, dragged him through town behind a car, and finally hung him off the courthouse balcony.  The courthouse in question--the Maury County Courthouse--is located in Columbia, TN, which was the scene of a "race riot" in 1946 (this is the white-supremacist term;  it was way more complicated than that, and it wasn't the Black people that started the trouble).  In the 1990's, it was the venue for a so-called "Good Ol' Boys' Roundup," which featured racial slurs and a pretend lynching.

Yikes.

The company that produced the video says that Aldean did not choose the video's location, and that the Hannah Montana movie was also filmed there (though I bet she never sang any racially tone-deaf lyrics against the background of a courthouse reflecting film of burning American flags).

That may be true, but...seriously.  You can Wiki both the Choate lynching (not the only one to happen there) and the 1946 confrontation.  The idea that the company didn't know Columbia's history rings false somehow.  It seems more like they didn't care.  Aldean obviously didn't;  he has consistently defended the song and said that calling the video racist is going too far.

But CMT pulled the "Try That" vid out of their rotation after the controversy heated up, and it makes me wonder if somebody there did some Wiki research of their own.  It's frighteningly easy to pick up a racist vibe from the video once you know Columbia's racist history;  CMT was doing the bare minimum of the right thing by pulling it.

Oh, and to all the Aldean fanfolk screaming about "cancel culture"...the Dixie Chicks (now just the Chicks) would like a word.  All they did to get cancelled was say they were ashamed to be from the same state as George Dubya.  Nobody I know was defending them when they disappeared from every radio station owned by Clear Channel.  So kwitcherbitchin'.

And Now, Back To My Comment...

Remember Aldean's implication that big-time crime didn't happen in small towns?  Remember, too, how I called "bullshit" on that?  Well, let me tell you a story.

Back in my hometown, there was a bachelor brother and his spinster sister, both middle-aged, who lived together in the same house.  This was in the 1980's, and things were still relaxed enough that hardly anybody locked their door unless they were leaving for a while.  The brother often came to our house of an evening, toting a case of cheap beer in the front of his overalls (he didn't own a car or truck, though he would gladly help you fix yours, or indeed help you with any odd job you needed) as a contribution to the evening's festivities (usually music played on the front porch).  His sister was a science-fiction fan like me, and we traded books and got together with the school librarian for road trips to large cities with book stores.  Neither sibling had a job, so I'm guessing one or both of them was on disability, or perhaps a military pension in the brother's case.  But if that was the case, they weren't getting much--enough for basic needs and a little beer (and book) money.

One day in the late 80's (I was away at college at the time), while the siblings were taking an afternoon nap, several teens from a neighboring small town (not city kids, mind you) walked right into the house looking for drug money.  They killed both of the siblings in their sleep, and got away with just a few dollars...not a hundred, or even twenty.  Less than that, and no jewelry or other saleable loot, since those people had none.

According to my mom, the whole town went up like a firecracker, with all kinds of threats if those punks ever showed up in town again.  The punks got caught by the county cops, they went to jail, and the only lingering effect of the murder was that now everybody locked their doors, even when they were home.

So, sorry, Jason.  Small towns do get their share of heinous crimes.  But you know what doesn't help?  Vigilante mobs.  All you get from those are lynchings.

In Memory of Ajike Owens

 What I Wanted to Do Today

Today, I was going to write another post about Juneteenth.  I was looking forward to it, in fact--I had the day off, the weather was much milder than it had been in a month, and the subject is both worthy and pleasant.

But I can't write about Juneteenth today, because I have to write about Ajike Owens.

She was a Black mother of four, who lived near Ocala, Florida.  She was a manager at McDonald's and worked hard to provide for her kids.  And I'm having to use the past tense here because she's dead.

Not from natural causes, mind.  Ajike--AJ to those who knew her--is dead of a fatal gunshot wound to the chest.  The gun in question was fired by a white woman named Susan Lorincz, who was safe in her own house, but didn't like it when Ms. Owens pounded on her door to confront her about the way Lorincz had treated her kids.  Lorincz shot AJ Owens through the door!

What Happened...

It was Friday evening, and AJ's kids were playing in a field next to a quadruplex.  One unit of that 'plex was rented by Lorincz, and according to neighbors, Lorincz had a long history of harassing not only the Owens kids, but also all the other kids in that neighborhood, who all liked to play in that field.  The field was apparently a sore point with Lorincz;  she called it "her property" (she didn't own any of that complex or its land) and did everything she could to chase the neighborhood kids off of it.  She would shout racial slurs at the kids, rev the motor in her truck or blast the horn in order to intimidate them, and even wave a gun in their direction!

So:  Friday, June 2nd.  Lorincz yelled at the Owens kids to get off the field.  Eventually, they did, but one of the kids had left his iPad there, and Lorincz went out and took it.

The details get a little confused here.  In one account, when the kids went to Lorincz's apartment to get the iPad back, Lorincz threw the iPad at the kids, hitting one of them and cracking the screen.  In another account, Lorincz threw a rollerblade and hit one of the kids in the toe.  Still another account has Lorincz poking an umbrella at the kids.  At any rate, her behavior caused the Owens kids to go and get their mother to handle the situation.

Owens went over to Lorincz's apartment and began to knock, good and loud, on that door and demand that Lorincz come out.  Lorincz, for her part, called 911 and told them that Owens was "pounding" on her door, and that she was "breaking it down."  And then Lorincz fired her gun through the door, hitting Owens in the chest.  One of her sons attempted CPR on his mom, but Ajike Owens died before an ambulance could get her to the hospital.

So, the Cops Arrested the Killer.  Right?

Wrong.

The sheriff on the case hemmed and hawed about how when you get to a crime scene, sometimes you only get "one side of the story."  He emphasized a "long-running feud" between Owens and Lorincz, as if that somehow explained how an armed white woman shoots an unarmed Black mom through a closed door.  He didn't want to interview the Owens kids right away because he thought they might not want to talk to officers; he was waiting for "trained counselors" (or some such bullshit term) to talk to the kids.  Oh, and they were also trying to determine if Florida's "stand your ground" laws were applicable. 

Dear God.  An unarmed Black woman is dead, and the cops are wondering if the armed white woman who did the shooting is protected by a stupid law that wouldn't even fly in the so-called "wild" West, where many towns required you to check your shootin' irons at the local sheriff's office.

But the Owens family were not about to take this in silence.  They hired attorney Ben Crump to represent them, and they got the word out about AJ and how she died.  As awareness grew, pressure on the local law did, too, and they finally arrested Susan Lorincz on Tuesday, June 6th--which also happens to be the anniversary of D-Day.  Rather appropriate.  By Friday, she had been charged with manslaughter, culpable negligence, two counts of simple assault, and battery;  her bond was set at $154,000.

Lorincz has pleaded "not guilty" and claims that the Owens kids--ranging in age from 3 to 12--had threatened to kill her, which I find laughable considering who had the guns (turns out Lorincz had a second gun in the house) and who did the actual killing.

The Thing I'm Really Afraid Of...

...is that Susan Lorincz will walk free.

Florida is a bad state for justice of any kind if you are a Black person.  Trayvon Martin's killer is free to this day, and it's looking like the only judgement he will ever face is when he dies and stands before God.

Lorincz has "outed" herself as a racist;  by her own admission, she called the Black children in her neighborhood the n-word and also "Black slave."  She was "afraid" that Ajike Owens was going to break in her door and kill her.  But her fears were imaginary.  Like so many white people, she looked at the color of her neighbors'--and their children's--skins and assumed them to be troublemakers and killers.  So she became a killer herself.

But will a jury see it that way?  I have my doubts.  Because Lorincz's lawyer will be damned sure to pile on as much victim-blaming as he can, and will dig up any dirt he can on AJ's character, work habits, parenting...anything to smear that good mother's reputation and make poor Susan look like the brave old lady protecting herself from a female Black thug.

Nevertheless, I pray that truth and justice will prevail.  The state of Florida owes that to both the family and the memory of Ajike Owens.

Update:  Justice for Ajike!

It took me a while to catch up, but I can now happily report that in August of this year, Susan Lorincz was convicted of manslaughter.  In November, she was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

AJ's kids are still orphans, and her family's grief will never quite go away.  But they can at least take comfort in the fact that Susan Lorincz did not walk free.  At the end of this long, sad day, there was justice for Ajike Owens.

I Love My Country, But... : A Few Thoughts About Patriotism

The Last Refuge of Scoundrels

I have kind of a weird quirk:  I refuse to fly a U.S. flag.  Or wear a pin.  Or hang up anything "flaggy" like a wreath or one of those distressed wooden signs.  And I absolutely refuse to clothe any part of my body with anything red, white, blue, starred and striped.

It's not that I "hate America" or favor burning the flag or any such nonsense.  It's just that I feel the same way about patriotism that I feel about my Christian faith:  that if I'm a true patriot, it should be obvious from the way I act and the attitude I have toward my fellow Americans.  (Which, on the Christian side, is why I don't wear a cross, either.)

This whole "more patriotic than thou" flag-waving dates back to the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.  Flags sprouted up everywhere, and it was considered a mark of support for our country.  All very well and good;  but as the years have ground on, that sort of patriotism has taken on the air of being more "the last refuge of scoundrels" than the genuine article.

And Just What Do You Mean by That?!

Oh, I can hear it now:  "Well, if the flag offends you, I'll help you pack!"

Hey, I'm not condemning the flying of the flag;  but when you see it everywhere, all the time, doesn't it sort of lose its meaning?  When you see full-size U.S. flags waving off the back of pickup trucks, or bandannas and other flag clothing being worn by all and sundry--not just on Memorial Day or the Fourth of July or the several other national holidays that call for flying the flag, but all year long--well, frankly, I'm tired of it. 

 The flag isn't supposed to be an object of reverence in and of itself;  it's a symbol.  It's supposed to be a symbol of goodness and doing the right thing and all that, and sure, some of that is true...but to be brutally honest, we've also done some massively awful things throughout our history.  From enslaving Black people to persecuting and killing Native Americans to meddling in the internal affairs of other countries (cough-cough-Iran-cough-cough), our record is far from spotless.  But a real patriot faces those actions and says,  "Yeah, it happened, and we were wrong to do it.  From now on, we need to do better."  What's so wrong about that?

Excuses, Excuses!

 And I'm sorry-not-sorry, but I have no use for any politician who waves the flag--either literally or figuratively--as an excuse for why he or she won't do something or help somebody or take a certain course of action.

A perfect example is the hate-on that the modern GOP has for a national health care program.  Heaven knows, the ACA is a patchwork solution at best, relying too much on the non-existent goodwill of Big Pharma and private companies who care more for the Almighty Dollar than for the well-being of their clients.  A single-payer system similar to that of Canada would do a lot to rein in the runaway horses pulling the private-insurance wagon, and would cost less for everyone, including the government.  But what do Republicans say when the idea is voiced?  "It's socialism!  It's not American!"   

Which is nothing but red, white and blue bullshit.  

The Preamble--the "mission statement" for the country--says that "we the people" were, among other things, aiming to "promote the general welfare."  Meaning, create an environment that was beneficial for all people to live in.  Health care for everyone is a natural fit for that part of the Preamble.  And as I have pointed out before in another post, keeping the American population healthy is a sensible investment;  healthy people can work better and produce more.  And when regular checkups and routine scans are free, serious diseases can be caught before costly treatments are needed;  even better, when people are following their doctor's advice, many ailments can be prevented.

So if a politician's only argument for failing to act is "But it's not American," he or she just might need to get voted out.  Because the concept of what is "American" is decided by all Americans...not just a few reactionaries who fear change.

Flag of Hate

Of course, there are those whose only real use of the flag is as a banner of hate, and I would be failing in my duty as a patriot if I didn't call those assholes out.

Yeah, that would be you, "Proud Boys" (notice it's not "proud men"...hmmm).  And you, too, "Oath Keepers" (any connection to the Promise Keepers?  Gotta wonder).  Yep, you Klukkers get a cyber-boo as well.  And every other stupid militia movement and white supremacist cabal sliming up the American flag while claiming to defend it.  You know why Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the National Anthem?  It was because of know-nothing hate junkies like them.  When people believe that justice and equal rights are only for those who look and believe the way they do, they reveal themselves to be fake patriots.  No one who truly loves this country should ever look to people like that for guidance.  And if any politician is following some hate group's guidance...well, on Election Day it would be an excellent idea to vote him out (but do be informed, lest you vote in someone worse).

And Finally...

I know I'm coming across as something of a doom-and-gloomer;  with Memorial Day approaching, most folks are looking forward to cooking out and hanging with the family, and the last thing they want is some little Worm like myself raining on the party!

But we need to be thinking about these things, now more than ever.  Muddy thinking has led us to this pass, and if we don't start defining terms like "patriot,"  we will continue to see the term misused and misapplied.  On this holiday, we are supposed to remember the many men and women who have lost their lives to defend the freedoms we have;  let us also remember that those freedoms have a flip side of responsibility.

So here are a few things a real patriot is and does:

• A real patriot loves her country, but not blindly.
• A real patriot is willing to admit when her country's people have done wrong, and is ready to make things right.
• A real patriot never calls another person's opinion "treason";  if the opinion is wrong, she will lay out the facts that demonstrate this, and not simply call her adversary names.
• A real patriot may disagree with what someone else says, but will always defend his right to say it.

And finally:

• A real patriot treats all other citizens and would-be citizens with respect and kindness, and does everything in her power to ensure that they are afforded the same rights and opportunities as everyone else.

 Have a safe and fun (but thoughtful) Memorial Day!

Juneteenth Is for Everyone!

 On This Historic Day...

I would like to formally welcome our nation's newest Federal National Holiday.

Also, I'd like to say:  It's about damn time!

Juneteenth--the celebration commemorating the full emancipation of the slaves in the last Confederate holdout state of Texas--originated in Galveston on June 19th, 1965, with the reading of General Order No. 3 by Union General Gordon Granger.  Celebrations of Juneteenth date to at least 1866, with local church-based gatherings (because white people refused to allow Black people to celebrate anywhere else);  from these, the holiday has spread across the nation--first through the South, then to the North--and has grown into a celebration not only of Black Independence, but also of Black culture and food.  It has even made its way to Mexico, courtesy of the Mascogos, descendants of a group of Black Seminoles who escaped slavery in 1852 and settled in Coahuila.

All this is more or less regurgitated Wiki.  But this lowly worm would like to advance the radical notion that Juneteenth is not just a "Black holiday."  This holiday is for everyone!

Okay, before anyone gets mad...

No person is an island.  We all need each other.  And back in the Bad Old Days, when a Black individual was considered 3/5 of a person for census purposes, there was a group of allies who shone brightly in those dark times.

I speak, of course, of the Religious Society of Friends, better-known as the Quakers.  Among other things, they were the most vocal of the Abolitionists.  This was no accident, nor was it a stance of convenience;  the Society's founder, George Fox, claimed to have received a direct revelation from God that slavery was wrong, and that Fox should spread this word to others.  However my readers may feel about people who claim to have heard the voice of God,  I would have to say that in this case, Fox did hear rightly.  His obedience, and that of other members of the Society, led to the publishing of much anti-slavery literature, petitions to various levels of government (local to [post-Revolutionary] federal) for an end to slavery in the nation, and the founding of the escape network widely known as the Underground Railroad.

Efforts such as these contributed to the attitudes of other Abolitionist groups and individuals, such as Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose novel Uncle Tom's Cabin sold some 300,000 hardback copies in the United States alone.  The novel raised the debate about slavery to such a pitch that President Abraham Lincoln, upon meeting Mrs. Stowe, referred to her as the "little woman" whose book had caused a "big war"--meaning, of course, the Civil War.

Meanwhile, down on the plantation...

...The slaves were freeing themselves!

They ran away from their so-called "masters" and headed North, where they built new lives and told their stories, which were published and spread by Abolitionists.  Some of them became "conductors" on the Underground Railroad, returning to the South to help free more of their people from slavery.  The most famous of these was, of course, Harriet Tubman, who never lost a "passenger" and has been lionized in stories and (finally) a major motion picture.  My favorite book about her was one I read as a kid called Harriet Tubman:  The Moses of Her People.

Now, the slaveholding South believed that whites were inherently superior to Blacks, and that slavery was the "natural state" of the Black person.  But you couldn't prove that by the actions of Black people, who were not only escaping to the North, but also rebelling in ways large and small.  The best-known rebellion was that of Nat Turner, who led an uprising of over 70 Black people, both slave and free, who killed 55 whites before the revolt was shut down by white militia forces.  (An interesting side note:  This rebellion almost led to a gradual emancipation.  Nat Turner's confession was published as a book, and some white folks in Virginia, reminded of the dangers of slavery, presented petitions that would gradually end slavery.  But the majority, not wanting to lose their slaves, ixnayed that.)

People who want to be free and are willing to risk their lives to get that freedom are not "natural slaves."  That this was finally recognized and fought for by allies and others does not diminish the spirit of the Blacks who escaped and rebelled;  it affirms that their spirit is strong and true.

This, fellow worms, is called facing reality.

The culmination of all that blood, sweat and tears was a set of Constitutional Amendments.

Amendments don't pass by themselves, you know!

The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution--known as the Reconstruction Amendments--were passed by the required 2/3 majority of Congress in 1865 (the 13th, which freed the slaves; the Civil War wasn't even over yet), 1866 (the 14th, to counter white southern opposition to the 13th), and 1869 (the 15th, which was passed to counter--you guessed it--racist opposition to Black voting rights).

But remember, that's only part of the process.  After their passage, the amendments had to be ratified by a whopping 3/4 of the states.  The miracle is that it not only happened, but happened quickly:  The 13th Amendment took only 10 months and 6 days to get that majority;  the 14th, 2 years and 26 days;  and the 15th, 11 months and 8 days!  In fact, by 1871, 31 out of the 37 states had fully ratified the 14th and 15th Amendments.  There were 11 original members of the Confederacy, so that means that five of those ratifying states were originally rebels to the Union.

It wasn't only the Black vote that achieved that.  It was good white allies, many of whom were probably involved in the Abolitionist movement before the war;  but that vote probably also included a number of white people who were just plain ashamed of themselves.  Shame may be a poor reason for doing the right thing, but it sure beats doing the wrong thing because of cowardice.

What I am not saying...

There has been a lot of talk in recent years about the "white savior" factor.  Movies such as Driving Miss Daisy, The Help, Hidden Figures, and most recently Green Book, have been strongly criticized for their portrayal of helpless Black people who needed the help of whites to get the respect and credit they deserve from society.

When I say that Juneteenth is for everybody, I am not saying that "if it weren't for white people, Black people would never have won their freedom."  No, what I'm saying is that bringing this holiday into the full view of all Americans gives every one of us the chance to learn some history and celebrate together...and declare our commitment to doing better by each other than our ancestors have done.

In Conclusion...

If you are invited to a Juneteenth celebration, or there is a Juneteenth street fair in your area, by all means, go.  See some great art, hear some great music, eat some great food.  Listen to the readings, be humble, and definitely be sure you know all the words to "Lift Every Voice And Sing."

We've been backsliding, children.  Time to repent and move forward.

Happy Juneteenth, everyone!

If We Were a Christian Nation...

 That's what we say, but...

A great deal of the anti-immigrant grumbling I hear on a semi-weekly basis has been about three things:  point of origin/race, poverty, and religion.

I used the fore slash on the first point because when pressed on the issue, the person who said it will backpedal and say something like  "I'm not prejudiced" or "I'm not racist" or "Not that there's anything wrong with coming from (fill in underdeveloped country/region)."

The unspoken addition to all those sentences is "...but..." followed by a sentence that proves that the person is, in fact, prejudiced, racist, and opposed to that undeveloped country/region.

The second point is even more insidious, in that it carries the assumption that a poor immigrant is somehow lazier than a home-born US citizen, or that if too many of "them" are allowed in, our country will be just as poor and badly-managed as their countries of origin are.  

These assumptions show a near-complete ignorance of our history--former immigration waves, including the Irish, Eastern Europeans, Asians, and the forced immigration and enslavement of Black people, have grown and improved the USA on all levels.  (The Black sons and daughters of the Middle Passage have yet to reap the fruits of their labors, a situation that we ought to find appalling but do not.)

Such assumptions also show a bias toward the faulty idea that poverty and ill-management are inborn traits...a belief strongly held by Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood.  But we know more now about the environmental stresses that keep poor families stuck in their condition like a phonograph needle in a scratched LP groove--how poor nutrition stunts children's mental development, which in turn leads to poor grades and behavioral problems, which shoves these unfortunates into the world with few skills and fewer opportunities, which leads to despair, apathy, crime, and violence.  And the cycle continues when these young people produce children of their own.

But that's environment.  Put people like that into a better environment, with better opportunities, and they will do better than their forefathers.

Then there's the point about religion.

I remember a number of years ago, there was a big flap in one of the southern states, where a Muslim woman objected to having to remove her hijab (head scarf) for her driver's license photo.  I can't remember what the courts decided about it, but I do remember an Internet posting that my mom forwarded to me titled "Immigrants, Not Americans, Must Adapt."  The writer was sick and tired of having to move over and make room for the customs and cultures of those who come here from somewhere else.  The hijab was only one of his gripes;  he also objected to having to accommodate people who don't speak English (never mind that English is very difficult to learn as an adult, especially if a person has never spoken any other than his cradle language.  Fun fact:  The more languages you learn as a child, the easier it is to learn more languages later.  Not so fun fact:  Most poor immigrants have never had the opportunity to learn any but their own language.) and the overwhelming of "our" culture by all these weird new customs.  His opinion in a nutshell (emphasis on "nut") was that immigrants should forget their own languages, religions, and cultures, learn English, and be hyper-patriots who salute the flag and never say a bad word about the good ol' US of A.

The point being...?

Along with those grumbles against immigrants, I also hear about how we are a "Christian nation."  That's the accepted reasoning for not allowing people in who practice some other religion (especially Islam, although white supremacists object to Judaism as well).

I would laugh at this if I weren't so horrified.

I remember reading a book called In God We Trust by Norman Cousins.  It was an overview of the religious beliefs (or lack of them) of our Founding Fathers, and it was quite the eye-opener:  With a very few exceptions, most of the FF's were Deists, meaning they believed in God as Creator of everything, but also believed that He created Man as a reasoning creature with the power to choose between good and evil.  Having done that, He left the universe to its own devices, trusting us to make the right choices for ourselves and our communities.

One of those Deists, Thomas Paine, was a militant believer in the triumph of Reason over emotional religion (there was a Great Awakening in progress right before the Revolution), and he wrote a book titled The Age of Reason in which he ridiculed the Biblical account of Creation, the idea of God actually speaking to people, and any miracles whatsoever.  Thomas Jefferson, another Deist, produced a version of the New Testament that excised all the miracles of Jesus and any of His words regarding His Divinity.  Jefferson firmly believed that Jesus was a great moral teacher, nothing more;  he blamed the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation on the corruption of Jesus' teachings by Paul and others.

Ben Franklin, though still a Deist, was much gentler toward those who disagreed with him.  He heard the preaching of George Whitefield, whose dramatic style of speaking helped fuel the Great Awakening, and though he had great respect for Whitefield's powerful sermons and their effect on people, he could never bring himself to convert to Whitefield's brand of Evangelicalism.  Franklin was more concerned with living a moral life than with any ecstatic "new birth" experience.

Of the very few who weren't Deists, one (I think it was John Jay) was a militant anti-Catholic, and another--George Washington--kept his religion very private.

If any doubt remains in the mind of the reader, the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment ought to erase that:  "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or preventing the free exercise thereof."  In modern language, that means the federal government is not allowed to create a national religion, favor any existing religion, or keep people from worshipping any god they wish...or none, if they so desire.  James Madison said that the reason for that clause was to keep the religious wars of Europe out of the United States.  He also believed that pure religion flourished better without government influence.

Why the myth dragged on

So how did we get to thinking we were a Christian nation when our founders weren't Christians and our Constitution wasn't designed for it?

Well, in simple terms, Christians were in the majority.  Mostly they were Anglicans, but there were Methodists, Friends (Quakers), and Catholics as well.  Later came the Baptists and Lutherans, as well as some odd spin-offs such as the Shakers, the Christian Scientists, and the Mormons;  but all those groups at least named Christ as having some influence on them.  States had religious laws on their books (Blue Laws--no businesses open on Sunday;  adultery and homosexual acts as prosecutable crimes), and no one who had any influence objected.  In fact, business leaders knew that belonging to the "right" church was essential to their standing in a community.

But as time went on, we began to get people coming in who weren't even nominally Christian:  Jewish people, Asian people (Confucianism,--more an ethical system than a religion--Shintoism, and Buddhism), Indian people (Hinduism and various branchings), and Middle Eastern people (mostly Islam, but also some Zoroastrianism as well).  As these groups and their influence grew, the influence of Christianity as the dominant religion has waned, and more legal challenges have been raised to counter the comfortable assumption that Christianity is the only right way to define our nation.

Some people--especially if they adhere to the teachings of various loud-mouthed televangelists--believe that this trend is a sign of the End of Days.  I don't think so.  If we want to be Biblical about it, God has only ever made a specific covenant with one people group:  the Israelites.  The Israel of the Old Testament was supposed to be a theocracy, with God Himself as their King.  After some disastrously-corrupt priests abused their power, the people rejected that model and asked for a human king, which God allowed.

But the New Testament changed that.  Now God's covenant is with anyone, anywhere, who trusts Jesus Christ for salvation.  Different denominations argue about what that means, but we all agree that Jesus is at the heart of the matter.

And what does that mean for America?

Well, it means that we American Christians ought to behave like Christ's followers, and not go around judging others.  Which brings me back to my original title.

If we were a Christian nation...

• We would not go around bragging about how great we are.
• We would seek peace with all nations, whether they agreed with us or not, and would go to war only as a last resort.
• We would care more for the poor, the sick, the oppressed, and the prisoners in our midst.
• We would spend our money on things that benefit everyone.
• We would have upright leaders who didn't take bribes (read:  campaign contributions).
• We would have a justice system that dispensed justice based on law rather than wealth or influence.
• We would be more concerned about pollution and climate change, since God set humanity as stewards of His creation.
• We would repent of the evils we have done in the past to Native Americans, Blacks, Nisei, and many others, and we would do whatever we could to make things right.

And finally:

• We would welcome immigrants into the country, since everything we have is the gift of God, intended to be shared with others.

That's what we would do, if our nation were truly Christian.  Since we don't do those things--or do them inconsistently--outsiders have every right to doubt our Christian claims.  After all, Jesus said that a person's true character would be known by his or her "fruit," or acts.  Given our ongoing actions as a nation, those words ought to scare us shitless.

Notes from a (Social) Distance II: The Unwanted Sequel

Remember when...

..."Rona" was a gossip columnist?

...the only vaccines you needed as an adult were for shingles, the flu, and tetanus?

...your only worry about that person sitting way too close to you at the bar was that they might be hitting on you?

Times sure have changed, huh?

They have.  Permanently.

In some ways, it's for the better.  About 73% of the adults in this country are fully vaccinated against COVID;  I don't have the stats for children.  And President Biden has done a great job getting the vax rollout done, despite his infamous predecessor having left no plan at all for getting the shots into our arms.  Building a plan from scratch that quickly, with no cooperation during the transition?  That alone should win Biden a second term, in my book.

And we now can get rapid tests that you can use at home to tell you if you have COVID!

But...

Things are worse, too.  Because so many people haven't yet been vaxxed--not only here, but around the world--COVID has had a chance to mutate.  We're now up to a variant called Omicron, which is way more contagious than its parent.   The vax won't stop it, but it does at least help your body fight it... but the variant is still highly dangerous for older people, even if they are vaxxed!  (And the at-home test doesn't always catch the Omicron variant in a timely fashion!)

The pharma folks are working on a booster that will protect against Omicron, but it's one of those impossible races against time that only work out in the movies.  Which means that COVID, whatever the mutation, is well on its way to becoming endemic.

In fact, the odds are high that sooner or later, we all, vaxxed and unvaxxed, will get some mutation of COVID.

Welcome to the new normal.

We still have the conspiracy nuts who try to tell everyone that the virus is a government plot (weirdly, they point to the mutations to prove it), that Dr. Fauci helped the Chinese create it, that the vaccine is made out of aborted stem cells, that this or that quack remedy will either prevent or cure COVID....It never ends.  Meta and Twitter ban accounts when the misinformation gets too egregious, but those accounts mutate like...well, like a virus.

Also, there are the alt-right politicians who refuse to impose masking, social distancing, and vaccine mandates on their populations, protesting that such measures put too much stress on people and the economy.  There is some truth to that, but how difficult is it to find compromises?  Remember how I talked about the curbside pickups for take-out food and groceries?  Those things are still around.  And the vax bill is being picked up by the federal government--I definitely prefer that to them buying a bunch of new weapons or arming the next edition of the contras.

The right-wing politicians point to the learning problems that kids have had due to lack of actual classroom time.  Distance learning, it turns out, didn't work as well as we hoped because the kids didn't cope well with the isolation.  And most children who catch COVID have mild symptoms.  So if the teachers get vaxxed and boostered, we should be okay, right?

Well...yeah.  The problem is that when the children come home and bring the 'rona with them without knowing it, the entire family is at risk.  The adults, even the vaxxed people, will have to isolate until they can be tested, thus losing time from work.  And any close contact with Grandpa could kill him.

It's one of those Gordian knots that can't be solved by cutting it in half like Alexander the Great did.  But there are people on both sides in such high dudgeon over the school issue that nobody is working on a solution.  Somebody needs to start teasing those tangles apart, and soon.

So what now?

Now, we wait.  We do the best we can.  We get vaxxed, get boosted, try to avoid the unmasked idiots, and hope that at some future time we'll be able to go to a concert where we can dance with strangers in the aisles and not worry about getting sick.  We order takeout instead of going to the restaurant (unless they have an outdoor patio), and at home we try new recipes from YouTube, Reddit, and Insta.  We watch live-stream church services instead of attending in person.  At work, we mask up with a filter insert, and hope everyone else will keep six feet or more away from us.

And we pray.