Fear, Ignorance, Hatred

Saw a story today in the paper about the “Tough” sheriff in Phoenix who likes to “round up” anyone who might be an illegal immigrant, on whatever minor charge he can think of – broken taillights, cracked windshields, you name it. I’m sure he has plenty of support from righteous folks who think that illegal immigrants are stealing jobs from decent Americans, and committing identity theft in the process. The sheriff and his supporters mention "crime" and "the laws" a lot.

The line that’s been haunting me all day since then is from Woody Guthrie: “They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.”

Listen to “Deportee” (I think The Byrds did the best version) and think about the immigration debate. These people are being treated like thieves for supposedly stealing jobs and Social Security numbers. Crime, fraud, oh my; now we can treat them like outlaws. But the jobs are those that won't be filled otherwise, and the use of fake Social Security cards would only benefit the people whose Social Security numbers are being used – not he people using them. So what’s being stolen?

I’ll tell you what’s being stolen in this whole debate. Our humanity, and our core values. This country has fought a two-hundred-and-thirty year struggle to keep the values of liberty, equality, and opportunity alive -- not only in the face of external threats, but also in the face of the more insidious threats of fear, ignorance, and hatred. That’s about as simple as I can make it.

Fear, ignorance, and hatred. They come up most often in commentary about the immigration debate, but they really poison our whole political discourse and much of our culture these days. Not that it's new, by any means. But all this stuff has been stewing around in my mind, and gets me trying to think about it all (which my wife would say is a dangerous thing to start me doing).

Reading Kathleen Parker’s column the other day, about how the “true bloodline” of Americans is being overlooked by the presidential candidates, really ticked me off as a not-so-subtle piece of racist rhetoric. People have been using their purported idenitity as part of a "better" group, from time immemorial, to keep other folks down.

But it occurred to me that maybe the real “bloodline” that defines the United States of America is a bloodline of ideas and values. At our best, our country stands for affirming the best in people, and protecting the people who need protecting the most. I don’t care what party you support, or where you stand on all the tired “litmus tests” that are supposed to define your ideology and let you be pigeonholed and tallied by the pollsters and politicians seeking your vote. It’s the values that matter. And we need to take a hard look at every issue and every position related to that issue, in some very simple terms: Does that position represent and affirm our most basic and cherished values, or does that position represent a forgetting of those values, in favor of our less-admirable motives?

And I’ll tell you exactly what those less-admirable motives are: Three words: Fear. Ignorance. Hatred. Think about it.

Fear is a terrible basis for policy. It gives us excuses to start ill-advised wars, causes us to allow our basic rights of free expression and free assembly to be threatened, and it fuels hatred as surely as June heat fuels weeds. Fear got us into Iraq; it spawned a whole new bureaucracy that worships suspicion at our airports and in our border towns, and it nurses grudges even when the reason to be afraid is gone.

Caution is another matter. Caution leads to further investigation, and to looking before we leap. Caution is rational; fear is irrational.

So what’s the antidote to fear? Courage. Courage means knowing the risks and dealing with them or transcending them. Courage means being willing to meet others halfway and work toward solutions. Courage means being willing to balance safety against our other important values.

Then there’s ignorance. Ignorance means not only failing to educate yourself about the facts, but also failing to think when an issue presents itself. Ignorance is jumping to conclusions. Ignorance is assuming that those in authority are making decisions based on good information, and that they’re trustworthy. Ignorance believes questionable theories because they make us feel more comfortable, or because they excuse us from having to check things out and think for ourselves. Ignorance is letting emotion be the basis for selective attention, as when we use one incident to “prove” that all of “those” people are “that way.” Ignorance is assuming that one solution can cure all our problems – whether that solution is more taxes and government oversight, or letting “the economy” take care of decisions that profoundly affect the general welfare, further disempowering those already without power.

So what’s the antidote to ignorance? Well, the simplest answer is “intelligence,” but you gotta be careful using that word so people don’t think you’re elitist or making some kind of categorization of people. You know, “The Bell Curve,” and all that. But let’s define intelligence this way: Developing and using our powers of human reason in order to solve problems and make things better in the long run. Intelligence is the “executive function,” the “ego” as opposed to the “id;” it's the willingness to postpone immediate gratification, to look at issues objectively, and to arrive at some reasoned conclusions rather than using knee-jerk reactions. Sure, passion can play a part in this, and passion often tips the balance in favor of one approach when several might work. But passion without reason is like a fire hose with no one to aim it. It wastes resources, fails to solve the problem, and can hurt people needlessly.

So let’s use Thomas Paine’s reliable old phrase and call what we need “Common Sense.” It works for me.

Which brings us to hatred. People underestimate the sneakiness of hatred. Oh, there’s plenty of pure, straight-ahead hatred in this world, there’s no doubt about that. And people who indulge in hatred seem to gravitate to others who enjoy the same thing, which creates mobs and keeps bumper-sticker makers and talk radio hosts in business.

But there are plenty of milder, yet still destructive, forms of hatred. There’s resentment, which leads to revenge and grudges. There’s jealousy, which leads to malicious scheming. And there’s labeling and dehumanizing, which may not be accompanied by anger, but which lead to many of the same results as angry, hateful, spiteful behavior. Hatred rejoices in the misfortune of others. Hatred loves to turn others into objects so they’re easier to hate. And hatred fuels things like litmus tests and loyalty oaths, because hatred loves things to be in all-or-nothing terms. If you’re not with us, you’re against us.

By the way, you notice at this point how fear, hatred, and ignorance feed on each other and help each other out immensely. All three get us to forego the higher human faculties in favor of the baser urges. All three involve our “lizard brains,” to use a term that’s been popular lately, because those pesky higher functions of our minds take a bit more energy than the simple information-processing subroutines that our animal urges favor. See bug (or something that looks like a bug). Catch bug. Feel good. See illegal immigrant (or someone who looks like an illegal immigrant). Catch illegal immigrant. Feel good.

Last week I washed out my barbecue grill on the lawn. The next day I saw that my dogs had eaten all the grass and a pretty good quantity of dirt from the spot where I'd washed the grill. My dogs swallowed a bunch of dirt because they liked the way it smelled. The parallel with the audience for the average ranting talk radio host is just too perfect to pass up...

One of my favorite quotes as a therapist has always been, “Emotion, like fire, is a useful servant but a terrible master.” Emotion can drive much of our behavior, on the political front as much as on the relationship front. Whether it’s Eliot Spitzer’s tarnishing of the role of attorney general, Bill Clinton’s impeachment circus, or stupidly negative campaign advertisements, unregulated emotional urges and their accompanying stupid behaviors cost us, and they cost us plenty. They cost us financially, they cost us our spirit and our morale, they cost us time and energy that could better be used fixing the real problems we all face, and they cost us our integrity as a nation.

But I digress. So what’s the antidote to hatred? Pretty simple, really. We’ve been taught since we were kids that it’s respect, concern, helping others, and plain old charity. The Golden Rule is golden for a very good reason: It works best as a guide to behavior. We’re social creatures. We don’t have tusks, poisonous skins, claws, sharp teeth, or powerful muscles. We have each other. We need each other. And we find our purpose on this earth in relation to each other. Originally, that meant survival of the tribe. But we can’t afford tribes anymore. Our existence is too fragile and too interdependent. So the tribe has to be all of us. But it certainly needs to start with our nation. And governments and political leaders probably hinder social cooperation much more often than they help it.

The United States was built around a basic affirmation of those values of cooperation and working together, of dignity, and of equality. Sure, we’ve often failed to live up to our standards, but at least we kept them front and center through much of our history. Or at least that’s the story we’ve tried to tell ourselves and our children. We saw the hypocrisy of allowing slavery, so we eventually got rid of it -- though it almost tore us apart and came at great cost. We struggled with the unfairness of keeping more than half of our fellow citizens (women and black people) out of the political process, and we did the right thing in each case -- though it’s been a struggle that continues to this day (hanging chads, anyone?) But that story is no longer being told. Instead, we have cynicism and brainless ranting. Most political discourse these days is garbage, and we shouldn't be proud of it as a reflection of what our citizens strive for.

All of our images of the traditions that we want to keep – whether it’s Norman Rockwell’s ordinary citizen speaking up at a town hall meeting, or “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington – reflect the aspirations contained in those three guiding principles: Courage, common sense, and respect. Yeah, I know, the images are always of WASP-ish men in those roles, but that's not the point. A rainbow of people should be honoring that tradition and setting the standards we should all be following. So if Norman Rockwell doesn't do it for ya, think "Sesame Street" and "Mr. Rogers." Who are the people in your neighborhood? Won't you be my neighbor?

So what should we be doing? Well, we should start making a point of evaluating our own discourse, and that of others, according to these values. And we should demand of our politicians that they do the same, whether they are stating their positions or making decisions on our behalf. Let’s start with you, Senator Obama. You talk about hope and change; let’s hear you start publicly affirming these values. It would be a real change, and would give us all a lot more hope.

Senator, you have my permission to take any part of my blog post here as material for a speech. I won't mind. Hearing some of these ideas get talked about in the political arena would be reward enough for me.

Random Thoughts (Well, OK, random gripes)

Low Sodium Blues

I had a blood pressure "adventure" last week -- despite being on medication for 4 years -- and called my doctor after my B/P was up around 150/95 for a couple days in a row. He gently suggested that I was still eating way too much sodium, and needed to be super vigilant about cutting down. So I bought two low-sodium cookbooks (the American Heart Association's and the "Complete Idiot's Guide") and installed some software on my computer (from FitDay.com) that lets me put in everything I eat and track calories, fat, and everything else as well as sodium. The program is a little aggravating in terms of choosing the foods from their selection list, but at least it's keeping me a lot more honest about what I eat. And I lost six pounds in the first two days, which I'm sure was all water, when I cut back as much as I could on sodium. Since then, some of it has come back, but I'm still down four or five pounds. Guess that's the price I pay for being middle aged and stressed. I'm also practicing yoga (no classes, just books, the "Yoga Dacks" of cards, and when my daughter returns them, I'll use our Rodney Yee DVD's. I'll try to ignore his package.

Anyway, my gripe is that it's REALLY hard to find food at the grocery store that isn't loaded with sodium. You pretty much have to cook your own fresh meat and buy fresh vegetables. Some frozen stuff is OK, as long as it's "one ingredient" stuff, like green beans or lamb chops. But anything that's in any way convenient is loaded with the stuff. And even most breads have way more salt than they need to have for baking purposes. I suppose the food companies would say that people demand the salt so the stuff "tastes good." Well, that's what a salt shaker is for, if they can have it. I can't.

And The Snowball's Chance in Hell award goes to...

Well, I kept quiet so far about Rev Wright, but it's hard to ignore the whole deal. I'm a child of the civil rights era, and a white liberal; and I've put up with diversity training, the politics of guilt and resentment, and the circus of Chicago identity politics all my life while trying to be a good sport about it. I've been accused of being an unconscious racist (because I'm white), of taking my "privileged" status for granted, and blah blah blah. I've always wished that my sincere hope -- that we could some day be color-blind in this country -- wouldn't brand me with all the above-mentioned accusatory labels, but what the hell. I'm an idealist, so I still hope for it. So Rev, Wright's first round of bombast struck me as just more of the same old crap. I thought, well, if his ilk had their way, we'd be having Al sharpton running again, not Obama. I found Obama refreshing because he didn't echo all that same old grievance politics and pessimistic accusatory crap. And I still think he's managed to stay above it. But all the talk about Wright is kinda depressing.

Now of the black journalists who've commented, I liked Clarence Page's take the best. But he's probably thought of as not black enough, either. And Mary Mitchell from the Chicago Sun-Times had that old disapproving DCFS-caseworker-facing-white-people-who-want-to-be-foster-parents-to-a-black-kid look on her face. She commented that Obama didn't have a good connection to the black leadership, or something to that effect. Obviously she meant it as a criticism. Well, Mary, I say again, if I wanted a black candidate who had that kind of connection, I'd vote to bring back Al Sharpton for another sorry circus like he had before. That's the whole point.

And by the way, what's with this "prophetic tradition" crap? That's just a code word for whipping up a lot of racist rhetoric from behind the shield of a pulpit, if you ask me. You can justify pretty much anything you want to by quoting the Old Testament selecively, including hate crimes against gay people, polygamy, and domestic violence. I don't recall anything in there about prophets (or their emulators) having a license to blame white people for everthing wrong with the world. Amen. Thank you. Mmm-Hmm. That knowing smirky clever blame game, like we all know the score and how things really work in this country and how they always will work as long as white people are running things, is a sorry rehash of the Black Power/Black Panther era, only dressed in Sunday clothes and kept behind church doors.

I read one column that quoted a survey that said something like 37% of black people surveyed believe that the United States Government really did create (or at least spread) the HIV virus in order to kill minorities. Now, THAT, my friends, is about the most scary and dangerous piece of ignorance that I've heard since we learned about the anti-semitic rants of Nazi Germany. And even though it kind of expalins why someone like Wright can keep on blowing these rhetorical stink bombs and getting away with it, it still makes me feel like our country is in pretty sorry shape and the future looks bleak for race relations.

But then again, a depressing percentage of white people think that the universe was really created in seven days, so it's not race relations that's the problem, but a general tendency for Americans to swallow stupid ideasand hate people who disagree with them. As the Internet has proven quite well - look at the Comments posted after any news story on AOL, if you need proof.

Damaged Disney Goods

I feel sorry for parents who've paid $500 for scalped tickets for their kids to see a "Hannah Montana" show, but not because they now have to explain to their kids why their idol is acting like a tartlet. Rather, I feel sorry for them because they've failed to avoid letting the media juggernaut brainwash their kids into thinking that's something they need to do in the first place. And I'm sorry for Miley Cyrus, not because she was manipulated into doing this ill-advised photo shoot for Vanity Fair (although I would GUESS that an adult had to give permission for it). Rather I feel sorry for her because she was turned into a "franchise" or an "image" rather than being allowed to be a kid. Her objectification started long before she let Annie Liebovitz drape a bedsheet around her and sit her in front of the camera. The furor I imagine is taking place at Disney is probably a lot like the feeling among investors in a Kentucky Derby winner that's just broken a leg. Their product has been damaged. They shoot horses, but Miley may just not have her contract renewed.

How did I miss "Pinky and the Brain?"

When my kids were in their pre-teen and teen years, I was pretty busy working and going to grad school, so I didn't have a lot of exposure to their entertainment. I know they liked "Animaniacs" because they got me to replace all our Windows 95 sounds with wave files from Animaniacs and Tiny Toons.I knew about "Pinky and the Brain," but it looked like just another Roger Rabbit style homage to old Bipolar Bugs and the Looney Tunes I grew up with.

So I was pleasantly surprised when I stumbled on a You Tube clip of Pinky and the Brain doing the famous Orson Welles "Frozen Peas" tape almost word for word (took out the cuss words). Watching that, I thought, I wonder if my kids had ANY idea what that was all about when they saw it? It was humor aimed at people MY age who grew up with Orson Welles and his pompous attitudes, and the rumors of his drunken outtakes for those Paul Masson commercials we all hated (of course now, the rumors can be validated on You Tube as well, along with Alex Trebek drunk on his ass). But it almost makes me feel guilty that I'm discovering things that were hip so late that they're now nostalgic. Kind of like what happened with me and some music of the 80's. Except that was stuff that was so BAD it's now campy and nostalgic ("Mr. Roboto" and "She Blinded Me with Science" come to mind). Like I said, I last paid attention to popular culture about the time of Woodstock. Well, I admit that I was taken in by "prog-rock" a bit in college, when people were blasting "Lucky Man" by Emerson, Lake, and Palmer out their windows so they could hear the Moog synthesizer echo off the Administration Building... Wow, man...)

But anyway, good job, Pinky and the Brain.