Mimeographs from the Future

N.B. I began this post about a month ago, but I never really could find a way to fin­ish it. Rather than allow it to linger, I’ve decided to pub­lish it.

In Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Com­mu­nity?, Mar­tin Luther King Jr. writes:

Unfor­tu­nately, when hope dimin­ishes, the hate is often turned most bit­terly toward those who orig­i­nally built up the hope. In all the speak­ing that I have done in the United States before var­ied audi­ences, includ­ing some hos­tile whites, the only time that I have been booed was one night in a Chicago mass meet­ing by some young mem­bers of the Black Power move­ment. I went home that night with an ugly feel­ing. Self­ishly I thought of my suf­fer­ings and sac­ri­fices over the last twelve years. Why would they boo one so close to them? But as I lay awake think­ing, I finally came to myself, and I could not for the life of me have less than patience and under­stand­ing for those young people.

For twelve years I, and oth­ers like me, had held out radi­ant promises of progress. I had preached to them about my dream. I had lec­tured to them about the not too dis­tant day when they would have free­dom, “all, here and now.” I had urged them to have faith in Amer­ica and in white soci­ety. Their hopes had soared. They were now boo­ing because they felt that we were unable to deliver on our promises. They were boo­ing because we had urged them to have faith in peo­ple who had too often proved to be unfaith­ful. They were now hos­tile because they were watch­ing the dream that they had so read­ily accepted turn into a frus­trat­ing nightmare.

At the start of Decem­ber 2010, I wrote about my dis­il­lu­sion­ment with Obama and the Demo­c­ra­tic party, but also the unrav­el­ing of the demos in democ­racy itself. Hav­ing had some time to rumi­nate, I find myself in a dif­fer­ent place: Not how did Obama dis­ap­point us, but how did we dis­ap­point ourselves?

These thoughts are lit­tle more than a col­lec­tion of ideas for my own con­sid­er­a­tion and I do not have answers, nor do I believe that there is a answer, but instead, a col­lec­tion of them as unique as the peo­ple who ask them.

Did we imbue Obama with the pent up hopes and dreams of the lib­er­als? After eight years of Dubya, eight years of Republicanism-light and the “third way”, and 12 years of Reagan-Bush, the true lib­er­als of the United States had taken a beat­ing at the poles, and so when along came some­one who seemed so very dif­fer­ent than every­thing before him, did we just assume that he held beliefs that found no sup­port in his own words?

Because he was black, did we see him as “like us”, rather than see­ing him for the mod­er­ate and con­cil­ia­tory Sen­a­tor that he was? One can not ignore the idea of “lib­eral white guilt” that per­me­ates and flows through much con­ver­sa­tion. Did we make what amounts to a racist deci­sion — though more pos­i­tive than most — to lump Obama in with our per­ceived notions of African-Americans? Just because some­one votes for the same party as you doesn’t mean they believe as you do. This is the most dif­fi­cult ques­tion to con­sider. I was raised to be as “color blind” as is fea­si­ble, and to judge peo­ple on their mer­its, not their phys­i­cal attrib­utes, and yet we all har­bor gen­er­al­iza­tions, resent­ments, assump­tions and con­cerns that we know we are wrong to feel, and so we pre­tend we don’t.

Was it sex­ism against Hillary Clin­ton? Was it Clinton-fatigue? The sex­ism is hard to know, and for myself I can only say “no”, as I grew up with a bril­liant and strong mother, and knew that any woman could lead as well, or bet­ter, than a man. I did, how­ever, hold tight my con­cerns that Hillary would bring back the ani­mos­ity of the Clin­ton era, and that the insane hatred of her by the right would rekin­dle all the strife I hoped to leave behind. I was naïve.

So, even after all that, and all my dis­ap­point­ment, I return to the fact that given the choices in the gen­eral elec­tion, there was no choice for me. McCain rep­re­sented more of the same, but with an arguably more incen­di­ary tem­per, and accom­pa­nied by some­one who rep­re­sented one of the most ter­ri­fy­ing prospects as a poten­tial suc­ces­sor as I had ever seen. No, there was no choice, only the deci­sion not to just stay home.

And with all of that, I leave with the words of Bobby Kennedy after the death of Mar­tin Luther King, Jr., which ring as true today as they did near 43 years ago:

No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil dis­or­ders. A sniper is only a cow­ard, not a hero; and an uncon­trolled, uncon­trol­lable mob is only the voice of mad­ness, not the voice of the people.

When­ever any American’s life is taken by another Amer­i­can unnec­es­sar­ily — whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defi­ance of law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in pas­sion, in an attack of vio­lence or in response to vio­lence — when­ever we tear at the fab­ric of life which another man has painfully and clum­sily woven for him­self and his chil­dren, the whole nation is degraded.

“Among free men,” said Abra­ham Lin­coln, “there can be no suc­cess­ful appeal from the bal­lot to the bul­let; and those who take such appeal are sure to lose their cause and pay the costs.”

Yet we seem­ingly tol­er­ate a ris­ing level of vio­lence that ignores our com­mon human­ity and our claims to civ­i­liza­tion alike. We calmly accept news­pa­per reports of civil­ian slaugh­ter in far off lands. We glo­rify killing on movie and tele­vi­sion screens and call it enter­tain­ment. We make it easy for men of all shades of san­ity to acquire weapons and ammu­ni­tion they desire.
Too often we honor swag­ger and blus­ter and the wield­ers of force; too often we excuse those who are will­ing to build their own lives on the shat­tered dreams of oth­ers. Some Amer­i­cans who preach non­vi­o­lence abroad fail to prac­tice it here at home. Some who accuse oth­ers of incit­ing riots have by their own con­duct invited them.

Some looks for scape­goats, oth­ers look for con­spir­a­cies, but this much is clear; vio­lence breeds vio­lence, repres­sion brings retal­i­a­tion, and only a clean­ing of our whole soci­ety can remove this sick­ness from our soul.

For there is another kind of vio­lence, slower but just as deadly, destruc­tive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the vio­lence of insti­tu­tions; indif­fer­ence and inac­tion and slow decay. This is the vio­lence that afflicts the poor, that poi­sons rela­tions between men because their skin has dif­fer­ent col­ors. This is a slow destruc­tion of a child by hunger, and schools with­out books and homes with­out heat in the winter.

The most pow­er­ful thing the Pres­i­dent has is not the econ­omy. It is not the stroke of the veto pen. It is not the bombs that fall in the night. The true power of the Pres­i­dent lies upon the bully pulpit.

Tagged: democrats, government, liberalism, obama, politics