Letters From Home

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In the aftermath of the election, I have seen people who normally are even-tempered and courteous writing messages that ought to be labeled with a skull and crossbones or a Mr. Yuk symbol.  These folks are livid that Obama won the election and they are predicting dire consequences for pretty much the entire universe.

Where on earth do they get this sour point of view?  Judging by what I’ve seen, Fox News is a primary culprit, but there are other “conservative” news sources contributing to the flow of bile as well.  When Chris Wallace appeared on the Daily Show the other night, they played some clips of his Fox News colleages snickering about Obama’s aunt, the alleged illegal immigrant, and cattily wondering if she’s registered to vote.  Chris Wallace had the good grace to look embarrassed.

Many of these same people greeted Dubya as a newfound saviour and gloated that their guy won, and told those of us who predicted he’d be a disaster to suck it up and get with the program.  Now that the predictions have come true, they’re telling us Obama will be worse.  Buh?

Oh, if Molly Ivins were only still with us.  She’d set them straight in short order.

Last year, I wrote a series of posts titled “Ten ways to take a stand against ignorance.”  There is a prologue of sorts here, and the main series starts here. One of the things I suggested was that we learn something new every day. In today’s Productivity 501 blog, one that I read every day precisely because it’s a good way to learn new things, author Mark Shead says much the same thing: Stretch yourself.

We now have an opportunity to make progress and rectify some of the wrongs of the past.  It won’t happen overnight, but if we-the-people pull together, we can prove to the naysayers that it’s long past time they pulled the plug on Fox News.

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Today marks the 39th anniversary of my husband’s and my first date and I could think of no better way to celebrate it than to say we need to stand up to the bigotry of religious groups who wouldn’t know Jesus if he came back tomorrow and kicked them in the butt.

Which, come to think of it, he really needs to do.

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Let me begin this by saying that I don’t particularly like either of the major candidates running for
president this year.  While both of them have numerous admirable qualities and good ideas, they also both have numerous faults and failings and neither makes me enthusiastic about the consequences of voting for him.  I am not a supporter of either man, and on election day I will have to once again have to hold my nose and choose which I think will be the lesser of two evils.

Now, as for political propaganda–I recently read a forum post from a curmudgeonly fellow who was passing along one of those ubiquitous internet letters that people tend to pass on if they happen to agree with them.

The letter purported to be from a Cuban who made the point that Fidel Castro started out as a young, charismatic guy who promised change, and a lot of Cubans were sick of the status quo so they went with the young guy who promised change, and OMG LOOK WHAT HAPPENED.  The reader is, apparently, supposed to draw his/her own conclusions about the following of charismatic young guys who are all for change.  And, no doubt, vote accordingly.

This led me to thinking about other charismatic young guys who were all for change.  One of them wrote the following words, which, alas, far too few Americans have ever seen or paid attention to.

Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Barack Obama is 47.  In 1776, Thomas Jefferson was 33.  John Hancock was 39.  James Madison was 25.  Patrick Henry, who advocated change more fiercely than most, was 40.  Thomas Paine, who did likewise, was 39.  And George Washington was 44.  If charismatic young men like these hadn’t advocated change, we’d likely still be singing “God Save the Queen” today.  (I have often said that the descendants of people who were conservatives in 1776 have a special name–Canadians–because that’s how I came to be the descendant of a gentleman who scooted across the border from New Jersey to New Brunswick and stayed there.)

Many Cubans still hold a deep grudge about what happened at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 and I know several who will never vote for a Democrat because they hold Kennedy and his cronies personally responsible for that.  However, even the most cursory examination of history will show that the Bay of Pigs was the Dulles brothers’ idea, that they’d gotten it pretty well set up to go before Kennedy was even elected, and that they were part of the Eisenhower administration while they did so.  They went ahead with it under the assumption that once it was under way, Kennedy would have no choice but to send in American troops in support.  Kennedy proved he did indeed have another choice, and he took it–but he was man enough to publicly accept the responsibility for what happened next.

John McCain is 72.  In 1961, Allen Dulles was 68. John Foster Dulles was 73.  Dwight D. Eisenhower was 71.  Should the Cuban who wrote the letter not be thundering about old men who thought they were still warriors, acted accordingly, and OMG LOOK WHAT HAPPENED?  Had the Bay of Pigs not happened, Castro would not have had a readymade propaganda victory at the very beginning of his rule, and what might have happened in Cuba as a result?

Obviously, both sides of that particular argument are hogwash and the comparisons they make are specious in the extreme.  Obama is no Castro and McCain is no Dulles.  To vote for or against a presidential candidate because some other guy in some other time and/or place did something is absurd.

But it seems that once again, a lot of people who, as Santayana said, know nothing of history, are once again doomed to repeat it.

photo credit: Obese Seagull Productions

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When you think about it, we learn least when we listen only to those we agree with. Isolating ourselves in such a comfortable, agreeable environment is natural–but if everyone’s in total agreement and nobody’s willing to start asking inconvenient questions, we isolate ourselves more and more from learning and from the expansion of human knowledge.

Begin paying real attention to the commentary of “the other side.” Don’t just dismiss them with the cuss word du jour and assume you’re not interested in hearing what they have to say. If you won’t go directly to the source, whatever information you might have will be secondhand at best, and filtered through someone else’s prejudices. Don’t you want to make up your mind for yourself? How are you going to do that if you won’t go straight to the source and get the facts for yourself?

I suppose it’s futile to say that one way to take a stand against ignorance is to quit listening to “commentators” in the first place. There’s not a one of them, no matter what they might say, who reports without bias. The whole point behind commentary is making pointed comments. And the commentators stay on the air because flocks of people who don’t know any better are sitting there listening and saying “Yeah!”

So, if you’re a fan of Keith Olbermann, give Bill O’Reilly honest equal time (and vice versa). If your favorite newspaper columnists are Rich Lowry, Mona Charen and Thomas Sowell, give equal reading time to Thomas Friedman, Maureen Dowd and Richard Cohen. You may well be astonished by what you learn. Years ago, I learned that particular lesson by reading Pat Buchanan’s commentary on the first Gulf War and finding out that he and I were in almost total agreement. If I’d refused to read “the other side,” quite a lesson would have been lost.

There’s a much wider world out there beyond our own little internal “villages” and if we refuse to explore it, we’re no better than ignorant villagers out to do the newcomers in with pitchforks and torches. Take a stand against ignorance–find out for yourself what the other guys are saying.

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