By Mickey Walker-February 15, 2009
You know, I have some dear friends and neighbors who seem to
get caught up in the stinkiness of "knowing" that lazy, freeloading
Americans are hiding behind every bush, and generations of no-‘count welfare
kings and queens are lurking behind every tree to steal our hard-earned tax
dollars we pay to support the despicable, lazy bums. I do not share their
views, and I must confess that I strive to avoid them like the Black Death.
An old high school chum of mine whose family gathers every two years in
Louisiana told me recently that his reunion broke up last year. It seems they all got into an argument
about Mexicans and other minorities who were a drain on our tax dollars. And instead of regaling in the notion
that he and his cousins’ ancestors settled the very same sugar cane fields
where they gathered to eat, breathe, and exchange smiles with the same DNA, the
new family engaged in the awful game of “Uproar.” Families have their favorite
games, you know. It all began, he
said, with a mild game of “Ain’t it Awful” about how the Meskins are coming
acrost the border and taking our jobs.
Then it grew to how us Americans’ very own land and way of life was being
threatened. And not by just Mexicans, but by Pakistani convenience store
operators, too. And on. Our very own culture and
Judeo/Christian values were about to go up in smoke, some of them argued. And a row almost broke out in a
traditionally peaceful setting of a family reunion. Is it me or when somebody mentions “Judeo/Christian”
values and culture, is it like, somebody is sayin’ that they’re better than somebody
else or what? I mean, after all,
Hitler, Goebbels, Stalin, and Hernando Cortez were of that same culture,
weren’t they? I stand corrected;
Hitler wasn’t for obvious reasons.
I bet the Aztecs and the Sioux would have preferred a broken leg to the
notion of preserving Judeo/Christian values when the white man first came to
America to steal their land, resources, and, oh yes, let us not forget, their
gold.
Oftentimes, those who think they are better than the next
fellow will tell you that they are hard-working farmers, bidnessmen, and/or entrepreneurs and
that they despise those who are able to work but would rather live off the gummint. Sometimes it seems like they are
saying, “All poor people are lazy.”
Such a “captured-by-knowing” notion takes me back to an interview of
George W. Bush’s Harvard Economics professor, Dr. Yoshi Tsurumi. He said after showing his class the
movie, “The Grapes of Wrath” a student in the back piped up and asked him, “Why
are you showing that Commie movie to us?”
It was George W. Bush. Bush
went on to say that people don’t have to be poor, and that even the dust bowl
Depression-decimated characters in the movie, based on John Steinbeck’s great
book, were just too lazy to find work.
Tsurumi said the class booed Bush down, but the notion remains. Is there a class of “us” and “them”
after all? Is this a true slice of
life as it is or, as Bush might say, a bunch of Commie misinformation? Are we, the taxpayers truly at the
mercy of a bunch of lazy bastards?
Are there new jobs really waiting for the millions of recently laid off
Americans in late 2008 and by February 2009? Is this trait of “knowing” something to be true, a part of
our human condition that makes us more evolved and better? Or worse? But I’m getting ahead.
How does anyone "know" who is lazy and who is not? It seems that the Mexican illegals who
cross the border are willing to work.
As a group you could hardly call them lazy. And I know, I know, they break the law to come in many
instances, not just to better themselves, but to survive. We profess to be a charitable
Judeo/Christian nation, but are we?
Our anger at this changing economic world and the loss of our prosperity
burns hot in our breasts. But who is the real monster? Where does the Shadow reside? How does anybody "know"
anything to be true, much less let the ire build like a steam kettle inside us
and to fire the flames of anger over "knowing" things about other
people that in truth, we do not "know." Bush’s notion seems
typical. It is the stuff that
breaks up family reunions and disrupts Tsurumi’s college Economics class.
It is the stuff that emanates from our core being, our lizard brain, that does
not seem to conflict with the Christian values we say we uphold, including a
pro-life stance to "kill" those who work in abortion clinics by
mindless fire-bombings. Whence cometh such a paradox in our souls? How
did we come to be captured by "knowing?"
I have seen the red in the eye of these Americans captured
by "knowing" stuff about their neighbors when standing in line at the
HEB grocery store. If a man or woman (usually brown-skinned) pulls out
some Food Stamps and slows down the cash register person, someone behind me in
line or even across the aisles usually says something in muffled contempt about
the Food Stamp person. If the less-fortunate pays cash for
cigarettes the green cloud of hatred that looms over the checkout
aisle is so thick you can cut it with a knife. Our good old boys in
line who resent these fellow creatures of the earth with Habenero hate
begin to utter and guffaw, most of the time as if to say, "If they can pay
for cigarettes, why the hell they on Food Stamps?"
A hate-your-neighbor attitude starts wars. It is the
stuff that makes you attack and occupy countries like Iraq where the people
wear strange head cloths, have dark complexions and who bow down to Mecca
several times of the day. "Muslims" we call them. Even
the name exudes a rancorous stench in some Judeo-Christian nostrils. The Koran tells them to kill us, many
good Christians will say. But when
Bush caint find Weapons of Mass Destruction then we start to talkin’ about how
Saddam Hussein tortured and killed all his enemies (as if we really ever cared
about them or the 100s of thousands who have died since we first attacked Iraq). It all begins when the hate part sprouts
self-righteous wings of “knowing” that something ain’t right and is very bad in
Iraq and needs purifying by our wand of freedom, our Blackwater mentality
toward our fellow man, and our ravaging the countryside, the villages, and the
Iraqi people with smart bombs, Daisy Cutters and Hellfire missiles shot from
drones. We are still there. Why? What if the Mexicans came across our border and started
shooting up and occupying American towns?
Bet we would really start to fear for the preservation of our
Judeo-Christian values if that happened.
I saw the Hippies in the streets change America. It was back during Viet Nam, and
presidents toppled, and a nation had a change of mood about war. It worked maybe because people
cared. Or perhaps people believed
in people, and were not so captured by “knowing” that some people were better
than others. Because of their
religion, skin color, or were illegal aliens, come to cut our grass. That the poor would bleed blood just as
red in the jungles as any privileged son who avoided combat through connections,
has always been true. Things back then were real. Our neighbors cared enough to demonstrate for all our American
sons put to war. They stood up
with courage as if our soldiers were our own adopted sons. These scraggly demonstrators toppled
presidents like Johnson and caused Nixon to withdraw us from such madness. As President Obama said recently, “We
are not Republicans; we are not Democrats. We are Americans.”
I hope his words live on to where we can free ourselves from the social
monster of being captured by “knowing” that we are better than some of our
neighbors. Freedom is a pure thing. It can never abide the Orwellian notion
that “Some animals are more equal than others.”
Last evening, I attended a wedding reception where there was
a bar, and I was standing in line to the right when a bold older man in a dark
suit rushed up to the left and between the bartender and the person who had
just taken his drinks. The man
ordered his drinks ahead of me!
And in departing, he told the bartender who had said he was from
California, that the weather is nice out there, but that California has way too
many liberals. Before I could
stick my foot out and trip him, he whisked himself and his “knowing” attitude
about liberals in California aside and off to dazzle other guests about his
command of what was right and wrong and “knowing” that there were a bunch of
“liberals” in California! So I
said to the bartender, “Did you see that?
Only goes to show that anti-liberal morphs like that dude might be good
at slandering liberals and other phenomena upon which they are massively
ignorant, but they are still unashamedly brazen at cheating and stealing from
their fellow man.” The bartender,
amused, wanted to know what I meant.
“He broke in line.” I said. Without shame Conservatives seem all
too willing to break in line and steal another person’s right to the orderly
progression of American citizens seeking to exercise their democratic right of
first come, first served, I thought. But such thought seemed so primordial, so
like the presupposed ideas that broke up the Louisiana family reunion and
permeate the rank and files of good old boys everywhere that “know” what’s best
for America. Had the dark side,
the ancient “lizard” brain in us all that rules primitive parts like anger,
taken control of me or what? I
knew that all Conservatives don’t break in line, but my being a bit pissed at
the man who decried California as a state rife with liberals, must have deluded
my thinking. I, too, was captured
by “knowing.” I got to watch out for that. 