Ball of Confusion

(note: I started this around Independence Day, and planned to publish it earlier than now, but, well, life.)

We are all tangled up in a ball of confusion these days. I don't think I'm the only one who was a little confused this year on Independence Day. It's been one of my favorite holidays, full of pride and patriotism, but this year it rang hollow for a few reasons. It took me a few days to process my thoughts.

SCROTUS and his ugly campaign stop Independence Day event at Mt. Rushmore, where dog whistle after dog whistle was blown. He's not smart enough to know the meaning of what surrounded this appearance -- or maybe he is -- but in any case, he or one of his handlers *cough* Stephen Miller *cough* loaded his speech with grotesquities (ooh I made a new word! I like it!)

• The song "Garryowen" was played at his entrance. This song is rife with racist connotations, as it was the song played and sung by General Custer and his 7th Cavalry as he massacred the Lakota, Dakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapahoe Indians just a few hundred miles from Mt. Rushmore. Read about the pledge by descendants of the 7th Cavalry to never again play the song. "The dreaded 'Garryowen' will never ring again across the American plains or the American west for the native Americans. And the old native American ghosts can rest in peace." That is, until SCROTUS stands on hallowed ground, ground stolen from Native Americans, and spouts his racist feculence.

• He evoked the "great" Andrew Jackson during the speech, among other notable Americans (but no other presidents, other than those gracing the mountain behind him). 

• The week before, he called for criminal penalties on those who tried to topple the "great monument" of Andrew Jackson statue in Washington D.C., calling them “bad people, they don’t love our country, and they’re not taking down our monuments.” 

• This fawning over Andrew Jackson was a clear message to Native Americans. As you know, Andrew Jackson was single-handedly responsible for the deaths of thousands of Native Americans when he signed the Indian Removal Act, which led to the forced removal of Native Americans in the east to areas west of the Mississippi, a march known as the Trail of Tears. As The Washington Post reports, "a few removals took place without great loss of life, but most were terribly deadly. Of the 80,000 Native people who were forced west from 1830 into the 1850s, between 12,000 and 17,000 perished. The U.S. Army and state militias killed some in wars to break the resistance of noncompliant communities, but the large majority died of interrelated factors of starvation, exposure and disease (malaria, cholera, typhus, smallpox and dysentery). To put this in perspective, the death toll (14 to 19 percent) would be equivalent to between 46 million and 62 million of the current U.S. population." This action has been called genocide by some. Jackson was a bad man. No wonder IMPOTUS reveres him. All his talk about Andrew Jackson was a spit into the face of the Native Americans whose land he was contaminating with his very presence.

• The speech was divisive, disparaging those of us on the left, using words like "fascist" (ummm, get your terms right, idiot. Look in the mirror: Fascism is what YOU and your right-wing white supremacists subscribe to), and saying the "left-wing cultural revolution" will "destroy" our civilization.

• He fueled racial tensions yet even more, ranting against the recent demonstrations: "The radical ideology attacking our country advances under the banner of social justice, but in truth, it would demolish both justice and society. It would transform justice into an instrument of division and vengeance and it would turn our free and inclusive society into a place of a repression, domination, and exclusion. They want to silence us, but we will not be silenced."

• "He pandered to his religious base, as well as the nationalists among them, saying "We are proud of the fact that our country was founded on Judeo-Christian principles and we understand that these values have dramatically advanced the cause of peace and justice throughout the world. We know that the American family is the bedrock of American life. We recognize the solemn right and moral duty of every nation to secure its borders and we are building the wall. We remember that governments exist to protect the safety and happiness of their own people. A nation must care for its own citizens first. We must take care of America first. It’s time. We believe in equal opportunity, equal justice, and equal treatment for citizens of every race, background, religion and creed. Every child of every color, born and unborn, is made in the holy image of God." Ummm.... no. 

It's hard to celebrate the day when it's been so perverted.

The Black Lives Matter movement and our collective self-examination, has renewed my, as well as many others', assessment of our Founding Fathers. Most of the white men who founded our country were racist, embraced slavery, also mistreated the Native Americans, did not see women as deserving of equality, and did not truly live up to the "all men are created equal" bit. The time has come to not ignore that stuff and face it. 

And then, yo-yo'd back, up with the timely broadcast of "Hamilton." What joy! It brought back the awe and love about the Founding Fathers in a glorious way! We got to see the founding women and men in a human light, with magical rhymes in a brilliant production. A work of art! But there was backlash about it, too. Not enough treatment of slavery. I understand the criticism. Thing is, it's art, not history. 

In the end, we must face the facts that the Founding Fathers were flawed men in a flawed time. We must judge them as they were, with all of their faults and all of their genius. Thomas Jefferson gave us amazing words in amazing documents, but he was woefully short on action. He wrote that slavery was wrong, but did nothing to move toward abolishing it, not even to free his slaves. George Washington was a brilliant politician and a great leader, and he did free his own slaves, but it would be another 64 years --three generations of slaves -- before the Civil War began.

These men and the other founders laid out a framework and gave us a roadmap for the country's future. They brilliantly defended their positions and made a document envied by the rest of the world. And they also shamefully passed the buck on the hugely important issue of slavery.

Here is the cast of "Hamilton" responding to the issue of the Founding Fathers' faults and how "Hamilton" fits in to the conversation.




On a long drive just after the Fourth of July, I happened upon this great episode of one of my favorite podcasts: The Hidden Brain: A Founding Contradiction. Historian and Harvard law professor Annette Gordon-Reed taught me more about the complex Thomas Jefferson. He wrote public condemnations against slavery while owning several human beings to do his bidding, including his long-time relationship with Sally Hemings, fathering six children with her. The times were complicated, the relationship was complicated, and it's a fascinating listen. She concludes in the podcast: "The fascinating thing about Jefferson is that, in some ways, he embodies the country. I mean, the struggles that were within him - and that's why when you go to Monticello, you get to see the best and the worst of America. And they're embodied in this person who was idealistic but, in some areas, did not live up to that. And certainly, the idea of citizenship, first-class citizenship for African-American people, is not - has not come to pass, I don't believe." I'm going to read Gordon-Reed's books, the one she talked about here (co-written with Peter S. Onuf), "Most Blessed of the Patriarchs," as well as her Pulitzer-Prize-winning book, “The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family.”

The Founding Fathers, particularly Jefferson, were complicated men who aspired for something better. And if you've read here for any length of time, you know I'm cut from the same fabric. An eternal optimist, I never want to give up hope for what our country can become, even in these upside down and inside out days that we are living through. And our Founding Fathers, in their wisdom, offered us great hope when they launched this wonderful experiment. They couldn't, or wouldn't, do it all, and they certainly did shirk too much off to future generations, who also passed the buck, and on down the line for generations....

...to us. NOW. Today. You and me. WE can be the ones to continue the changes to make our country better.

What are you doing today?