Pixel Hall Press, Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) Members’ Titles 314 pages, Publication Date: May 6, 2013
It would be hard enough growing up any different kind of kid in a small rural community. Growing up the only Jew in a poverty-stricken mountain town would be significantly harder. So what would it be like growing up a brown-skinned Jewish girl — the only Jew, the only person of color and the only foreigner — in an inbred narrow-minded fundamentalist Christian town with a strong skinhead militia contingent and longstanding prejudices against anyone who is at all different?
Add it together and it goes far beyond difficult and moves into the realm of nearly impossible.
Judith Ormand spent her early life in Paris, France, the daughter of a Black man and a converted-to-Judaism white mother. After her mother dies of causes never clearly explained, she ends up being raised by her Moravian German grandparents in a small insular Pennsylvania mountain village.
Her growing up years were punctuated by racial attacks, by violence, hatred and fear. Her only protector? Joe Anderson, a handsome blond football player, son of a drunken father and a skinhead, drug-dealer brother. When Joe — her beloved best friend — turns against her, her world is shattered. She vows, encouraged by her grandmother, to never under any circumstances return to Black Bear, Pennsylvania.
But Gramma and Grampa are gone and despite any promises she made, Judith — Jo — must return and face the nightmare of her growing up years and uncover the truth about the people she loved and lost.
The book is a compelling psychological drama and Judith Ormand is a fascinating character, a perfect target for bigoted small town residents. I found the story gripping and honest …. until it approached the end.
All of a sudden, the book went into overdrive, as if the author had reached her page limit and now had to quickly tie up all the loose ends and somehow give this sad story a happy ending. I didn’t believe the ending. I didn’t find it emotionally honest and didn’t think it made sense based on everything that had gone before. After such a very promising start, it was a big disappointment.
For all that, the book is worth the read. The misery of a child who is so very different trying to find happiness in a frightening and hostile environment is heart-wrenching. I wish the author had stayed the course and written the ending with the same integrity she gave to the story’s beginning and middle.
Jo Joe is available as a hardcover from Amazon. It will be available in paperback and on Kindle in June 2013.
If you are somewhere around my age, you remember the Jonestown Massacre. Even if you were a lot younger, if you were old enough to read a newspaper or watch TV, you could hardly forget it. With fundamentalism enjoying a rebirth, with well-known people urging others to murder or mayhem, it is a good time to remember where this kind of thing leads. These days, disagreements that ought to result in nothing more serious than an argument result in the ugliest kind of hate-spewing rhetoric.
Lest we forget, there was nothing even remotely amusing about this story. There isn’t a word that begins to sum up the sickening reality.
It isn’t rare for fanaticism and hatred to end in death. It frequently leads to a lot of death and almost always, it is the most innocent who pay the butcher’s bill.
The Road to Jonestown
The phrase “drink the Kool-Aid” has become common parlance in American business and politics. Roughly translated, it means “to blindly follow.” It usually carries a negative connotation. The “Kool Aid” references go all the back to the 1950s when it was the typical drink for children on suburban summer afternoons. But the origin of the saying is something else, darker, and different. It has become the kind of bland rhetoric about which we don’t give a thought, but its roots lie in horror.
Before we talk about Kool-Aid, let’s take a brief trip down memory lane to a particularly horrible episode of American history.
Jim Jones, cult leader and mass murderer, was a complex madman. A communist, occasional Methodist minister, he founded his own pseudo-church in the late 1950s. He called it the “Peoples Temple Full Gospel Church,” known in short as the “Peoples Temple.”
The lack of a possessive apostrophe was intentional. The name was supposed to be a reference to “the people of the world.” While Jones called it a church, it was closer to a warped version of a Marxist commune. Initially, it was combined with a hodgepodge of Christian references that he used in his diatribes … supposedly sermons.
Regardless, it was never any kind of church. The Peoples Temple was a straight-up cult. It made serious demands in the way of personal committment and financial support from its members and a level of obedience that is the defining quality of a cult.
Jones was the cult’s leader — and a homicidal maniac — but he had positive attributes. Jones and his wife Marceline were strongly in favor of racial integration. They adopted a bunch of kids from varying racial backgrounds. They were the first white family in Indiana to adopt an African-American boy. Other adopted children included 3 Korean Americans, a Native American, and a handful of white kids. They also had one child of their own.
Jones called his adopted kids the “Rainbow Family,” and he made a name for himself desegregating various institutions in Indiana. Before you get all dewy-eyed about this, note this ultimately climaxed in the murder of these children by their adoptive parents.
The Peoples Temple continued to expand through the 1960s. Jones gradually abandoned his Marxism. His preaching began to increasingly focus on impending nuclear apocalypse. He even specified a date — July 15, 1967 — and suggested after the apocalypse, a socialist paradise would exist on Earth. Where would the new Eden be?
Jones decided on the town of Redwood Valley, California and before the expected Big Bang, he moved the Temple and its peoples there.
When the end-of-the-world deadline came and went without nuclear holocaust, Jones abandoned even the pretenses of Christianity. The cloak came off and he revealed himself as an atheist using religion to give legitimacy to his views. Jones announced that “Those who remained drugged with the opiate of religion must be brought to enlightenment — socialism.” Prophetic words in view of the fact that Jones himself was a drug addict who preferred literal to metaphorical opiates.
As media attention increased, Jones started to worry the Peoples Temple’s tax-exempt religious status was in danger of revocation. He was paranoid about the U.S. intelligence community — probably with justification.
Jim Jones, cult leader
In 1977, Jones moved the Temple and its people again. This was a major relocation, leaving the United States completely and settling on a site that Jones had been working on since 1974. Located in Guyana, a poor South American nation, he modestly named it “Jonestown.”
It was a bleak, inhospitable place on 4000 acres of poor soil with limited access to fresh water. It was much to small encampment, dramatically overcrowded Temple members were forced to work long hours merely to survive.
Jones figured his people could farm the land in this new utopia. He had put together several million dollars before getting to Jonestown, but his wealth was not shared amongst his followers. He barely used any of the money for himself and lived in a small, bare-bones shared house.
All Hell Breaks Loose
U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan visited Jonestown in November of 1978. Rumors of peculiar goings-on were leaking out of Jonestown. Ryan decided to investigate the allegations of human rights abuses in Jonestown.
Ryan didn’t go alone. He took a contingent of media representatives including NBC News correspondent Don Harris and other reporters, plus relatives of Jonestown resident. During his visit to Jonestown, Congressman Ryan talked to more than a dozen Temple members, all of whom said they wanted to leave. Several of them passed a note saying: “Please help us get out of Jonestown” to news anchor Harris.
If the number of defectors seems low proportionate to the more than 900 residents of Jonestown, keep in mind the congressional party had not been able to talk to most of the “fellowship.” The number of those who might have wanted to leave could conceivably been much more but we will never know.
Ryan began processing the paperwork to repatriate Temple members who wanted to go back to the States. In the middle of this, Ryan was attacked by Don Sly, a knife-wielding Temple member. This would-be assassin was stopped before injuring Ryan.
Eventually the entire Ryan party plus the group of Jonestown defectors drove to a nearby airstrip and boarded planes, intending to leave. Jim Jones had other plans. He sent armed Temple members — his “Red Brigade” after the Congressional party These creepy ‘soldiers of the Temple” opened fire on them, killing Ryan, one Temple defector, three members of the media, and wounding eleven others. The survivors fled into the jungle.
When the murderers returned to Jonestown and reported their actions, Jones promptly started what he called a “White Night” meeting. He invited all Temple members. This wasn’t the first White Night. Jones had hosted previous White Night meetings in which he suggested U.S. intelligence agencies would soon attack Jonestown.
He had even staged fake attacks to add a realism, though it’s hard to believe that anyone was fooled by the play-acting. Faced with this hypothetical invasion scenario, Jones offered Temple members a set of choices. They could stay and fight imaginary invaders. They could take off for the USSR. Another tempting alternative would be to run off into the jungles of Guyana. Or they could commit mass suicide as an act of political protest.
On previous occasions Temple members had opted for suicide. Not satisfied, Jones had tested their committment and gave them cups of liquid that they were told contained poison. They were asked to drink it. Which they did. After a while, Jones told them the liquid wasn’t poisonous — but one day it would be.
Indeed Jim Jones had been stockpiling cyanide and other drugs for years. On this final White Night, Jones was no longer testing his followers. It was time to kill them all.
Don’t Drink the Poisonous Fruit-Flavored Beverage
After the airstrip murders outside Jonestown, Jim Jones ordered Temple members to create a fruity mix containing a cocktail of chemicals that included cyanide, diazepam (Valium), promethazine (Phenergan — a sedative), chloral hydrate (a sedative/hypnotic sometimes called “knockout drops”), and Flavor Aid — a grape-flavored beverage similar to Kool-Aid.
Jones urged his followers to commit suicide to make a political point. What that point was supposed to be is still a matter of considerable conjecture. After some discussion, Temple member Christine Miller suggested flying Temple members to the USSR.
Jones was never interested in escape. There was only one answer that he would accept. Death and lots of it. He repeatedly pointed out to his followers that Congressman Ryan was dead (and whose fault was that?) which would surely bring down the weight of American retribution in short order. An audiotape of this meeting exists. It is just as creepy as you’d expect.
Then it was time for the detailed instructions which — still baffling to me at least — the followers did as they were told. I will never understand why. Probably that’s a positive sign indicating I’m not insane.
Jones insisted mothers must squirt poison into the mouths of their children using syringes. As their children died, the mothers were dosed as well, though they were allowed to drink from cups. Temple members wandered out onto the ground, where eventually just over 900 lay dead, including more than 300 children. Only a handful of survivors escaped Jonestown — primarily residents who happened to be away on errands or playing basketball when the mass suicide/massacre took place.
Jones, his wife, and various other members of the Temple left wills stating that their assets should go to the Communist Party of the USSR.
Jones did not drink poison. He died from a gunshot to the head, though it’s not clear if it was self-inflicted. Jones likely died last or nearly so and may have preferred the gun to cyanide, having just seen the horrendous effects of death by cyanide.
What’s With the Kool-Aid?
In the wake of the tragedy at Jonestown, the phrase “drink the Kool-Aid” became a popular term for blind obedience, as the Temple members had apparently accepted their cups of poison without objection. According to various accounts, the primary beverage used at Jonestown was actually Flavor Aid (sometimes “Flav-R-Aid”) — although there is evidence both Kool-Aid and Flavor Aid were used.
Kool-Aid was better known than Flavor Aid . Kool-Aid was introduced in 1927 in powdered form. When Americans thought about a powdered fruity drink mix (other than “Tang”), “Kool-Aid” came immediately to mind.
So, although Kool-Aid and Flavor Aid were both present at Jonestown, the phrase “(don’t) drink the Kool-Aid” has become entrenched in popular lingo.
I’ve read a few articles lately in newspapers and online that “prove” it is Liberalism that creates classes. In their view, if we were all conservatives, we wouldn’t have classes and all men would finally really be equal. It worked for Louis XVI, so it ought to work here, right?
I have a hot flash for conservatives who are trying to prove the unprovable: there were classes before there was democracy, before the concept of elections by the people, before there were political parties and long before the United States existed. To say anything else, no matter how many big words you use, is absurd.
Classes exist in the United States because some people have a lot of money and many others have little or none.
Classes exist in the United States because we have a shameful legacy of slavery and oppression of anyone who isn’t white and Christian.
Classes exist in the United States because laws are not enforced equally and never were.
Classes exist because they exist, always have and no doubt always will.
-
This quote from a popular columnist in the Washington Post makes me want to scream. Does she think that using big words changes the facts?
We can’t eliminate them, but we can do our best to lessen the differences between them, to enable movement between classes. We can do our best to eliminate the barriers to upward movement by the poor by making education affordable, by equalizing job opportunities and pay between men and women, white and non-white workers.
The real tension in America today is not about black versus white but about liberalism versus conservatism.
Liberalism is about government as a political agent, not as a protector of individual freedom. By it’s very nature, liberalism creates political classes – whether based on race or gender or business interests. Those that get the goodies are happy. Those that pay for them are not. Tensions and animosities get worse, not better.
In the end, we all suffer because giving politicians more power means less growth and prosperity.
Things will never get solved until we finally take “e pluribus unum” seriously – that American diversity can only be finally united through one set of values, under God, that enable freedom, one set of true values for all.
Really? I thought it was about poor versus rich, the haves versus the have-nots … you know, like it’s always been throughout history. Or have we decided that anything that didn’t happen during this election cycle no longer counts? Shall we exclude any history that fails to agree with your warped view of reality?
Get the goodies? What goodies? The Social Security and Medicare for which I paid for more than 40 years? I thought this was my money coming back to me as promised. Free public education? Roads without potholes? Medical care so I don’t have to worry I’ll die for want of money to pay a doctor? What other goodies do I, or anyone else, get? You mean food stamps so that people who are desperately poor don’t starve? Those goodies? How about educational programs to help people develop enough skills to earn a living wage? Are those the goodies creating classes in this country?
What piece of the government’s infrastructure would you like to eliminate? How about student loans? Maybe even state colleges are too much. Let’s go back to the good old days when only the wealthy could afford an education, thus enabling the persistent domination of everybody else by a privileged few.
I am tired of being told about my entitlements. My husband and I worked our butts off for 40 plus years. The bit we get back now will never equal the amount we contributed, but I’ll shut up about the unfairness of that if you’ll shut up about “entitlements.”
As a matter of fact, please, just shut up. I’d appreciate a big empty silence where your voice used to be. Until you have walked in my shoes, or better yet, until you have lost your shoes and had to go barefoot and hungry, shut up. Your silence would go a long way to healing the open sores of society.
I voted for Obama four years ago and I don’t regret it. I thought we needed to do something different. I didn’t think that continuing to do the same things that had landed us in a mess were going to get us out of it. It’s foolish to believe that repeating the same behavior will eventually produce different results.
If Obama had lost and McCain had been elected, aside from living in fear that he’d die leaving us with Sara Palin, John McCain was qualified to be President of the United States. He was not my choice, but he was not ridiculous or evil, just not the guy I wanted as President.
-
This year is different. Rather than feeling like an election, it feels like a referendum, the results of which will define who we are as a nation. We are about to make a statement that will tell the world whether or not the U.S. retains a moral compass.
No government is entirely on the side of the angels, though every government will protest otherwise. Regardless, there are obviously better and worse governments. No one will argue that Germany under Hitler was merely expressing a difference of opinion with other nations, or that Idi Amin was a bit wrong-headed but his heart was in the right place.
I’ve studied, read, argued and reargued this issue for the past 50 years. You don’t have to agree with me, but I believe knowing right from wrong is the essence of being human. I think it has little or nothing to do with your upbringing. Bad kids come from good homes and good kids emerge from bad ones.
Here’s a personal example.
My husband was raised by Christian parents, attended church regularly. He credits many of the values that have guided his life to his upbringing. He doesn’t push his beliefs on anyone else, including me. He would never presume to force anyone to his way of thinking.
On the other hand, I was raised by wolves. I’m kidding. Only one of my parents was non-human and he was a snake, not a wolf. I like wolves.
My mother called herself an atheist, but blamed the God she claimed to not believe in for failing to prevent the world’s ills. We attended neither synagogue nor church. I have spent most of my life trying to understand why God seems to be persistently MIA when bad things happen to good people. I’m not an atheist, but I am a skeptic.
Garry and I have been married for 22 years. I don’t believe anyone who knows us who would call either of us immoral or without conscience. We hold different beliefs, but respect each other’s points of view.
Garry thinks he developed his morals, conscience and understanding of right and wrong because his parents provided positive role models. He also gives credit to his church. I, on the other hand, believe we are all hard-wired — designed by our Creator — to know right from wrong. I think that is what distinguishes human beings from other species. If we were created in the image of God, but God has no physical aspect, then in what other way than by our ability to know right from wrong could we resemble God?
I don’t think it matters whether you are brought up Christian, Jewish, Muslim Buddhist, nothing at all or any combination of the aforementioned. If you are human, you know it’s wrong to murder, steal, cheat, lie or for that matter, let your neighbor die of starvation or lack of medical care. Even — maybe especially — if it costs you something to save someone else, you know in your head, your heart, and your guts that it’s the right thing to do.
The irony — or perhaps one of many ironies — of this election is that a group of so-called Christian Conservative fundamentalist whack jobs are leading a charge against the very things that every religion on earth values. The very things that Jesus advocated are the things that these phony Christians would abolish.
In a few weeks, we get to choose a president — and whether or not we are the kind of people who throw our elderly, sick, disabled, and just plain unlucky fellow citizens under the bus … or throw them a lifeline. We choose whether we will be ruled by fear, prejudice, and hate … or by our inherent understanding of right and wrong. It’s awful that we’ve come to a point where we are so divided along racial and religious lines that such a choice is part of the electoral process. We appear to be standing at the edge of a deep chasm . I’m not sure we could climb out of that hole once we are in it. No one is pushing us over that edge. If we wind up in the chasm, we get there because we chose to jump.
I have always loved elections. They are my favorite spectator sport. During Presidential election years, I am usually glued to the television watching debates, analyzing political advertisements, reading the latest poll numbers.
I have watched many candidates for whom I voted lose. I was not thrilled about it, but I wasn’t scared to death, either. We’ve had a lot of Chiefs of State that were not my choice, but that’s the way the process works. You win. You lose.
Losing is disappointing, not catastrophic, It is one of the reasons this country is great. In the United States, we peacefully pass the reins of power from one administration to another. We don’t need a revolution to change the composition of Congress or the President. Good choices or bad, we have always managed to retain our fundamental principles, our sense of purpose and identity. We have regularly scheduled elections at which time we can replace former elected officials with different ones. Between elections, we cope and get on with our lives. In the end, to quote Tip O’Neil, “All politics is local.” No matter who is president, we have local representatives to help us. Most of the time, all we need to do to get help, is to ask for it.
This year, it’s come down to moral choices about what kind of people we are. Do we really, truly not care if everyone suffers as long as we advance our own agendas? Are we actually willing to vote for someone entirely because of his skin color? Have we gone so far backward that we don’t remember that we fought a bloody war that was supposed to settle that issue?
You don’t have to agree with me and I don’t have to agree with you. I shouldn’t have to worry that you’ll kill me because I don’t agree with you or vice verse.
Except, this year it is different. The amount of hate in this campaign shows a massive failure of basic civility, of our fundamental sense of fairness. The willingness to believe anything as long as it supports our position without regard to facts, right, wrong, or common sense demonstrates how far we have NOT come.
How many people see that our first amendment right to freedom of religion is under attack? It’s as if we no longer have a constitution. The conservative fundamentalists who are pulling the strings in this election support the right of everyone to have a gun or, for that matter, an assault weapon, but not the separation of church and state. When did my rights go up for grabs? Didn’t we settle that 250 years ago? Didn’t we duke it out with Great Britain on this very subject? And yet, here we are again. What happened? How can we let ourselves be so manipulated and used to support an agenda that the vast majority of us disagree with?
I am trying to hang on to my belief that Americans are not fools, that we won’t elect a government whose principles are contrary to those of the nation we all love.
The system isn’t bullet proof. We can ignore our own better selves in the name of saving a few bucks. We can let our worst impulses, our hatred, our bigotry, our ignorance dominate our world. We can destroy ourselves. It isn’t easy, but it’s doable.
Here’s how. Instead of reasonable people, elect fanatics, haters, and folks with lots of loose screws. When the haters, fanatics and crazies comprise a group large enough to form a swing vote, they will be the ones who decide what laws are passed. They will tell us what we can do with our lives, what to believe, what we can do in our bedrooms and of course, with whom we can do it. They can upset the balance of powers to such a degree that the system stops working.
Small town voting. It looks like home to me! (Photo credit: Muffet)
However you choose, VOTE. Vote for principled men and women who take the job of governing seriously and will work for the common good. Vote for positive reasons, not out of hate. Never in human history has hate been the foundation for anything good. It does not work that way. Karma is a bitch. Finally, don’t assume your vote doesn’t matter. We are as strong as our willingness to participate in the process. We have a good system. Support it. Be part of it. Whatever your feelings, our current problems are a bump in the road. A big bump to be sure, but not the end of the world unless we make it so. Win or lose, it’s a good system. It is my system, your system. Treasure it. Keep it strong.
.
The news is so evil and demoralizing, that I cannot process it. I try, to the best of my ability, to avoid watching, listening, or reading about it. I can’t fix it, so all it does is make me angry and upset. I avoid it but am not always successful. Even comedy shows are dangerous. Comedians mention current events and I don’t want to know.
Refugees greet their new nation.
I seem obsessive about taking pretty pictures rather than discussing what I’m thinking. I’m not so much obsessive as trying desperately to avoid dealing with a reality I find too awful to confront. I’m trying to NOT think about anything meaningful. Can you blame me?
I really deplore what’s going on this election year. I am sickened that racism has become okay if not outright trendy. Catch the code words people use that are thinly disguised hate-speak. They fool no one but themselves.
The ocean liner Queen Mary passes the Statue of Liberty as she enters New York Harbor after completing her first voyage to the United States on June 1, 1936. (AP Photo)
Today … again … hating immigrants is fashionable, expressed by people whose parents and grandparents were themselves immigrants. ALL of us are immigrants — really, worse than immigrants. We are despoilers who dispossessed and slaughtered the native population to take their lands and destroy them.
President Franklin Roosevelt, speaks on the 50th anniversary of the erection of the State of Liberty in New York, on Oct. 28, 1936. He declared that, “To the message of Liberty which America sends to all the world must be added her message of peace.” (AP Photo/Preston Stroup)
Who granted us that right? It seems we granted ourselves the right. We wanted it and declared it our God given right to grab it. To the best of my knowledge, God never weighed in on the issue. More’s the pity.
We have an ugly track record and much to answer for, something we completely ignore as we self-righteously treat newcomers to this country as if we ourselves are not the bloodiest of intruders.
I take pictures of waterfalls and trees. Of the oncoming of a new season that I hope does not herald another appalling chapter in man’s inhumanity to man and my reluctant participation in a process that makes me alternately depressed and ashamed.
A steady stream of tourists from everywhere in the U.S. and many from foreign lands, visit the Statue of Liberty (background) in New York August 4, 1946 which rises from an almost 150-foot pedestal. This height of the base of the 152-foot figure was necessary to make Miss Liberty impervious to the high winds of the bay. (AP Photo/FS)
As my neighbors … the people who wave the flag of which I’d like very much to be proud … spout words that are mindless repetitions of crap they’ve heard on propaganda machines like Fox news, I wonder what went wrong? How come we seem to have bred a generation of morons too stupid to recognize their own best interests? Do they realize that they are spitting on the flag they claim to love?
As a nation, we have lost ourselves. We have traded our souls to the Devil … and I hope we have one Hell of a long spoon, because as you may recall, dining with the Devil rarely works out well for the dinner guests.
Our flag flies over our local Revolutionary War era cemetery in the middle of town.
As for me, I’m back to pictures of waterfalls and autumn leaves. They won’t hurt me. They remind me that the earth somehow endures, despite our best efforts to kill it. Maybe our nation will survive too, even though we seem determined to destroy all the good we ever represented.
Everybody these days is proud of being something. Proud to be from Texas. Proud to live in the greatest city on earth (fill in the name of city). Proud to be white. Proud to be a man, but proud to be a woman. Proud to be Irish, Black, Hispanic, Polish, Greek, Jewish, Chinese, Korean, Russian, Christian, Hindu, Muslim … any religion, ethnicity, or nationality will do as well as any other.
Life is a game of chance. Play well.
We are all so damned proud.
But I ask again: what makes you proud to be something that was an accident of birth? Are you proud to be alive? Human? Proud you aren’t dead of disease, starvation, natural disaster, or war?
I am not proud to be an American. I am glad to be an American, grateful to be free to live in this beautiful valley. I love the United States. I think it’s fundamentally a great nation which, if we stopped screwing around, could be even greater. But proud? What does pride have to do with it?
I’m proud of some of the things I’ve written, some of the pictures I’ve taken. I’m ashamed of things I’ve done, too. I haven’t always lived up to my own beliefs. Has anyone really? I’m proud of what I’ve earned, but I’m not proud of the gifts I was given at birth. I am deeply grateful that I was lucky enough to receive them. To be proud of them would be pure hubris. I didn’t earn them. They came free. What I do with them may or may not give me an excuse for pride.
Photo credit: Garry Armstrong
Assuming, of course, that you believe pride is a good thing and not, as every good Christian should, believe that pride is the ultimate and deadliest of sins.
I am proud of my country’s achievements, but ashamed and embarrassed by other things we’ve done. I believe our Constitution is one of the finest legal documents ever written. That we so often fail to live up to it saddens me, but at least we had founders who weren’t airheads or mass murderers, a burden other nations bear.
Pride implies you actively participated or contributed to whatever makes you proud. I don’t think being born qualifies. Birth gets you get a ticket to stand at the starting line plus a chance to run the race. To live. After that, it’s the life you live that matters.
So I’m glad to be an American. I’m happy I was born here and not in Sarajevo or Beijing. But I didn’t have anything to do with it. It wasn’t a choice I made. Nothing was required of me. My mother’s pregnancy occurred here and not somewhere else. If she had been Mexican or Turkish? Then, by current jingoistic ethnocentric guidelines, I’d surely be proud to be Turkish or Mexican.
Borders are lines on a map. There are no substantive differences except those imposed by tradition and politicians who live on one side or the other of an invisible, artificial, politically driven boundary. If you live on the border of another country, you are no doubt aware the only reason you are who you are is luck. For that matter, your social status, your class, religion, ethnicity, level of wealth of poverty … all dumb luck.
Liberty Hall, Philadelphia
You aren’t special because you were born to a family that is rich, white, Christian, Republican or anything else. You are not defined by your parents nor by their traditions, religion, politics, or social status.
The life you live will define you. The choices you make, the work you do, the way you treat the rest of God’s creatures as you walk your path determine your character.
Being righteous isn’t special. It’s what you are supposed to do. That’s why you have a conscience and free will. Whatever you got or didn’t get when you were born determines where you stand as the race begins, but you define who you are at the finish.
What you do in this world may perhaps be something to take pride in. Where and what you were at your birth are not.
Does that make me unpatriotic? Patriotism and love of country should be tempered by intelligence and the understanding that nations, like people, don’t always do the right thing. You are entitled to judge your country, state, and elected officials by the same standards as anything or anyone else. Judge your homeland on its merits, not because an accident of birth dropped you there.
This isn’t the currently popular viewpoint, but if you get it, spread it. No nation gets a free pass for bad behavior. You don’t get a free pass for bad behavior, do you?
Most of us are glad if we break even at the end of the month. We don’t have batteries of lawyers to finagle our way out of trouble. We have to deal with the consequences of our actions. Being “a product of your times or environment” is no excuse for ignorance, bigotry, hatred, or cruelty. It is never acceptable to mistreat people because they are different or your segment of society despises them.
You aren’t special. You just think you are.
Ask God. Ask yourself. Look in a mirror. What have you done to deserve the air you breathe? If you don’t have an answer, you probably should reconsider your priorities and maybe, your life.
Stanley Kramer receives an Award at the 1960 Berlin Film Festival for Inherit the Wind (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Given the way our world is going, consider this a reminder of the way things have been and the way we hope they will never be again. Much of the dialogue in the movie was lifted straight from the actual Scopes Trial transcript. That it is as relevant today as it was 50 years ago is — to me — frightening. We should all be frightened that we are in fact repeating history, apparently having learned nothing from the past. It’s an evil omen and makes my skin crawl.
From “Inherit the Wind,” one of the best movies ever made .. a reminder …
Fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy, and needs feeding … and we are feeding it well.
Is this where we want to go? Are these the people we want to emulate? Is this what we fought and died for in the carnage of all the wars we’ve fought for the last century?
Proud to be from Texas. Proud to live in the greatest city on earth (fill in the name of city). Proud to be white. Proud to be a man, but proud to be a woman. Proud to be Irish, Black, Hispanic, Polish, Greek, Jewish, Chinese, Korean, Russian, Christian, Hindu, Muslim … any religious affiliation, ethnicity, or nationality will serve. Why? What makes you proud to be something that was an accident of birth? Are you proud to be alive? Human? Proud you aren’t dead of disease, starvation, natural disaster, or war?
I am not proud to be an American. I certainly am glad to be an American, happy that I am free to live in a beautiful place and have a home in this valley. I love the United States. I think it’s fundamentally a great nation which, if we stopped screwing around, would be an even greater one. But proud?
I’m proud of things I’ve written, some things I’ve done, and ashamed of others. I’m proud of what I’ve earned. I’m not proud of the gifts I was given at birth, but I am deeply grateful that I was lucky enough to receive them.
I am proud of my country’s achievements, but ashamed and embarrassed by other things we’ve done. I believe our Constitution is one of the finest legal documents ever written anywhere at any time. That we so often fail to live up to it saddens me, but at least we had founders who weren’t airheads or mass murderers, a burden other nations bear.
Pride implies you actively participated or contributed to whatever makes you proud. I don’t think being born qualifies. If you exist, you were born (not counting Jesus and other less popular deities). Birth gets you get a ticket to stand at the starting line and a chance to run. To breathe air. After that, it’s up to you. What you do by the time your life concludes may or may not confer any right to be proud.
So I’m glad to be an American. I’m happy I was born here and not in Sarajevo or Beijing. But I didn’t have anything to do with it. It wasn’t a choice I made. Nothing was required of me. My mother’s pregnancy occurred here and not somewhere else. If she had been Mexican or Turkish? Then, by current jingoistic ethnocentric guidelines, I’d surely be proud to be Turkish or Mexican.
Borders are lines on a map. There are no substantive differences except those imposed by tradition and politicians who live on one side or the other of an invisible, artificial, politically driven boundary. If you live on the border of another country, you are no doubt aware the only reason you are who you are is luck. For that matter, your social status, your class, religion, ethnicity, level of wealth of poverty … all dumb luck. You aren’t special because you were born to a family that is rich, white, Christian, Republican or anything else. You are not defined by who your parents were, nor by their traditions, religion, politics, or social status. The life you live will define you. The choices you make, the work you do, the way you treat the rest of God’s creatures along your path … these determine your character.
The only thing that you could legitimately take pride in is the good you do and if you are either Jewish or Christian, even that is wrong and lessens the value of the righteous acts you perform. Charity performed anonymously is of far greater value than anything for which you get recognition or rewards.
Being righteous isn’t special. It’s what you are supposed to do. That’s why you have a conscience and free will. Whatever you got or didn’t get when you were born determines where you stand as the race begins, but you define who you are at the finish.
What you do in this world may perhaps be something to take pride in. Where and what you were at your birth are not.
Does that make me unpatriotic? I don’t think so, but others will disagree. I think patriotism and love of country needs to be tempered by intelligence and the realization that nations, like people, don’t always do the right thing. When nations are better than they need to be … or worse than they should be … you are free to judge them as you would a person who does well or badly. Judge your homeland on its merits, not because an accident of birth dropped you there.
I know this isn’t a popular point of view or one that everyone will understand, but if you get it, spread it around. Nations don’t deserve a free pass for bad behavior. You don’t get a free pass for bad behavior, do you? Unless you are super rich, in which case you get to do whatever you want and count on your lawyers to take care of the fallout.
Most of us are not super rich or even sort of rich. A lot of us are glad if we break even at the end of the month. We have to deal with the consequences of our behavior. Being “a product of your times or environment” is not an excuse for ignorance, bigotry, hatred, or cruelty. It has never been okay to mistreat fellow creatures because they aren’t like you or because you grew up in a world that despises them. You aren’t special by reason of birth. You just think you are.
Ask God. Ask yourself. Look in a mirror. What have you done to deserve the air you breathe?
With camera in hand, exploring European lands, cultures, food, and drink...mostly with a plan, but sometimes enjoying the adventure of just getting lost.
