CAN REPARATIONS SAVE AMERICA?

I just watched Dan Rather AND Lawrence O’Donnell, in separate interviews, trying to assure rational Americans that we are going to be alright.  Both pointed out American resilience in tempestuous times in the past as evidence that America will somehow make it through the Trump presidency.  The problem with such reassurances is that they are essentially and fundamentally self-defeating.  If we weren’t in a world of trouble there would be no need to assure us that we are NOT in a world of trouble! 

The source of this deep deep doggy doo, lies not in the fact that we have a narcissistic, homophobic, racist, misogynistic, barely literate, kleptocratic, pathologically lying, ethically challenged, morally bankrupt, intellectually stunted, thin skinned, dictator wannabe, lazy, immature man-child as president.  No, the source of this trouble lies in the fact that it is self-inflicted.  The aforementioned president, as a candidate, told everyone exactly who and what he was and he still received only three million votes fewer than his rival, Hillary Clinton. Furthermore, as his administration sinks further and further into the quagmire of his incompetence and disposition, his core supporters remain faithful, their devotion unscathed by facts or reality.   

The pundits have pointed to all manner of reason for the political ascendency of Donald Trump:  Hillary Clinton did not campaign in some swing states; there was too much emphasis on what was wrong with Trump instead of developing a positive message with a plan of action attached.  Political pundit Chris Mathews has opined that the Trump victory resulted from the fact that the elitist establishment has either forgotten about or condescended toward the hard-working non-college educated white men.  

Some of these arguments may have some merit (with the notable exception of the Chris Mathews’ argument, but that is for another day) yet none deal with what I believe is the core of the American political/spiritual dilemma: the profound need for confession/absolution/redemption.  The American soul/psyche has never come to grips with having committed two of the greatest sins/crimes in the history of the world: the genocide of American Indians and the brutal chattel enslavement of African people.  The racism used to justify these horrific acts, as expressed as Manifest Destiny back then and American exceptionalism today, remains a powerful contradiction to the so-called American Ideal as well as a formidable tool by which the elite control the white masses by keeping them in conflict with African Americans. 

America is so comfortable with her crimes that Andrew Jackson, the president personally responsible for the genocide of thousands of Indians remains on the twenty dollar bill, and monuments to the Confederacy are defended as history!  (Wonder how many statues of Hitler remain in public in Germany as “history”?)  

Put in Christian theological terms, at the end of formal, legal slavery, America had a chance to wash its sins away by being reborn the through confession and acknowledgement, not only of its sins, but also of the profound need for atonement.  Former slaves should have received the forty acres and a mule, as well as any needed assistance in education or any other area, along with the deepest and most profound regrets conceivable.  Rather than wash the stench of slavery, America chose to cover it with the cologne and deodorant of denial (then Fox news personality Bill O’Reilly proclaiming that the slaves who built Washington D.C. were “well fed” as an example) self-fulfilling prophecies, Jim Crow, mass incarceration, propaganda masquerading as history, the destruction of successful black communities, and the list goes on and on and on.   The stench of slavery, of benefitting, whether one’s progenitors, owned slaves or not, from the incalculable free labor resulting from it, grows as the insane rationales that surround that legacy grows.

To keep working class white folks voting against their own best interests, we now have right wing radio hosts such as Rush Limbaugh and Alex Jones, along with a major propaganda outlet, Fox News, masquerading as a news network, stirring discontent and lying to the point of challenging reality.  

This acceptance/denial cover=up has been unintentionally (at least regarding U.S. History) personified as metaphor in the unrepentant and tragic characters of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Arthur Dimmesdale, in the “Scarlet Letter,” and the killer in Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell Tale Heart.”

Evil, when left unaddressed, will destroy itself.  The devotees of American exceptionalism have elected the most unexceptional smallest man on the planet to fill the most exceptional, biggest job on the planet.  Reparations for slavery could have benefited everyone; the perpetrators far more than the victims.

 

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There were lines in Seth McFarlane’s film, “A Million Ways To Die In The West.” that had me questioning his attitudes on race.  Since I’ve been watching “The Orville” his new Sci-Fi “dramedy” I’m no longer questioning.  The only black woman on the program actually had a sexual encounter with a blob! Blatant and disgusting!