I've been largely absent from these digital pages for weeks, trying to discern how to be a better person under the circumstances in my community, trying to infer how to live a more loving life in a small blood red place. Goodness knows I’ve made mistakes. Now was a time for personal reassessment. What are the specific true obligations of love for humanity? The local conditions are a microcosm of a fear and hate-filled world, but I do not want to reflect fear and hate and, alas, sometimes have. My online friends reading this are on journeys of their own from which I can learn, but I've felt the need to, for the most part, log out to make better sense of things nearest to me.
The Trumpian logic of the Deep South fevered swamp where I live is not new, but after most of a lifetime I'm still learning and often painfully unsettled in my mind. This is the land where saying it was “Antifa” that was responsible for the violence last Wednesday at the Capitol was accepted as Gospel by most members of the dominant political group and or at least generated the intended predator cat purrs.
Down here, for persons of color and their allies to protest is to be ostracized or worse. Sanctioned disputes must be on the terms and conditions of white power, which is sacrosanct.
From its earliest days "dissent" down here was the presumed province of white privilege. Note the profound absence of voice for Native Peoples and slaves in the earliest Georgia white rebellion:
Whereas many of Georgia's original settlers came with monetary aid from the Trustees, most of the Malcontents arrived without assistance and thus did not have the same loyalty to the colony's founders. In particular, the Malcontents objected to the Trustees' limits on landownership and prohibitions on slavery and rum. Since the Malcontents could afford to purchase enslaved Africans and vast tracts of land, they felt the policies of the Trustees prevented them from realizing their economic potential.
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In 1740 William Stephens, the father of Thomas Stephens and secretary to the Trustees, wrote a memorial entitled A State of the Province of Georgia. The document claimed the Trustees and their policies enjoyed wide support throughout Georgia and—owing to the unique laws governing the colony—economic success seemed assured. For many residents Stephens's description did not reflect reality. Speaking for the Malcontents, Tailfer refuted Stephens's claims in a tract entitled A True and Historical Narrative of the Colony of Georgia. Writing from Charleston, South Carolina, Tailfer reiterated his belief that Georgia's survival required significant changes. Tailfer wanted members of Parliament and others who provided funding for Georgia to understand that many of its residents were prevented from succeeding financially because of the Trustees' policies.
Tailfer's arguments were heard but did not result in immediate change. Officials in London ordered additional surveys of popular sentiment following the publication of Tailfer's pamphlet, but the Trustees and their increasingly controversial statutes remained. In 1742 Thomas Stephens, representing the Malcontents and other disaffected settlers from London, published a pamphlet entitled The Hard Case of the Distressed People of Georgia. The Trustees maintained their power, but Stephens's arguments continued to be heard in Georgia and England. When the Trustees passed a law in 1750 allowing slavery, many credited the change to the actions and writings of the Malcontents.
The insurrection at the Capitol was not free speech. A Black athlete cannot take his knee during the National Anthem, but the white man with the rebel flag felt he had every right to be there in all his supreme glory.
I have had to slow down and quiet down to sort things out. Having done so, I see three powerfully negative cultural features that must be acknowledged and addressed in a practical way in the quest for a more loving personal ethic. These bear some resemblance to then-candidate Barack Obama’s famous and much criticized description (www.huffpost.com/...), but the three cultural features described below put the present circumstances in a much more dangerous light than conditions in 2008.
Donald Trump has greatly heightened certain cultural conditions, but these conditions did not materialize from a cultural void. The culture in which these conditions have come to a full fruiting under Trump is dangerous and sick, but not for the reasons Trump and his followers proclaim. None of us alone can remedy this dangerousness and sickness, but at least we can as individuals try to behave responsibly given the dangerousness and sickness. I am preaching at myself on this one.
Note that I am in the below list leaving out underlying economic conditions, which might seem strange coming from one who has an anti-capitalist point of view. To truly remove the dangerousness and sickness requires political-economic change we cannot as individuals create. In the meantime, we must not lose the potential for political-economic change to an autocratic takeover.
I am not at all disregarding my belief that underlying economic conditions must be addressed to have true liberty and justice for all. Moreover, we simply must have much greater economic fairness in order to even survive this pandemic, much less to resolve other paramount problems such as Global Climate Change. I also take it as a given that fascism grows much more readily where there is an underclass of racially-privileged but economically-threatened persons who can be thereby more easily led to blame “the other.”
Rather, I am putting aside economic discussion to identify cultural facets of Trumpism that are to me key in the present moment in addition to, but by no means separate from, underlying economic conditions. These cultural facets of Trumpism are subverting civil society and political democracy, which we all should value and which are seriously threatened in the United States. Trumpism attracts adherents from all economic strata. I cannot change these economic conditions any more than I can change these cultural facets of Trumpism. We each need to work in democratic solidarity with others to do so, but in the meantime, we each have to live in love the best we can.
God Prods
It is impossible to understate the power of toxic self-righteousness to the Trump movement.This toxic self-righteousness has been aided and abetted by, and in fact built upon, the edifice of the myopically-moralizing, wickedness-tolerating Conservative Evangelical movement. This is the same Conservative Evangelical movement that sanctioned first slavery and then Jim Crow and now sanctions Donald Trump.
Even today most Conservative Evangelical calls for a reckoning within Evangelicalism (see, e.g., www.usatoday.com/...) fail to acknowledge the role that the disease of toxic self-righteousness plays in the Conservative Evangelical consciousness. LGBTQ’s and women wishing to control their bodies rather than having them controlled by powerful white men are ever the targets of Conservative Evangelical fervor.
First they came for the persons of color, LGBTQ’s, women, immigrants, and antifa, then they came for the Democrats, and now they come for anyone who is not a 100% dedicated fascist, always with absolute moral certainty in their fevered brains.
I am a pro-choice Christian contemplative (and practicing Episcopalian) who grew up the son of a Southern Baptist pastor in the Conservative Evangelical movement but left it around the same time I discovered my inner democratic socialist. I sincerely believe in a big tent left political movement for liberty and justice for all that encourages both free thought and religious diversity not infringing on the rights of others.
I do not believe that the Conservative Evangelical movement is, or ever has been, an accurate reflection of love. It is a conservative movement, not a love movement. Vicious cycles between shepherds and flocks are mandatory to the movement: Conservative Evangelical ministers do not challenge conservative positions, or they will quickly lose their congregations, and congregants who recognize and tire of the toxic self-righteousness drift away. Toxic self-righteousness learned first from generations of Conservative Evangelical ministers was and, to the extent people still go to the churches, is merely emulated on a much more dangerous mass-scale by Trumpists.
Guns
Now these fevered brains, full of toxic self-righteousness, routinely control high-capacity semi-automatic weapons available at a moment’s notice. I am really glad that the District of Columbia has strict gun laws, and I really wish all of our country did. Even in the country, far from law enforcement, no American outside of law enforcement should have a military-style assault rifle.
If the historical Conservative Evangelical movement was a significant part of the moralizing intellectual foundation of Trumpism, the gun shops and ranges are its churches, and the gun and knife shows are its tent revivals.
Full Disclosure: I say the above without denying some things that might draw criticism from some who read this, if not accusations of hypocrisy. I personally can understand the temptation of firearms as a fixating device. I particularly have tried to better understand these places within the last year, and I believe I do. This is where I may begin to sound like one of the guns nuts I am concerned about, but I want you to know that I try to understand how those people feel on some level.
I have long owned a hunting rifle, a shotgun, and a Western-style revolver chambered in .22 caliber purchased for dealing with dangerous pests. I have actually never hunted myself. I got the long guns when I was thinking of doing so. I have nothing against hunting. I have on occasion killed a water moccasin that I felt was a threat near our house, which is in the woods on the edge of suburbia. I also have nothing against some of these types of items being kept for possible use in home defense under carefully-controlled circumstances that, for instance, avoid the risk of over-penetration. I personally do not plan to ever use guns in this way. They are always kept unloaded, hidden, and locked away from separately hidden and locked ammunition. If we ever are getting broken into, I trust the dogs will bark, and I plan to call 911 before grabbing a can of pepper spray and, at the very most a machete hidden at the top of my closet.
Much more recently, however, I have taken another to me much more questionable step. Because I live in a state where they give out concealed carry permits like candy, and fanatical Trumpists with military-style assault rifles and high-capacity semi-automatic handguns surround me and my family, I now have a concealed carry permit of my own and a high-capacity semi-automatic handgun of my own. I do not actually carry a concealed weapon, and the handgun, without magazines or ammunition, stays hidden triple-locked in a safe place at an undisclosed location outside our home and motor vehicles.
I now legally could carry that handgun in the highly unlikely event I ever sensed the critical need to do so. Again, I do not believe that I will ever have to carry that handgun, much less use it, but it is a probably paranoid precaution I took just prior to the election. In contrast, the fanatical Trumpists surrounding me and my family are, to varying degrees, fixating upon and some even looking forward to the time when they can pull their guns and use them. Their guns are their precious, whereas my handgun is a worst case scenario to defend people I love from Trumpists, a scenario perhaps slightly more likely than a Zombie apocalypse. Based on what happened last week at the Capitol, I can now better believe that my precautionary conduct against the high-powered fascists has been reasonable. But it is not without regret and disgust that I have, to some degree, been sucked into the very paradigm that I abhor.
One benefit is that I have been, to the extent the sole customer wearing a Covid-19 facemask can be, somewhat “undercover” at probably every gun shop in my county, a gun and knife show, a concealed weapon gun safety training course, and a local gun range. I am not proud of any of this, but it has allowed me to see the staff and the other customers and to hear with my own pointy liberal ears their conspiracy-filled Trumpist rhetoric. Their rhetoric is some fucked up shit, I can tell you.
They are dangerous, and their toxic self-righteous movement is a true believer movement of intentional dangerousness. That’s point number two. We need to not forget that these people and the Trump movement they populate are dangerous.
Affrays
They are carrying, and I am not. Even if I were (like I am now legally allowed to do in the crazy state where I live), I would of course never want to use the darn thing and be more likely to shoot my own foot by accident, whereas some of them are chomping at the bit to do so and have a great deal of training, some from military service or civilian policing service. They may be looking for the slightest provocation to vent their toxic self-righteousness at maximum force against a oatmeal-eating, compost-loving, uncoordinated brown-skinned nearly senior citizen like me.
I do have a big left-wing mouth sometimes. If I were shouting out how great Trump is that would be fine. But I am not, and I need to avoid verbal confrontations and leave some correction of Trumpist misbehavior neglected. I must also avoid some of my own self-righteousness and spleen-venting slipping into my concern about their toxic self-rightousness and general gross lack of good human citizenship.
I have, for instance, learned first hand that unmasked Trumpists in my state, which does not have a mask mandate even at the height of the pandemic, do not like to be told to wear masks where a business’s store sign clearly says to wear masks. I am particularly concerned about this issue because I take care of my octogenarian parents, and I am doing everything possible to keep them safe.
I had to go to the grocery store on Christmas Eve to get some forgotten items. The chain grocery store where I normally shop has such a mask mandate sign, and it is clearly official store policy as confirmed on the internet. So I was startled and upset when I saw the policy not being enforced. The manager blew me off, so I took the initiative to ask two Trumpist men on the molasses aisle at the same time why they weren’t wearing masks. They both told me it was none of my business and other choice words, and, when I disagreed, physically threatened me to the point of one making it clear that he would have shot me if I had been outside. “Stepping outside” is apparently a thing with Trumpists, much like it was back in high school, except that now these people are probably packing.
At that point I kept my words to myself. But the store was out of molasses for the sweet potatoe casserole, so I drove to the other grocery store a few miles further down the road. Same grocery store chain, same mask mandate sign and official policy, same lack of compliance, same lack of enforcement by the manager, and same attempt at somewhat constructive human interaction by me with two white male non-compliant persons. (Same lack of molasses too, unfortunately.) The second individual was a very buff looking man at least two decades younger than me with Trumpian facial hair and a fancy tactical coat that looked like he would be carrying or at least have fists registered with the FBI (which also, back in high school, was a thing).
Right in front of the manager he was absolutely insistent that I meet him outside so that he could “show [me] how we settle things down here.” I explained very clearly that I was there to shop and would not fight with him. I complained to the manager that I should not have to be threatened because he does not want to do his job of enforcing the mask requirement. At that point the manager told me that I would have to leave the store because I was being disruptive. I then walked out of the store. The buff Trumpist man was not there waiting for me, thank goodness, and I took my liberal ass over to Walmart and finally found some molasses. That’s Walmart, where they also no longer enforce their clearly posted official store policy.
Point 3: accept the things I cannot change, if going to mention masks to the unmasked do it as kindly as possible, avoid affrays unless the innocent must be defended, and live to GOTV against the fascists another day.