"Muslim!" "Not a citizen!" "Michelle Obama not a proud American!" "Let's draw a Hitler mustache on him!" "Socialist (though we really don't know what that is)!"
There is no power in any of that, because any reasonable person can see none of it is so. Ah! I said, reasonable person, didn't I?
Surface-dwellers. Threatened by ideas that seem strange/alien/inclusive. In the early days of my Daily Kos membership, my thoughts used to be, "Well, we're all Americans."
I don't necessarily think that anymore.
I've not abandoned my innate optimism, but I am an optimist--not an ostrich. "America" means a different thing to you and I, than it does to them. Yes, I do dislike speaking in terms of "us" and "them". But as I read "Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume II, by Blanche Wiesen Cook, I find parallels:
ER's ability to invite her cousin Alice Roosevelt Longworth to inaugural events was...extraordinary. Alice had, after all, declared war on Democrats and never missed an opportunity to deride Eleanor publicly. Her opposition to Franklin was shrill, often vulgar and cruel. She not only attacked his policies, she mocked his physical condition: "My poor cousin. he suffered from polio so he was put in a brace; and now he wants to put the entire U.S. into a brace, as if it were a crippled country--that is all the New Deal is about...."
Shrill. Vulgar. Cruel. Did I say parallels? Perhaps the ghost of Cousin Alice marches with them.
Although ER never criticized Alice by name, she wrote an article in which she described her kind of malicious gossip and concluded that it reflected "not only a cruel but a despicable trait of human nature."
This diary seeks not to attack an individual, particularly one who's not here to defend herself, but to show there is some truth to the old idea that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
But this is what they have. It is a dark and strange thing to me, this collective group-think embrace of un-reasonableness.
After the publication of Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume I, some people recoiled from the possibility that ER might have had passion and love in her life outside her marriage and apart from FDR...One woman, a human rights worker, was aghast that ER had "lesbian friends, or was a lesbian, or some such thing." When asked if she read the book, she replied: "No, I wouldn't read it; I wouldn't touch it!" Such views, even on the part of those who claim to respect and admire Eleanor Roosevelt, reflect the kind of determined ignorance she worked so hard to uproot. After a lifetime of loving, with all the difficulties and contradictions love involves, it seems a peculiar and sad commentary that people who claim to know ER do not care to know about the relationships that most absorbed and concerned her.
(Emphasis mine.)
Reason seeks answers, but not in a vacuum. Reason gathers ally and friend, where both or either can be found. un-reasonableness seems to only feed upon itself. Reason is strong, and moves ever forward.
To contemplate ER's life of example and responsibility is to forestall gloom. She understood, above all, that politics is not an isolated individualist adventure. She sought alliances, created community, worked with movements for justice and peace. Against great odds, and under terrific pressure, she refused to withdraw from controversy. She brought her network of agitators and activists into the White House, and never considered a political setback a permanent defeat. She enjoyed the game, and weathered the abuse. Energized by her friends and allies, she devoted some part of every day to the business of making life better for most people. To contemplate her life of action and determination is to reconsider the role of popular movements everywhere growing, reorganizing, still and again dedicated to a politics of care, love, and justice.
"...a politics of care, love, and justice." This is strength, not a shrinking away. What they have, the loud voices shrill indeed, the venomous striking out against whatever does not fit in their narrow scheme of things...their version of America...what they have is weakness. But the energy of care, love, and justice is strength because its energy always pushes forward, its tenants based upon their own principles, for the sake of their own being. They just are.
And that is what we have.