I want to address my fellow Americans, those about a generation older than me. You’ve changed, or I’ve changed—something is different, and I’m not sure what. I’m thinking I’ve lost a lot of my cherished naiveté, and that hurts. Ignorance can be a form of bliss. That’s dangerous, though.
I mean, I grew up watching you guys, listening to you talk over coffee to my mom and dad. In defense of myself, there was so much you guys didn’t say. Oh, you told us not to use this word or that word around anyone but whites, not to repeat the things mom and dad said to John and Darlene as you drank evening beers together and played cards or beat on the old guitars waiting for the sun to go down. It was the end of the ‘60s, the beginning of the ‘70s and you said a lot. But you didn’t say a lot, too.
By the time I was 6, I had been told by my father that the only good black man was one who was kissing my behind—but the best black man was a dead black man. My mother was from small-town Illinois, and no one could put the hate on Mexicans or anyone else from anywhere else like she could. But never where they could hear! No, if blacks or Mexicans were in earshot, wait until you get to the car to start bitching about “their kind” in your neighborhood. I never did get why them being there threatened us. According to mom and dad, ours was the chosen race anyway.
And bombs—lord, if you wanted to get dad and his cronies chortling with glee and pride, why, you talked about bombing someone. Anyone, anyone who dared cross or insult us. We were, by God, Americans and if they so much as snicker at us, bomb them back to the stone age, that’s where they belong anyway with their barbaric ways! If anyone disagrees with America—France, Japan, Russia, Mexico, anyone—bomb them. It’s a wonder I matured into a rabid liberal. It sure isn’t what I was taught at home.
But at the same time, I went to first grade in 1969 and I had teachers fresh out of college that had us singing If I had a Hammer and Jeremiah was a bullfrog. They were mainly women who were freshly enthusiastic with the possibilities opening up, women’s liberation, and a world that might have less war after the debacle that was Vietnam and the spirit of change they’d helped bring about. They said the things you left unsaid.
It was all very confusing, really. I’d leave school humming those tunes, having been told that America had a glorious destiny, one that included helping the world get to where we were going. Then I’d get home and be told over and over again that those people were idiots. They were traitors, lazy bums that only wanted a free ride on the white man’s coat tails. Let me illustrate this another way: The day John Lennon was assassinated, my father took a day off of work—to celebrate.
And now, it seems, many, many of you who would have been my father’s cronies and my mother’s contemporaries are vociferously behind Mr. Trump. It’s like you finally feel empowered to shout out all the things you gravely whispered to us young ones back in the day.
I mentioned being confused. I grew up in the ‘70s, when your “Put another log on the fire” was clashing with Steve Miller’s “...shoe the children, with no shoes on their feet.” How else could I be, save confused? Then I joined the Army during Reagan’s first term.
Everyone talks about the military as this sort of monolithic conservative institution, but compared to what I grew up under, it was a breath of fresh air. There, I was thrown in with men and women from all over our nation and I found out how deeply I had been lied to. How many fair and competent black or Latino, Samoan or Asian men and women—Americans all—did I have to meet and work with before I realized all the propaganda that had been drilled into my head made no sense! It was hateful and evil.
These men and women began teaching me about real honor—honor that no one but you can polish or tarnish. They taught me that it is all on your shoulders, there are no excuses, you broke it you buy it, you condone it, you own it. I really have to say, I’m really tired of you guys bashing them.
It was about this time that all of you who had been so quiet about your hate got a name: the Silent Majority. To my mind, that’s a textbook definition of cowardice. You might argue it was self-preservation, much like those who join the KKK wear a sheet, to preserve their “public” identity. I’ll argue that if your arguments and your causes were good and just, you’d not need to hide your face or put forth your views under a cloak of disgruntled, privileged secrecy. You were silent because you knew your desires were evil and you knew your neighbors would rightfully think ill of you for the way you see the world. You couldn’t even be true to yourselves. Cowards, pure and simple.
But, you also didn’t need to. All the presidents and most of the Congress, the state houses, governorships—all of them were white male bastions. And yes, I get the fact that many women are very comfortable with the way things were. Then, America betrayed you.
You were comfortable that all of America actually agreed with you: They were the true cowards, not saying what they really felt, and they were all dangerously P.C. But a majority of your fellow citizens voted in a black man—not once, but twice.
And you folks went ballistic. Now it’s a woman running for the top office, and ballistic has become an escape trajectory.
Let me be clear: I was a child when you were raising children. I also raised children when you were setting policy. I had social benefits that eased the way for my mom and dad, but those benefits just were not there when I raised their grandchildren. You guys took all of that, milked it, then turned around and denied it to us.
Honor. I can’t find anything honorable in you. I’ve lost that naiveté and I’m pretty sure I don’t want it back. I am no longer that 10-year-old kid you might have seen on a used bicycle with a banana seat back in ‘74. These years have changed all of us. Now I see you, wearing your V.F.W. hats and applauding a man who is actively pressing for America to bow down and let Russia roll right over us. I stood guard on that East German border and I would never, ever have believed this of any of you.
I find it dishonorable to judge a person’s worth by their skin color. Not only that, it’s stupid. I find it dishonorable to be willing to abridge other’s freedom of speech so that I only have to hear what I want to hear. It is dishonorable to be on the side of torture and torturers.
It is damned dishonorable to be so afraid of everything around us that we have to threaten to blow other nation’s ships out of the water for making insulting gestures at us. If we’d been that thin-skinned on the Cold War watch, believe me, none of us would be here debating anything.
It is dishonorable to lie, and believing a lie so you can keep your cherished hate is both dishonorable and lazy.
I now think that you haven’t lost your honor: I realize you never had it. Like your candidate, you played honorable folks as long as it was easy for you, and now you have gone to your most fundamental state. Spoiled brats—really, that’s what it seems to be. You want what you want and only what you want. I’m pretty sure you won’t get it in a nation of nearly 400 million people. I’m also damn sure none of us should.
This election will end, and once it does, we will have to move forward. But I have to tell you, your support for Trump, for the things he finds good? It quite simply says too much to me about the type of person you are. I’m not sure I can forget, andI’m pretty sure I don’t want to. That’s information I’ll need when dealing with you after this.
No more passes. The media might not do it, but Americans will. We’re calling you on it from now until forever.
You make bad decisions, using really bad motives.
Not any more. The mask is off and we won’t forget. Think about that.