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A Special Rant About What Is Happening

June 30, 2016 By Cam Miller 9 Comments

I do not understand.

Everyone knows that how a story is told influences the depth and veracity of how the climax or punch line or moral is understood. The story of the election of the current Republican nominee, a person unfit on many levels to lead and govern, begins or at least has a worthy starting point in 1980. Yet the media is completely ignoring this story in favor of a narrative that seems to begin out of nowhere in 2015.

I do not understand why the media does not tell this story as it needs to be told if we are to recover as a nation from the current trajectory toward fragmentation.

Let’s put faces on this story because memory requires human faces.

Mississippi_KKK_Conspiracy_Murders_June_21_1964_Victims_Chaney_Goodman_SchwernerIn 1964 James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner (top to bottom) were murdered by a contingent of people representing the local KKK, Neshoba County Sheriff’s Offices, and the Philadelphia (Mississippi) Police Department. The three were part of the “Freedom Summer” campaign registering African-Americans to vote. They were shot and their bodies stuffed in graves dug in an earthen dam.

In August, 1980 Ronald Reagan left Detroit, Michigan immediately after the Republican nominating convention and made a beeline for Neshoba County Mississippi where he delivered his first speech. “I believe in States’ Rights,” he declared.

If you don’t know the history, “States’ Rights” is an argument rooted in the Confederacy of the Civil War, and was the rallying cry of segregationist politicians like Strom Thurman and George Wallace. “I believe in States’ Rights,” declared to a white crowd at the very place that “Civil Rights” marked as an infamous and brutal violation of humanity, was neither accidental nor innocent. It was a raw, blatant, living icon of race baiting and what would come to be known as the politics of cultural wedge issues.

Exploiting cultural wedge issues, if not begun by the Reagan campaign and National Republican Committee, was turned into a high art form by the campaign of 1980.

With funding and strategic support, the Republicans National Committee also enabled the sudden explosion of Jerry Farwell’s Moral Majority that mobilized millions of conservative Christians with fear-mongering and the inciting of anxiety around abortion, sex education, Creationism (which Reagan explicitly endorsed to be taught DA-SC-90-03096alongside Evolution), and the propaganda myth of the Welfare Cheat in which millions of urban African-Americans were supposedly milking tax dollars away from the hard working white middle class. There were also issues of international concern, especially fear of the Soviet Union and Iran, but that was not the sole practice of Republicans.

The point is that having no shame about exploiting the worst flaws in our national character in order to win, take power and hold power, has a natural progression and consequence and we are seeing it with the nomination of Donald Trump. Republicans and the media are scratching their heads trying to figure out how ‘this terrible thing happened’ but it is not a mystery nor should they be surprised.

If it continues, on either side, it will lead us into a more comprehensive and violent fragmentation than has already taken place. If the political parties do not stop intentionally exploiting hatred, fear, and division we will see far darker and more horrendous consequences.

There is always fear and bigotry, but true leadership brings people together in spite of their fears and across their prejudices to unite toward a common struggle and goal. It is possible to unite us across our differences but not if the leadership of our national parties are more driven by a lust for power and control than for the common good.

 

Filed Under: DENIM SPIRIT Tagged With: Bigotry, fragmentation, Philadelphia Mississippi, politics, Ronald Reagan's Sin

Comments

  1. Judy Kahrl says

    June 30, 2016 at 3:26 pm

    I find the current situation very frightening, not because I agree with things to fear that Trump puts forward, but because so many people follow his “fears” and want to support him. A book which helped me a little, is
    “Healing the Heart of Democracy: The Courage to Create a Politics Worthy of the Human Spirit” by Parker Palmer. We need to learn to talk to each other, even to people with whom we disagree.

    Reply
    • vtravis says

      June 30, 2016 at 3:54 pm

      Thanks for the tip! I love Parker Palmer.

      Reply
  2. Edwin Beck says

    June 30, 2016 at 3:39 pm

    Brilliant (I guess you’re not a big fan of The Orange Clown, ay?)

    Reply
  3. Patty-Kibler-Fries says

    June 30, 2016 at 4:03 pm

    Thank you, Cam. So many people don’t make the connections . They are crucial to understanding how we got to the sad place we are in today.

    Reply
    • vtravis says

      June 30, 2016 at 4:18 pm

      You’re welcome, and it’s true – those connection matter.

      Reply
  4. Peter S Conover says

    June 30, 2016 at 5:41 pm

    I am not a fan of Trump. In my longish life, I am convinced that we have never had two presidential candidates that are so lacking in moral character and basic integrity as these two losers.

    Reply
    • Cam Miller says

      June 30, 2016 at 7:10 pm

      Perspective helps, but not always a lot!

      Reply
  5. Bradley Sowash says

    June 30, 2016 at 6:25 pm

    You are so smart.

    Reply
    • Cam Miller says

      June 30, 2016 at 7:11 pm

      That’s the sweetest thing you ever said to me. If I had an emoji on this thing, I’d blow you a kiss.

      Reply

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Each of these posts appeared first in The Finger Lakes Times (NY) as an entry in the weekly series, “Denim Spirit.”

 

Sermons, and preaching as an art, are not for dispensing content or proclaiming doctrines and dogma. Like poetry, prose, and music, they are for provoking and inspiring thought, memory, and imagination within those receiving them. Please allow your thoughts to wander as they will in response to what you hear, rather than following along word for word.

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