truth

The Trickle Down Theory of Bigotry

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kids with instruments-01Enough.

I  know it’s been an interesting ride. We’ve never seen a political candidate like Donald Trump before. He gives vent to the inner two year old, the child who knows he’s better than anyone else and doesn’t let logic, truth, or empathy get in his way. He wants what he wants, and he will say and do whatever it takes to get it – classic two year old behavior. Watching him is like spending a day at the circus.

The problem is that he is a bully, a liar, and a bigot – traits which spit in the face of American ideals like equality, opportunity, and freedom of speech – and our children are watching. When our children see us supporting him for the highest office in the land, they might reasonably believe that we think bullying, lying and bigotry are acceptable.

They are not.

In a speech on caucus day in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Trump told his audience that he would pay the legal fees of followers who beat up protesters at his rallies.

After two brothers in Boston who beat up a homeless Latino man said that they were inspired by Trump’s anti-immigrant message, Trump suggested that the men were well-intentioned and had simply gotten carried away. A two on one well intentioned beating?

Last November, Trump supporters attacked an African-American protester who was chanting “Black lives matter.” They hit him, knocked him down, and continued to kick him after he was on the ground. Afterwards, Trump suggested that their behavior was justified. “Maybe he should have been roughed up,” he was quoted, “It was absolutely disgusting what he was doing.”

Hmm.

It reminds me of the sixth grade bully, gathering his friends behind him to beat up the unpopular kid, then trying to shift blame to the victim.

The Washington Post wrote that “Trump in this campaign has gone after African Americans, immigrants, Latinos, Asians, women, Muslims and now the disabled.” He physically mimicked Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Serge Kovaleski, who suffers from arthrogryposis, a congenital joint condition that affects the movement in his arms.

Can you imagine sitting in the Principal’s office, hearing that your child had done such a thing?

How are we to explain to our daughters that brains, talent and hard work are more important than breast size when the man we are considering for president says that “it really doesn’t matter what the media write as long as you’ve got a young, and beautiful, piece of ass.”

Last, most of us agree that teaching our children not to lie is an important part of parenting. Mr. Trump’s truth rating on the Pulitzer prize winning site Politifact is 2%.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, teens in Merrillville, Ind., at the predominantly white Andrean High School recently chanted “Build a wall” at their counterparts from predominantly Latino Bishop Noll Institute during a basketball game. Similarly, fans of Elkhorn High School in Wisconsin chanted “Donald Trump, build that wall!” at a girls’ soccer game against Beloit Memorial High School, whose team is largely Latina or black.

A survey of 2000 K through 12 teachers done by Teaching Tolerance reported an increased anxiety level and an upswing in bullying, harassment and intimidation among kids inspired by the appalling misbehavior throughout this campaign.

A kindergarten teacher in Tennessee wrote, “a Latino child—told by classmates that he will be deported and trapped behind a wall—asks every day, “Is the wall here yet?””

The “trickle down” theory of bigotry and bullying. If my parents admire this man, and this man says that Mexicans are rapists and women are disgusting animals, then it must be all right for me to think that also.

Most of us do not dream of our children growing up to be bullies and bigots.

Dr Martin Luther King said it better than I ever will:

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

So, enough. Remember the basics: respect for our fellows, equality, honesty, justice…

Your children are watching.

Domesticated Momster

Anonymity and Denial in the Twitterverse

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turtle2-01Playwright Tom Stoppard said, “Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.”

I am old enough to be amazed by social media, with its multitude of words and pictures. It did not exist when I was new. If we wanted enlightenment, we went to the library or read the Post. By the time we found our information, the events were already in the past. We knew people of different cultures existed, and events happened, but it was knowledge that came at a distance, blurred by its time-consuming transformation into letters and pictures.

When we curious children wanted to see what a woman looked like without her clothes, we stole our parent’s National Geographic and leafed through it for pictures of deepest Africa. Kennedy and Lennon were shot, but there were no cell phone videos or instant interviews. The stories unfolded over weeks, with time to adjust and get a little distance.

Social media now comes with immediacy and savage intensity. People’s lives are flayed open and placed on the screen for my perusal. If I presume to know anything about that woman in Africa, she can knock me upside the head minutes later, because she is in reality just a hairsbreadth away. If I pretend to wisdom, the whole world can judge me and let me know where they think are my errors in judgement.

This brilliant transparency should make us more authentic, more determined to write nothing that we would not stand behind to our deaths. We should claim our words without reservation. These words. are. me. Sadly, from a place of weakness and fear it can instead make us deny what we know, as we buffer our truth so as not to be responsible for it.

We write, “Tweets do not replace medical advice, retweets are not to be considered an endorsement.” We backtrack, and pad ourselves against risk. The most powerful thing we can do – put our thoughts into words for other people to see – we disclaim and weaken with “tweets are not meant to be advice.”

Of course they are! What would be the point, otherwise?

If we give thought to and write words down then they need to be true. Words are sacred. We record our words in the hopes that they will “nudge the world a little.” If our words are our truth then they have earned our faith: we have to stand behind them with our names and our identities.

Weakening our words by buying into a fear of lawsuits and judgement is a betrayal of our selves; it costs us a piece of our souls. Our words are us and denying them, even in a small part, allows decay to eat away at our own value.

Conversely, since we wrote those words with our very own minds and hands we should never, in the rush to say something, write down what we know is not truth: those words will also follow us through our lives. People sometimes feel that they can be nasty, petty, or judgmental on the internet because they are anonymous. They can twist the facts just a little to make their point. We must realize that there is no such thing as true anonymity. Even if no one else ever knows who wrote those words, you yourself do.

Persian poet Hafez wrote, “The words you speak become the house you live in.” Write only words that have a strong foundation and the solidity of truth, so that your house is yours alone and can hold up to the hurricane force winds of opinion. Hafez’s words are as true on the internet today as they were in the fourteenth century in ink on paper. Such is the power of words. Believe in them, and in your self.