A look at the present through the lens of the past....
(26 Jun, 2013) It has been an interesting two days for
SCOTUS... the results being more-or-less meh
for both sides... and a hardening of
pre-existing, yet increasingly impermeable, social, political and religious national
divisions. A sad legacy on this 150th
Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation and the 50th
Anniversary of the Martin Luther King, Jr.’s March on Washington, both aimed at
ending many related and not dissimilar divisions.
Perhaps the most significant result is not
necessarily that voting discrimination on racial, linguistic and economic grounds
will now be winked at by powerless Federal overseers but that so many American states still prefer
to look backwards into the darkness of Dixie’s Confederacy rather than towards
the light of the Constitution of the United States for inspiration and
political understanding. A dread day has
descended for all descendants of those who gave their lives, including a
President, horribly assassinated, for the vision of a nation unified in rights,
dignity and liberty for all and for all children of all immigrants who came to
this country in the increasingly dubious hope of liberty and justice for
all.
Similarly, while the Prop 8 decision places
limits on the right to interfere in state politics by third parties, but together with the DOMA
overruling, leaves our nation equally divided again along similar geographic and
political lines between those states that practice, celebrate and recognize
freedom, equality and due process for all, and those who would restrict the
rights of their fellow citizens based on the social, economic and religious prejudices of an increasingly minority privileged
political class.
It seems to me that we have seen established
today, two Americas: One that is the
home of the brave, land of the free and a beacon of light and welcome to the
world, against an America that continues to persist in those most egregious
political errors of our history -- a Confederacy grounded in and inspired by a love
and toleration for institutionalized inequality and voter intimidation between
classes of supposedly and naturally free and equal citizens, all in the name of
a privileged caste and a privileged religion.
While I would like to celebrate the hopes and
victories of friends and family today, I find my joy tempered with the sadness
of apostate clerics chanting divisive propaganda
and slogans in hopes of resurrecting the ghosts of the White Sheets and the Grey
Army to obscure and rend the vision of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton,
LaFayette and the Adams, or to turn blind, intolerant, bigoted eyes to the
historical and natural customs of the majority of those First Nations whom God prior-established
in this land as a hope, inspiration and example to those immigrants, and to all
lovers of liberty, community and equality in this land, into two separate and
unequal Americas.
Intolerable.
Let me clarify, lest some mistake this for a
mere rant, this is not a SCOTUS failing.
SCOTUS, like Providence, is merely giving us over to the results and
consequences of our own limitations as a body politic and mutually responsible,
if increasingly hostile and unequal, community of citizens.
150 years after the battles of Gettysburg,
Vicksburg and Chattanooga, 150 years after Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address,
150 plus 1 years after the Siouan Uprising for freedom and self-determination, and
50 years after MLK, Jr. promulgated his dream of America to America, we find
ourselves divided now as much as ever, but worse, for now too many of us have not learned from the past but continue to strive for
a privileged caste of unequal citizens and incompatible states.
We now perpetuate and encourage these
divisions in pursuit of caste and inequality, but not in the naïvité of our forebears, but rather in
the hardened consciences of those who knowingly and willfully deny the promise
of America to ALL Americans.
Today, as for no other day in the past,
increasing numbers of our fellow world citizens look upon the light and promise
of a divided America with the same reaction ~ meh.
Let’s fix this.
6:14 pm -
later, similar tho'ts from other sources ...
Meyerson, Harold, "Start the Border Fence in Norfolk, Va.," Washington Post
The Onion "Supreme Court Leaves Final Decision On Gay Marriage In Capable Hands Of Texas, Alabama, Georgia"
6:14 pm -
later, similar tho'ts from other sources ...
Meyerson, Harold, "Start the Border Fence in Norfolk, Va.," Washington Post
The Onion "Supreme Court Leaves Final Decision On Gay Marriage In Capable Hands Of Texas, Alabama, Georgia"
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