Keeping it real...

“Change means movement. Movement means friction. Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or change occur without that abrasive friction of conflict.” Saul Alinsky

Today is Veteran's Day in the United States - a Federal and local holiday - born after WWII initially in Birmingham, Alabama to coincide with the older Armistice/Remembrance Day. This former somber national "holy day" marked the conclusion of hostilities in Germany during WWI at the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918. By 1954, however, Armistice Day had been broaden into an All Veteran's Day to remember everyone who served the nation in the Armed Services and President Eisenhower signed this change into law on May 26, 1954.

Yesterday President Obama addressed the Ft. Hood Army base in Texas bringing both his condolences to the grieving as well as a word of hope and perseverance for those throughout the United States who have ears to hear...

And it is to those who have ears to hear that I write today because there is an odd and unsettling thing happening in America right now: political amnesia. I suspect that this has always been true to varying degrees in the white middle class - it certainly was a reality for me growing up in the 1950s - and yet something unique is going on right now. And it grounded in a truly ungrounded understanding of our history.

+ Perhaps you've heard pastors or political commentators decry our "loss of civility?" I've done this myself and there is something to be said about the coarsening of public culture. Without a doubt, there is a crudity and vulgarity that used to obscured but is now a part of our prime time TV viewing habits. Where once Red Foxx records were kept hidden and dragged out only at late night cocktail parties, now "South Park" rubs our nose in irony, hypocrisy and the absurdity of a consumer culture gone wild. (Don't get me wrong, I LOVE "South Park" and think it is one of the truly insightful pop culture critiques - just watch the episodes about either Tom Cruise or Mel Gibson - but they are clearly speaking in ways that once were not publicly tolerated.)

+ At the same time, as Lenny Bruce made clear (and George Carlin after him) when those in power whine about the crudity of public discourse, it is a distraction. There are far greater obscenities before us than potty humor: think of our inability to provide health care for the most vulnerable, the on-going legacy of racism and misogyny to say nothing of the two wars being conducted on Muslim soil. But these authentic social obscenities are rarely named out loud because so much of our time is spent bemoaning our verbal degradation.

Evangelical preacher and teacher, Tony Campolo, once clarified this as he spoke to a large church gathering nearly 30 years ago. He said something like, "Every 60 seconds hundreds of thousands of God's children die because of our unwillingness to share medical and food resources... and you don't give a shit." He waited poignantly while his conservative Christian audience gasped in horror and then added: "And the greater obscenity is that you are more offended by the word shit than you are about their deaths." Precisely... and in spades!

American historian, James Loewen, has dedicated most of his professional life to correcting both the overt lies most Americans have been taught in school as well as the political amnesia that our training has encouraged. Whether it is our completely sanitized understanding of Columbus - and the systematic obliteration of 95% of the First Nation peoples through disease - to our more willful ignorance of our organic anti-racist legacy, Loewen makes it clear that most of us have been conditioned to prefer being nice and polite to being effective on behalf of justice and compassion. And yet, if our real history teaches anything, it is what Alinsky noted at the top of this blog: NOTHING happens without friction and conflict - especially when it involves money, power, race and sex. (Take a look, for example, of his listing of the 10 Worst Summaries of American History @ sundown.afro.illinois.edu/content.php?file=slideshow.html)

And clearly our world is experiencing conflict around all of this and more right now: unemployment is at a record high, a Black man and his family have taken up residence in the White House, the old majorities are being replaced by post-modern generations and religious absolutes are being questioned and discarded. So it is not at all unexpected for the old guard to fight dirty - that is just reality - and as Meister Eckhart used to say, "REALITY is the will of God - now it can always be better - but we must start with what is real." Same is true in the wisdom of the 12 Steps: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference."

I remember back in the early 80s when the Religious Right was going public after having discovered the organizing tactics the liberals used in the 50s and 60s: the elite was horrified - the middle class was disgusted - and the alienated evangelicals were energized because they were effectively enacting their conservative social agenda. The same might be said about the way Tom Delay and his minions helped steal the election from Al Gore. Like Alinsky also said: "Last guys don't finish nice."

It was during this same time that a much younger Bruce Springsteen discovered both Joe Klein's book about Woody Guthrie as well as the writing of Flannery O'Connor. The result was a transformed rock and roller who recognized what all the conflict in America was REALLY all about... and he went on to share it. And he has kept sharing it as a way of combatting our social and political amnesia.

Many of us rejoiced with Barrack Obama was elected - and it was a blessing - so let's not go deaf, dumb and blind now that change can be accomplished. Let's stop wasting time and energy whimpering about the loss of civility. It is a distraction that simply isn't true. Rather, let us be compassionate and kind to one another while at the same time staying vigilant about a social agenda that binds up the wounds of the broken and feeds the hungry, clothes the naked and builds community. For anything less is... bullshit.