You’ve Got To Be Carefully
Taught!
“You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear. You’ve got to be taught from year to
year. It’s got to be drummed in you dear
little ears… You’ve got to be taught to
be afraid of people whose eyes are oddly made, and people whose skin is a
diff’rent shade…You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late…To hate all the
people your relatives hate. You’ve got
to be carefully taught!”
Rogers &
Hammerstein – South Pacific[i]
It was 1932, deep into the Great
Depression: high unemployment, lost savings, long bread lines and no hope. Franklin Roosevelt told us “the only
thing we have to fear is fear itself.” His inaugural speech raised the nation’s
spirits. Once again, in our short
national history, the nation is fearful.
I’ve struggled for weeks to put thoughts to paper about this fear and
hate. After too many revisions, I still hadn’t nailed it. Was I the only one paranoid about the state
of our country? Was I sounding like,
well, an old curmudgeon convinced that life was better when…?
The answer was yes! Then I awoke one morning to headlines that a
man had shot members of Congress, their staff, and Capital Police, because they
were Republicans. There is a high level
of fear across the land, much too much hate, and I liked it better before. I also liked it better when we had a
president who could raise our nation’s spirits.
At the Democratic Party baseball
practice, they stopped playing and circled together to offer a prayer. A picture of them praying, posted on line,
drew a steady stream of hateful comments because they were Democrats and
because they prayed. Former
Congresswoman Gifford, herself shot in the head for being a Democrat, offered
empathy, and consolation to the members of Congress. Her Facebook page lit up with hate messages,
calling for her to be shot too, and calling her names that you can’t
print. Even in the midst of tragedy, the
air is toxic. Who taught us to hate and
fear like this? [ii]
A recent national survey[iii]
showed that too many Americans are afraid.
They fear a corrupt government, one that will restrict firearms, and they
fear losing health care. They fear
unemployment, and the inability to get jobs in small town mid-America because
of plant closings and lack of technical skills.
They fear terrorist attacks, biological warfare, another world war, or a
pandemic. When a third of the nation or
more is afraid about the basics of life, we have a problem. Who teaches us to be afraid?
Fears are incubators of
hate. Evil is relatively rare, ignorance
is epidemic. We see this so often that it’s
the new normal. People all over the
country marched to protest the election of a duly elected President to demand
an end to Sharia Law in this country even though we don’t have it, and White
Supremacists and neo-Nazis demanding a White America. Our president tweets everyday to tell us whom
to fear and whom to hate. [iv]
Science is true even if you don’t believe it.
Yet the chattering class has demonized the idea of climate change. Schoolyard bullying is on the rise, based on
perceived permission granted by our nation’s leaders.[v]
Members of Congress run attack ads
against each other to try to force favorable votes. The level of incivility in the nation is a
rancid stew of fear and hate that is taking the country down. It needs to change, but it won’t, until those
responsible admit complicity.
MSNBC and Fox News came on the
air in 1996, each with an agenda. MSNBC
advocated for ultra-liberal causes and Fox News for ultra-conservative causes;
neither is “fair and balanced” or pretends to be. Bill O’Reilly was the top cable show for years
with an obvious right-wing agenda. Now
Rachel Maddow, an ultra-liberal holds the honor. Jerry Springer and Maury Povich display hate
and low-life on their daily shows. Talk-radio,
conservative and liberal hosts alike, seem to have license to lie and fulminate
against their opponents. Rush Limbaugh’s
daily audience of 13 million people believe him and end up afraid and hating
everyone who disagrees with him and them.
Listen once or twice to understand. Goebbles once said, “A lie told once remains a
lie, but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth.”
SCOTUS ruled that Citizens United
could raise and spend hundreds of millions of dollars to buy candidates. Money is the mother’s milk of politics, but
it’s getting ridiculous. Maybe Members
of Congress should wear jackets with their sponsor’s logos sewn on them like
racecar drivers. These huge sums skew
the political elections and give weight to the wishes of the top 1% of the
population who own nearly 90% of the wealth.
Candidates spent nearly four and half million dollars on the
Congressional race in my district last year, most from outside the district.[vi] Both parties operate call centers near the
Capital where members of Congress spend up to three hours each day dialing for
dollars.[vii] That is more time than they spend in session
each day. What can we do about the
situation? How do we stop carefully
teaching each other to hate and fear?
The Congressional baseball game
saw Speaker Ryan and Minority Leader Pelosi making nice to each other. They said they are Americans first and
Democrat or Republican second. They can
set an example by agreeing to work together for the benefit of the nation. The party in the minority has to be the
“Loyal Opposition, “not the party of obstruction. The majority party can’t be the party of
obstruction either.[viii] Sometimes you have to compromise even when
you know you are right.[ix] Radio talk show hosts and cable TV agenda
shows need to start being civil and adult in their behavior and discourse. Each of us should consider calling out our
friends when they say unkind things and ask them to restate their opinion in a
nice way. What if we and I’m guilty too,
didn’t have phones and tablets at the dinner table? What if families sat down to dinner two or
three times a week? Is competitive
soccer more important than carefully teaching the family? In the end, I think it’s we parents who cultivate
fear and hate or allow it to exist. Our
actions speak volumes: whom we watch on TV, whom we listen to on the radio, and
whom we elect as representatives. It’s
where we take the kids for entertainment, what movies we watch, and the music
to which we listen. It’s always been
that way. You’ve got to be carefully
taught!
[i]
Rogers and Hammerstein, South Pacific 1948
[ii]
Facebook, June 2017
[iii]
The Chapman University Survey of American Fears Wave 3, 2016
[iv]
Trump Attacks Media for Its ‘Agenda of Hate,’ Daily Beast May 2017
[v]
The Kids Are Alt-Right, BuzzFeed News, May 2017
[vi]
California’s 7th Congressional District election, 2016, Ballotpedia
2017
[vii]
Are members of Congress becoming telemarketers? Sixty Minutes 2014
[viii]
U.S. Senate, “The Ev and Charlie Show” January 1961
[ix]
Charlie Rose Show, June2017
