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Dear Reactionary Christian Right-wingers:Happy Holidays!Yours truly...
Oh, goodness, what a laugh. I was tempted to leave this letter at that, but I started writing because I wanted to point out some obvious things to you. This time every year, I hear cranky people having knee-jerk responses to hearing “Happy Holidays” and frankly it’s grating because when someone wishes you Happy Holidays, you’re supposed to take it as a nice gesture and return it in some way. But with wingnuts like yourselves, well, it’s all about YOU, isn’t it? Unlike the rest of us, you just can’t bother to try to understand people, and you certainly won’t return a favor. In fact I don’t know why I’m bothering trying here to enlighten you, since I know from experience it won’t work, but I guess that’s the difference between us—at least I try to help people understand each other.
‘Tis the season for charity, after all, so here’s a few things I’d like you to note about your favorite time of year:
1) It’s not only YOUR favorite time of year. Get a load of that guy, wrapped in white. This time every year, he fasts from sunrise to sunset during something called Ramadan. I kid you not! And that woman, with the colorful robes and dignified countenance. She celebrates Christmas, but then a bunch more days after called Kwanzaa! Get outta here! And how about the little guy in black with the braids and beard. He celebrates something from before Christ was born, and his kids get a present every day for eight days! How cool is that! Man, get a load of that woman with the red dot on her forehead! Who knows what she celebrates? “Merry Christmas” might not cover it, don’t you think?
2) Even in your household, there’s more than one holiday. Have you forgotten Thanksgiving and New Year’s? Someone wishing you Happy Holidays may not know if they will see you again anytime soon, so they cover the whole season in one swift stroke, rather than awkwardly cataloging the upcoming calendar. Isn’t that nice of them, not wasting your time?
3) There’s this kooky thing called the Winter Solstice that every known culture throughout history has observed and usually celebrated, and the only reason we call it Christmas now is because Europe’s pagans were too stubborn to give it up, so your Christian forbears slapped Jesus’ name all over it, fixed it on the 25th, and acted like it had never been any different. Did you hear that pagans? Now’s the time to convert; it’s never been easier! Call now and we’ll even throw in these handy snow tires!
4) Businesses are out to make money, and it does not pay to play favorites with Christians. (Especially those tightwad Methodists.) Any business owner will tell you that he will proudly accept cash, check, or charge from all comers, be they Wiccan, Jew, Muslim, Sikh, Rastafarian, Hindu, Pagan, Buddhist, animist, or shucks, even those godless atheists. Since you wingnuts are all Republicans, I though you of all people would understand this. The next time a business proudly puts up a Happy Holidays banner, remember: God loves Capitalism!
5) In the U.S. there’s a little thing called “separation of church and state” and it’s the reason you’re free to go to your Evangelical church (don’t deny it) as well as the key difference between our government and that of, say Saudi Arabia or China. People are happier when free to practice their own beliefs in both public and private, and more likely to investigate nature, invent new things, make beautiful art and music, and just generally slap each other on the back and say things like “Happy Holiday.” So don’t get angry if you have to go to church to see a nativity scene and not to the courthouse. Who wants to go to a courthouse anyway? Besides, would you really want to see the Wiccan symbol there, too? How about the Flying Spaghetti Monster? Our government is supposed to represent ALL of us. Happy Ho-Ho-whole-lotta Holidays!
6) I’ve even heard some of you on the radio bitching about seeing “Xmas” on packages and cards from friends, and how they’re all so ignorant for bastardizing such a holy day. Well, if you’d cracked open a book once in awhile or spent 30 seconds on the internet, you would know that “X” is a pretty versatile symbol, even representing Christ. “Xmas” is an acceptable abbreviation of Christmas—imagine that! Your friends didn’t take the Christ out of Christmas!
7) No, the phrase “Happy Holidays” itself wasn’t a recent invention of the “liberal” media or whatever conspiracy-of-the-week you’re imagining is polluting your children’s minds. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you of that timeless classic, “Happy Holidays,” sung by that good Christian soldier Bing Crosby (they’re bound to let him out of Hell someday) for his classic movie, Holiday Inn, which of course is a hotel open for the holiday SEASON. That was in 1942. < sigh> Yes, whatever, so the conspiracy goes back at least that far.
Geez, get it together Christians. You guys are supposed to know this stuff! Do you think Christ himself would be ornery and intolerant this time of year? (Maybe around Easter…)
Yours truly,
Andrew Lee Hunn
Think of any glaring societal problem, then think of what can be done about it. We can think (or write) about it. We can gather and discuss it. We can appoint someone to do something about it. We can volunteer to help—or even pursue a career helping—remedy the problem. But wait a minute, there’s another option: why take action when we can just leave it to the Almighty to sort it out?
We can sit smugly in church and listen to an obtuse and wordy lecture about it. We can vote for a bible-thumping politician who parrots the same thing. Is there a problem with crime in our city? Let’s pray to God about it, then tell everyone as scornfully as possible that God says it is wrong. We wouldn’t vote for a guy who talks over his shoulder to an invisible leprechaun, but we’ll gleefully vote for a guy who claims he talks with God! Damn right! And we’ll stand by and watch the problem get worse, making up rationalizations along the way. God must be punishing us. (Or them.) We must not be praying enough. They must have done something to deserve their fate. Does anyone else detect a pattern here?
Misplaced faith is what I rail against most in life. People are so ready to turn to a non-existent deity and to the lying cheats who claim to have him on their side, when all they have to do is to look into a problem and make a few choices. Perhaps the children are not getting enough attention at home. Perhaps the teacher to student ratio needs to be higher. Perhaps there are some city planning decisions that could be made differently. Perhaps society’s division of wealth is unfair. Perhaps someone could start a neighborhood watch program. But many would rather pray to their heart’s content, dress nicely and behave quietly for church, and vote for God. (And damn those sinners!) People take this concept of the supernatural and place it ahead of their real-life problems, when Jesus and his buddies Buddha and Mohammed should be the last thing on their “to do” list. Seriously, if these supernatural beings really are so great, what do they need us for?
Praying will not make drug dealers disappear from your city. (Has it ever, really?) Try educating children--not with church, not with Nancy Reagan “Just Say No” rhetoric, but try to see through their eyes what it is they need to keep from forming destructive behaviors. And if at first you don’t succeed, try making adjustments or try something altogether different. Don’t be so quick to throw up your hands in despair and leave it for God to sort out, because if you haven’t noticed yet, either there is no God, or he doesn’t give a crap what we do to ourselves, or at the very least he’s not going to give us any easy answers, though the people who claim to know him certainly are happy to make things simple for us. They just tell us to do nothing. It’s God’s will, after all. The very same people who consider themselves so pious are the people who are willing to let the world remain on a collision course with disaster.
There are too many people, we consume too much, and there is too little education and compassion to go around. No amount of thinking to ourselves or leaving the problem to others will change this. There will be no heaven or hell, other than what we do to ourselves on this planet, and I must say, too many of the religious folk seem content to bring on hell, the sooner the better, whether they realize it or not. I do so wish they would wake up from this fever dream of theirs and enter the real world. It is not such a bad place. We just have to ask questions, and earn the answers.
Election night, 2008. A deluge of news media gave us breathless and shallow reports of this “historical” election, as we all watched in anticipation of George W. Cheney declaring martial law, invalidating the election and declaring himself dictator for life. But somehow that didn’t happen.
In the U.S. it’s easier for Presidents to step down and live a cushy life than it is to cling to power, and since Barack Obama garnered enough votes to render voter fraud ineffective, we sent John McCain back to Arizona to represent the cranky old retired people who elected him to the Senate in the first place. And the news media was there to cover his sudden return to reason in his concession speech, after months of boldly selling his soul for votes from those ignorant enough to believe his half-hearted and insane attempts to stir their blind patriotism. But if you were watching with me that night, you probably noticed something very disturbing about that speech. It’s good that McCain acted reasonable and didn’t try to rile his supporters up any more than they already were. In fact, he very nearly had to shout them down in order to continue the speech. It’s not at all unusual for the partisan crowd at a concession speech to let out a few boos and hisses, but this crowd sounded ready for a lynching, and given the nature of this campaign, it should not be surprising.
Republicans’ campaign tactics reached a new low this time around, and I’m not talking about the television ads. The real story this time involves mailings, the internet, and private gatherings, often “church” functions. These are the venues most easily denied or disavowed by the official party apparatus, and consequently where the most outrageous offenses occurred. Without network camera crews in their faces, Republicans were able to voice their angry, bigoted, ignorant, and hateful views to each other, openly despising Barack Obama because of the color of his skin. Not since the heyday of the Ku Klux Klan (and Republican opposition to the Civil Rights Act) has there been so much bile in printed form available to anyone dumb enough to get past the cover. And the Republican party gave its tacit approval for all this mindless smearing and more.
The result, however, left something to be desired. Though that crowd at McCain’s election night party seemed ready to kill on command, what’s more telling about the Republicans’ tactics is that there were so few reasonable people in the house to shush the others. Indeed, those party members with any conscience at all either sat this one out or voted Democrat. The ignoramus portion of the voting bloc had their passions stirred, but the reasoning portion was disgusted and wanted nothing to do with it. In the final days leading up to the election, the kookiness of McCain’s campaign started flowing out into the mainstream, with mailings being traced to their source, disgusted campaign workers leaking horror stories, video of cuckoo-bananas supporters and McCain’s acceptance of them making the rounds on the internet, and so on. The divide and conquer campaign tricks so popular amongst Republican candidates wound up splitting their own supporters’ vote.
And did I forget to mention how homogenous the Republican crowd looked that night? If party leaders had paid attention in school or read a book or two, they would know by now that our country is ever more diverse with each passing year, and that whatever majority they assumed they had behind them will soon be a minority. Dividing the country by “race” will hardly be successful in such a future.
Our country has come along way in recent decades, and though far from perfect, there are some achievements worth hanging on to. Many people of my own generation have either never been force fed racism by their parents, or never listened. Most of my generation (and younger) do not belong to a party. And many of us live our lives trying to defy stereotypes. So go on running fearful racist campaigns, Republicans, and see where it gets you. Just hope the Democrats don’t answer by running campaigns casting suspicion on evil white men. They didn’t need to this time (McCain’s own ads practically did that for them) but given where our population is headed, it might well have worked.
Dear party members,
I am an independent voter who nearly always votes Democrat because your party has offered me little to no reason to vote Republican, and the Democrats have usually run a less evil candidate. Less obviously evil, at any rate. I don’t particularly like having to vote for one party just because the other fails so badly, so I’m going to offer you some advice, in hopes that one day your party may actually live up to the moniker Grand Old Party.
1) Quit treating me like an idiot. I and most people I know have at least some capacity for reason and clarity of thought, and your appeals to baser instincts like fear will get you nowhere with me—unless you want me to vote out of fear that the other candidates are less intelligent or ethical, and even then you must prove to me that your candidate has more to offer in that regard. It just so happens I’ve been exposed to many criminals, cheats, and cons over the years, and it seems every Republican candidate reminds me of them, with their fake smiles, disdainful eyes, contemptuous opinions and half-assed attempts at playing dumb when confronted. Voters are not sheep, and you are definitely not shepherds.
2) Stop talking about less government, or cutting taxes. The government did not shrink at any point under President Reagan or either of the Bushes, and certainly never did while Republicans had control of Congress. No one I know wants more or less government, we just want a government that works. I happen to know many wonderful, self-sacrificing people who work for the government and are hamstrung by sloppy legislation and uninterested political appointees at the top of the hierarchy. Start talking about what it will take to make things work the way they were intended. Reward competence over ideology or party loyalty.
3) Start thinking long-term instead of short-term. Like so many CEOs and board members these days, the Republican party does not seem to think about far-reaching effects of today’s decisions. What good is showing a profit this quarter if the company will be bankrupt in the next? The government, like businesses, must be set up with care to ensure long-term viability. I can think of no more egregious example than of Ronald Reagan tearing down the solar panels that Jimmy Carter had so thoughtfully installed in the White House. Fossil fuels will not last forever, and we need the White House to take the lead in having alternatives ready. Think of all the money that could be made in the process! And think of how crippled our country will be if we are not ready to move on to something new. For that matter, think of how weak we are now, having to depend on other countries for our energy. (And we call ourselves a superpower!) It would be easier to not need so much oil than to bully the rest of the world into giving it to us for “cheap.”
4) Stop telling me how to live my life. For a party supposedly all for less government interference, you folks sure have a proclivity for telling me what to do. I’m quite happy without God in my life, thank you, and even if I was a believer, I wouldn’t want you forcing him down my throat. (You believers never could agree on which church or God was the “right” one, anyway!) The founders of our country were fleeing the rule of royalty who claimed to be ordained by God. Thus the calls for liberty and separation of church and state. Supposedly you’re the party of history and tradition, so get off your collective butt and read some books and appreciate what we’ve had for so long before you throw it all out the window to get a few cheap votes.
5) Quit blaming Democrats for everything. Seriously, you’re like two little twin brats who keep picking fights and pointing fingers instead of looking out for each other. The sooner you two start getting along, the sooner our country will be out of the crapper. There’s no need to propose outrageous bills in order to force “no” votes on campaign issues, because nobody believes those moronic ads you run anyway. Quit posturing and get to work already, or we’ll come up there and kick both your little butts! We don’t care who started it!
6) Don’t mistake a win against a lousy candidate as a vote of confidence for cheap tactics. Too often Republican candidates have won because of Democrats’ wishy-washy campaigns. They don’t want to be as sleazy and cheap as their Republican counterparts, yet they’re not willing to put the effort into taking the high road, either. They come off as a “lite” Republican and subsequently lose the election. But a competent, well-spoken and intelligent candidate will win over an angry windbag in any race, and the sooner you learn from President Obama’s election, the better. The Democrats stepped up their game, and McCain sat back and expected an automatic knee-jerk response from so-called conservative voters, failing to realize those voters are actually the minority. Most voters aspire for better things, and the Democrats finally offered that. You had better find within your party some good debaters, and I don’t mean the smug ones who rely on cheap tricks.
Many so-called conservatives are now calling for your party to position itself even further off the deep end, demonstrating yet another tragic flaw of reasoning. The populace didn’t vote for Barack Obama because he was more conservative than John McCain. They voted for him because he instilled the most confidence, and it certainly did not hurt that he was very, very different from the worst “President” ever, George W. Bush. If you want my vote, your candidates will have to start doing their homework and stop being such obvious hypocrites. And it wouldn’t hurt if you stopped handing out illiterate, paranoid, racist propaganda at your meetings. There’s good reason for the Ku Klux Klan being moribund; keep it up and your party may meet the same fate. As much as I may detest what your party has been up to in recent decades, I really hate to think what kind of trouble we will get into if the Democrats don’t have someone to keep them honest. The only thing worse than a two-party system is a one-party system.
Good luck,
Andrew Lee Hunn
[Two workers hover over a computer monitor reading stories of 9/11.]
Andrew Lee Hunn: Ten bucks says we go to war with Iraq.
Redneck: Nah, that’s too easy.
ALH: We’ll bet for what country. I say Iraq, you say someplace else.
RN: I don’t have to name a country? Just war anywhere else?
ALH: Fair enough.
RN: Bet.
ALH: This is the excuse he’s been waiting for. You had to know he was going to try and top his Daddy over there.
RN: Yeah, the first Bush shoulda finished what he started.
ALH: No, the first one at least had the sense not to start something he couldn’t finish. But if there’s one thing I know about rich idiots, it’s that they’re always trying to have a bigger pecker than Daddy. Or be a bigger prick than Daddy.
RN: Why d’you always have it in for this guy? Wha’d he ever do to you?
ALH: What’s he done FOR me or you or anyone other than his rich friends? Seriously! Tell me, I wanna know!
RN: Well, he cut taxes.
ALH: Is your paycheck any fatter?
RN: No, but it takes time for it to trickle down…
ALH: I know a retired truck driver, and I asked him once about Reaganomics, and he said, “Only thing trickled down to me was a layoff!”
RN: You always talk like you know what you’re doin’, but you couldn’t do that job. I couldn’t do it either, they’re…
ALH: What, smarter than us?
RN: Yeah, I mean, they got education and business sense, and…
ALH: They’ve got friends in high places, or should I say low places, and they’ve got lots of money. There are no qualifications for elected office.
RN: Sure there are, they need experience. We don’t just put any slob in office.
ALH: Maybe we should. Tell me, if some slick suited bastard came up to you and offered you a briefcase full of money if only you would steer some government contracts his way, and you know that’s illegal, would you do it?
RN: If the contract’s gotta be filled…well, no, that’s how we wound up with those eighty-dollar toilet seats in the Army.
ALH: There you go, you’re already a better President than any we’ve had in our lifetime. If you were President, we wouldn’t be going to war.
RN: Now wait a minute, why do you say that?
ALH: ‘Cos we’re not going to war to defend anything, we’re going in order to use up bullets and ammo and toilet seats so defense contractors will be able to make more money. That’s the Vice President’s bag, you know, the defense industry. He goes out to eat with all those pricks, then he sends patriotic guys like you out to suffer and die so his buddies can buy more yachts and vacation homes.
RN: [A strange and never before encountered silence falls over the Red Neck.] Well, you may have a point, but I still think we should defend our country. Someone has to avenge those attacks.
ALH: What would you hope to achieve by that?
RN: Teach ‘em a lesson. Make ‘em think twice before attackin’ us agin’.
ALH: Okay. Let’s say your neighbor is a prick…
RN: He is!
ALH: There’s a shock. So let’s say you lose your temper and chuck a rock through his picture window. But you hate his guts and you feel like he deserved it…
RN: He does!
ALH: Beautiful. So you can’t bring yourself to apologize. Then one night, he breaks into your house, ties you up, rapes and murders your family while you watch, and burns the place down. Is that going to stop you from throwing another rock?
RN: Man, you’re sick.
ALH: If I’m sick, it’s only from reading accounts of what our own soldiers have done in the past. I shit you not, war is not what John Wayne wanted us to think it was.
RN: There’s supposed to be honor and valor—
ALH: And raping and pillaging.
RN: OK smart guy, what the heck do you propose?
ALH: Get a third party involved, before the raping and murdering starts. Both of you sit down, your neighbor admits that he’s been a prick and he’ll try not to act that way anymore, and you admit that you acted rashly and promise not to throw any more rocks. And the moderator reminds you that a return to your previous behaviors will only bring more trouble and humiliation down the road.
RN: Yeah, right, and I’ll be inviting the A-rab over for summer barbecue.
ALH: So long as it’s not pork. And who said it was your neighbor that was “A-rab” anyway?
“Let us pray.” For the budding young atheist dragged unwillingly to his grandparents’ church, there are no more disturbing words than these. Who the heck do these people think they are talking to? Don’t they know how strange they’re acting? Is there some gray old man in the sky somewhere with a telescoping microphone tuning in to these people’s daily begging for more money or better-behaving children or fewer beatings? Do they really think when they pray that they are going to affect some kind of outcome in the world? Do you think anyone can hear your thoughts? They cannot. No one can, and your prayer will not make a bit of difference in the life of your son fighting for his life overseas. I am sorry, but this is the truth.
There is something worthwhile about prayer. (But do not mention this to the devoutly religious, for I’ve learned they can’t bear to hear anything doubtful of their beliefs.) It has nothing to do with any god or deity, or supernatural (fictional) world. It has to do with your brain and how it works. We need to feel that life is worth living. We need to feel that we can have some effect on the world at large. And we need to feel that we are not alone in this. So by praying, one simply affirms these things to his or herself. Call it affirmation, call it meditation, contemplation, confirmation, mental masturbation, whatever suits your beliefs. Fact is, for many people--across many cultures and belief systems--it has the desired effect. This lends no legitimacy to Creationism or any other belief system; it is just natural that our brains and bodies function better when we believe that we are not alone and not helpless. We are social creatures and it is what we need to survive. Meditation is a sort of self-stimulation, allowing us to do for ourselves what we probably are not receiving externally. Bad news about the war your son or daughter is fighting in? You can’t go over there and protect them. Perhaps you believe the current President was right for getting us into this war, so you can’t protest, either. So, pray for them, since there is little else you can do. And you can offer them a little comfort by telling them that you pray nightly for them. At least they will know you are thinking of them. But that is all that it will mean.
I have nothing against prayer, but I cannot stand lies, deceit, deception. Prayer is an ultimately selfish and ineffectual thing, worthwhile only to those doing the praying. A crowd of a thousand people will no more effect the outcome of a Presidential election by praying than they will by yanking each others’ dicks in sync with the 1812 Overture. If it were really that easy, I’m sure the world would be much easier for everyone to live in. But it should be apparent to anyone that a better way to end war, disease or famine is for people to get up off their butts and get involved with some worthwhile cause or another. Homes aren’t built by telekinesis, news programs aren’t broadcast by telepathy, and wounds aren’t repaired by chanting and the waving of hands. And yet every Sunday millions upon millions of born suckers are convinced to try just that, to wish something into existence without lifting a finger to actually make it happen.
Suckers usually convince themselves of the merits of prayer. Just go to a church service, and ask someone what prayer has done for them, and you’ll get the most naïve and child-like explanations. You will hear accounts of just-missed tornadoes, even though millions of other people also were “just missed,” or testimonials of the healing power of faith, never mind the ability of every living thing to heal itself, or the hospital and their crack staff of professionals trained in the ways of science. The rain came “just in time” this year, in answer to a farmer’s prayers, even though it’s been coming regularly since before there existed people to beg themselves for it. Everyone in church loves to quote “the scripsher,” though none of them seem to be able to quote P.T. Barnum. (I’d be willing to bet the preachers know who I’m talking about; they owe more to con artists than to “Jaysus.”)
Like all the things religious, prayer has its more disturbing aspects. Prayer of the private and personal variety doesn’t bother me any more than the knowledge that people also eat, sleep, bathe, use the toilet, pick their noses, and so on. It’s the public aspect of prayer I find irksome. Instead of a healthy and relatively private thing, it becomes a ritualistic public display of submission, not to a higher power, but to whichever a-hole just called for everyone to bow their heads and agree with his barely literate view of the universe. (Or forever be ashamed of themselves for not doing as everyone else does.) As with so many other aspects of religion, there is an implied exclusivity that truly seems more the point of public prayer than anything else. It’s a tool for pushing conformity on those willing, and for driving wedges between them and everyone else.
Personally, I think it’s good there’s no one listening to our innermost thoughts. Seriously, would you want your most embarrassing prayers to end up on some cosmic “Universe’s Funniest Prayers?” Imagine arriving at the pearly gates and having St. Peter play back for you an endless recording of all those bumbling, half-baked requests for your jalopy to keep running, for your girlfriend to put out, and for Packer victories. How embarrassing would that be? Let’s just have no illusions about what goes on in our minds. We need comfort but we’re not getting enough from external sources, so we provide a little for ourselves. Yes, life is good. Yes, we can work to make things better. No, we are not alone in the world. There are five or six billion other worried people who often find themselves just as miserable as we, and no one is listening to them, either. Yes, life goes on.
Listen to talk radio, go to church, or watch televangelists (or FOX News) and you’ll soon begin to wonder about this mythical fantasyland ever-present in the minds of those who consider themselves religious or conservative: Ye Olden Days. These kinds of people find themselves particularly susceptible to that common feeling of nostalgia, that wishing for things to be again the way they were. You’ll hear them bandy about words and phrases like “forefathers,” “good old days,” or “tradition” as though the past were some kind of Eden. But nostalgic thinkers tend to forget, or not to know in the first place, that times were not always good or simple.
Women could not vote. Minorities lived in fear of being lynched. Catching a cold could lead to death. Children could wake up paralyzed by polio. Cars did not have seat belts. (Nor did horses.) Dentists’ offices were torture chambers. Need I say more? Our world has never been any more or less virtuous than it is now. It has simply changed over time, by our own doing and that of our ancestors, in a never-ending quest to improve our lives. The polio vaccine wasn’t found by praying, or denouncing victims as sinners, or by stubbornly adhering to old superstitious folk remedies. It was found by Jonas Salk, using the scientific method. Civil rights didn’t come about by wishing for the old days of life in Africa, it came about as a result of nonviolent demonstrations led by Martin Luther King, Jr., by the resulting awareness and empathy among the rest of the population, and by the demands they placed on their elected representatives. Perhaps it’s telling of those nostalgic thinkers, that they must not have suffered in the “good old days.” I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a black man calling for a return to slavery, nor have I seen (many) women wishing to be covered head-to-toe and forced to marry against their will. But I have seen many fat old white men with southern accents admonishing society for moving forward and wishing for a return to the old ways of suffering and denial for everyone other than fat old white men with southern accents.
It’s not hard to understand this longing for the golden days of yore. Everyone remembers the music of their youth as being better than any that followed; the tastes that are imprinted on a young mind can be hard to break. I can’t even turn on a radio anymore, except to listen to non-music programming, or old music. As my own parents disliked the music of my youth, so I now dislike the current youth culture’s preferences. Jealousy often is also a factor in finding fault with changes in society. “Why, when I was a kid, I had to walk to school sixty miles, in the driving snow, uphill both ways.” We’ve all heard something like this, or said it ourselves. Partly we say it to let children know how good they’ve got it, but also because there are some petty feelings of jealousy towards these grossly pampered children and the (relatively) safe and sheltered lives they’re now leading. I had to do without, so why should these little brats have it so good? Still, most parents pamper their children precisely because they remember their own brushes with certain doom, and want to spare their own sons and daughters from the same. Nevertheless, there are always blowhards who would make their own children suffer the same risks, mistakenly thinking that such risks result in good, outstanding people like themselves, or who would pamper their own children but expect others to suffer because they are in some way undeserving of the wealth that affords safety.
Nostalgic thinking has much to do with assumptions people make about their own past. Just because our parents or grandparents are content and happy in our memories does not mean it really was so. Perhaps Grandma would rather have been a career woman, or maybe should would have been happier with Fat Joe from down the block. Maybe she didn’t really believe in God; maybe she just went along with it to make everyone happy and to have something to scare her children into behaving with. Perhaps black people in real life weren’t as happy as they were when we saw them on stage. Perhaps they suffered in impoverished neighborhoods our parents were afraid to visit. Nostalgia is the kind of knee-jerk emotional response that needs to be carefully measured against personal research into history and human nature. But the people who most often glorify the past are those least likely to carefully think, reason, or research anything. Their mentality is that of the lynch mob—reflexive, reactionary, and willfully ignorant of anything that may stand in opposition to their wishes. If there is one thing consistent between our supposedly halcyon past and our discontented present, it is the presence of those willfully ignorant.
