One More Thought
Jul. 1st, 2018 12:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wingedbeastI went to the protest against family separation, yesterday. In my smallish town, it was a small gathering compared to others throughout the nation. And, there were a few voices, there. Mainly, they were immigrants-become-citizens or the near-descendants thereof. That is good. The minority voices should be heard. As important as the message I have is, it's just as important that this message be the punctuation of those others. So, I encourage you to read this after you've taken those into account or take this as a reason to take those others into account.
I am a heterosexual, cisgendered, white man. To look at me is to see someone who, by all rights, should be one of the people who could most easily join the Trump-supporting team. I could easily look to advances made by immigrants, black people, the LGBT, etc. as threats to myself. And, I could easily see anything that keeps them "in their place" as something that keeps me safer and stronger.
I don't have absolute faith in my own compassion to look past that feeling. What I do have is a knowledge of two points about my existence, two things that remind me of a basic reality.
My grandfather, a WWII vet, was Jewish. Ethnically speaking, that makes me a quarter Jewish. Religiously speaking, that means absolutely nothing. I wasn't raised Jewish and I don't self-identify with Judaism. But, in terms of people who chant about people not replacing them, I am in the explicitly identified group that they're so certain will not replace them. For all the fears of The Great Replacement, I, in all the lack of power I have to intimidate anyone, am that great replacement... in that my grandparents have passed on and I am in the generation that replaced them.
Another factor, one that, in today's society, I can't place as more or less of a target, is that I'm an atheist.
Among a coalition of white nationalists and Christian nationalists, the only question is, if they took the nation, which factor would see to my oppression and possible execution first.
By what people can get away with saying at current, I'm not high on the list. Muslims and immigrants (documented and otherwise) from Central and South America are at the top of that list, first in line for the camps so to speak. But, I'm on that list. No matter how good I am at faking a conversion, I can't take myself from that list. I can't undo the fact that my grandfather was Jewish.
As easy as that factor is for me to forget in other circumstances, it's there. I could go my whole life without discussing that fact, even when discussing his service in WWII. And, it would be easy for me never to find out, as that might simply not come up in conversation.
What I'm saying is that it's easy to find yourself on that list. You don't even have to know you're on the list. Did you once date or marry someone who, you never knew, actually turned out to be Jewish? Welcome to the list. Were you not sufficiently against your child's LGBT "lifestyle"? Did you show less than perfect support for their execution? Welcome to the list. Chances are, in today's America with America's history, you're on the list even if you don't know it.
That happened the last time we had a merger of white nationalism and Christian nationalism take over a nation. Many who thought of themselves as upstanding members of both groups found out that they weren't. They found out that they had literally been their own worst enemies.
My opposition to Trump and to racism and to sexism and to anti-LGBTQ bigotry isn't due to any great virtue on my part. It's my selfishness guiding my cowardice. That which can be done to anybody on the list can be and will be done to me in time. The same could be true of you without you ever knowing it. At the very least, if you are accused, you can't prove that wrong.
I am a heterosexual, cisgendered, white man. To look at me is to see someone who, by all rights, should be one of the people who could most easily join the Trump-supporting team. I could easily look to advances made by immigrants, black people, the LGBT, etc. as threats to myself. And, I could easily see anything that keeps them "in their place" as something that keeps me safer and stronger.
I don't have absolute faith in my own compassion to look past that feeling. What I do have is a knowledge of two points about my existence, two things that remind me of a basic reality.
My grandfather, a WWII vet, was Jewish. Ethnically speaking, that makes me a quarter Jewish. Religiously speaking, that means absolutely nothing. I wasn't raised Jewish and I don't self-identify with Judaism. But, in terms of people who chant about people not replacing them, I am in the explicitly identified group that they're so certain will not replace them. For all the fears of The Great Replacement, I, in all the lack of power I have to intimidate anyone, am that great replacement... in that my grandparents have passed on and I am in the generation that replaced them.
Another factor, one that, in today's society, I can't place as more or less of a target, is that I'm an atheist.
Among a coalition of white nationalists and Christian nationalists, the only question is, if they took the nation, which factor would see to my oppression and possible execution first.
By what people can get away with saying at current, I'm not high on the list. Muslims and immigrants (documented and otherwise) from Central and South America are at the top of that list, first in line for the camps so to speak. But, I'm on that list. No matter how good I am at faking a conversion, I can't take myself from that list. I can't undo the fact that my grandfather was Jewish.
As easy as that factor is for me to forget in other circumstances, it's there. I could go my whole life without discussing that fact, even when discussing his service in WWII. And, it would be easy for me never to find out, as that might simply not come up in conversation.
What I'm saying is that it's easy to find yourself on that list. You don't even have to know you're on the list. Did you once date or marry someone who, you never knew, actually turned out to be Jewish? Welcome to the list. Were you not sufficiently against your child's LGBT "lifestyle"? Did you show less than perfect support for their execution? Welcome to the list. Chances are, in today's America with America's history, you're on the list even if you don't know it.
That happened the last time we had a merger of white nationalism and Christian nationalism take over a nation. Many who thought of themselves as upstanding members of both groups found out that they weren't. They found out that they had literally been their own worst enemies.
My opposition to Trump and to racism and to sexism and to anti-LGBTQ bigotry isn't due to any great virtue on my part. It's my selfishness guiding my cowardice. That which can be done to anybody on the list can be and will be done to me in time. The same could be true of you without you ever knowing it. At the very least, if you are accused, you can't prove that wrong.
