Ignorance Is A Bullet, Have Mercy On Us Everyone

(thanks Johnette Napolitano)

What happened to the dreams of a girl president
She's dancing in the video next to 50 Cent
They travel in packs of two or three
With their itsy bitsy doggies and their teeny-weeny tees
Where, oh where, have the smart people gone?
Oh where, oh where could they be? ...

Disease's growing, it's epidemic
I'm scared that there ain't a cure
The world believes it and I'm going crazy
I cannot take any more
I'm so glad that I'll never fit in
That will never be me
Outcasts and girls with ambition
That's what I wanna see

~”Stupid Girls,” by Pink

"Punks are running wild in the streets and nobody anywhere seems to know what to do and there's no end to it. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy so we don’t go out anymore, we sit in the house and slowly the world we're living in is getting smaller and all we say is please and please leave us alone in our living rooms, just leave us alone.

Well I’m not going to leave you alone."

~”We’re Only Gonna Die For Our Own Arrogance,” by Bad Religion (Skunk Records Version)

So, here we are in the Age of Anti-Reason, an age of raging, proud, fierce ignorance.  In America.  The Trumpets tell us it is ok to be uncivil, uninformed, undisciplined, out-of-control.  Decorum?  What’s that?  Civility?  What’s that?  Knowledge?  What’s that?

And, what does it sound like?  I know it is a chorus led by a man of non-sequiturs, of nonsense, the ultimate, consummate narcissist.  It is a chorus led by a man full of sound and fury, signifying nothing—I am so sorry Will—except the amplification, the inflammation of rage looking for a place to land, to do damage, to let out the demons of disappointment and an easy, more comfortable way to deal with anger through blame and the lowest, most base expression of it.

Because anger is sexy.  It is easy.  It can make us feel falsely powerful. And, the ultimate deceiver that it is, it is most inviting to those who would rather not read, reflect, think. It is base reaction. It is far harder to dive deeper into the layers of the much more intolerable and important feelings it masks.  Like feelings of regret, insecurity, fear.  Regret that we might not have made better choices in our lives when we had them before us.  Regret that we did not, perhaps, get better educated, use our time to look under the covers of our troubled selves and ask harder questions that would make us feel vulnerable—sometimes unbearably so—and, in so doing, allow unknown doors within us to open and allow in the light that makes us—and all things—grow.  It is often a defensive reaction, this anger. If we are insecure, afraid, it may make us feel less so—momentarily.  If it were the cure, we would be healed once we expressed it.  In healthy acknowledgements and expressions of anger, it can be. But when it is an anger that cannot be assuaged, it is something else entirely.  It is corrosive.  It grows with incitement.  And not a thing gets better.  Being more reflective, deliberate, open, vulnerable is scary, indeed.  But, I know no braver way to face and progress through challenges, hurt, fear than to do exactly this.

I have read too much, seen too much, heard too much unbridled anger and ignorance in this way-too-long election cycle.  Brutal and bruising campaigns are nothing new in American politics, but this one takes the cake.  But, hanging back as I have for over a year before coming to this page, I have got to say, now, I want to be the girl with the most cake.  I want to plunge my hands in up to my elbows and pull it away from the gluttons feasting on it while our democracy starves for higher, better discourse.

I am sickened by the hateful rhetoric not only of the Trump campaign, but of the comments I read and hear in social media and just walking around in the real world.  I hear the repetition of insults, mis- and dis-information, lies, and a frightening rejection of facts and civility.  To those guilty of this behavior I say, Trump’s words do not fit well in your mouths.  They don’t fit well in anyone’s mouth.  Do not just swallow, regurgitate, and repeat.  As sentient beings, it is worth a little time to think, get better informed, and reject—even if you support Donald Trump—the way in which he speaks.  Being thoughtful is no crime. 

A family friend posted comments on Facebook last night that were embarrassingly ill-informed.  She wrote that “Killary” is causing great racial divide, hates whites and police officers, and that this “Isn’t what Martin Luther King wanted.”  She went on to say that King wanted to unite us, like her candidate, Donald Trump.  To her and those who think she wrote something brilliant I say, “People, I have read Dr. King’s speeches, books about him, the Civil Rights Movement, seen hours of film footage that, when strung together over my lifetime spans weeks, months.  I know Dr. King’s stances on policing, poverty, and political realities of his time that still plague ours. I admire Dr. King and his eloquence and non-violence, his call for peaceful and meaningful dialogues.  I love Dr. King.  People, your candidate is no Dr. King.”

The posting went into other postings that stated Muslims are killing Christians—in some Muslim countries that is happening—but never told the further truth that these extreme crazies are killing other Muslims in greater number than any other religious group.  If you have some background knowledge of religion’s role in war, torture, the utter subjugation of women and others who do not follow that particular religion, you would know the subject is vast in scope, and no religion—except, perhaps, Buddhism—

            comes away unsullied.  

                       

The postings continued to include that Trump did not leave thousands of U.S.  troops in Benghazi to be slaughtered and that “Killary”/"Crooked Hillary" did.  Really?  I was unaware of our vast invasion of Benghazi.  Probably because there was none. (And, while there were and continue to be mistaken nods to Secretary Clinton as Commander-in-Chief, she could not have sent troops anywhere as Secretary of State).  Now, when you put stuff out on social media, you ought to fact-check before you do so, because people with more knowledge can call you out on it.  In fact, facts don’t seem to matter so much in this political season.  But, they matter to me.  And when more well-informed responses are made to vastly uninformed commentary, the request that others not exercise their 1^st Amendment right and stop commenting to the posts is intolerable to me.  As Voltaire said, and I closely paraphrase, “I may disagree with what you say, but I would die for your right to say it.”  You see, it is rights such as our 1^st Amendment that make us great. That is not a slogan on a hat.  That comes from one of the greatest political documents in history: the Bill of Rights.  (And, one more thing about the Benghazi matter: requests for additional security to our embassies were made by Secretary of State Clinton and were denied by our Republican Congress.  In the Republican sequester that cut funding in so many areas, our nation has suffered terribly.  In Benghazi, the sequester, and Republican obstruction to all-things-Obama, proved lethal).  Ignorance is a bullet.  If it gets Trump elected, have mercy on us, everyone.

Change.   People want change.  I get that.  I want change, too. But it matters very much what kind of change to support.  You know, it’s funny that so few cannot see the change right in front of them—an epic, historical change: the first woman to become President of the United States of America; the first woman to hold the most powerful office in the world.  Now, that is change.  It would be a paradigmatic and seismic shift unlike any other in history. And that makes many uneasy.  Like Vladimir Putin.  I think we should question loudly and often why a dictator such as Putin does not want to see Hillary Clinton become president, or, why he wants to see Trump win the election.  I have a theory:  Putin would be able to swiftly—and with supreme confidence—take advantage of Donald Trump.  He entertains no great optimism of taking advantage of Hillary Clinton.  In fact, the world of awful dictators and subjugators of women fear the direct, even perhaps immediate, effects a Hillary Clinton presidency would bring.  Imagine the possibilities:  the emboldening of repressed women around the globe, the demand for greater human rights in patriarchal countries that stone, beat, humiliate, imprison women for wanting basic human rights.  Yes, the patriarchy is shaking in their shoes.  Even patriarchal Americans cannot wrap their heads around what the prospect of our first female president would do to their entitled sensibilities.  So, yes, the greatest change I can think of bringing to America and the world is President Hillary Rodham Clinton.  I wonder if many women in America are questioning why a brilliant, accomplished woman has to work so much harder to gain support and trust than a woefully uninformed man.  Oh, wait…I forgot.  That is the reality of the female experience in every field—and it is as powerfully at work today as it ever has been. 

Many women do not remember, or perhaps ever knew, there was a Women’s Movement.  Some Blacks, thankfully lesser-so, don’t seem to grasp the unbelievable fight for equal rights, equal justice under the law that was the Civil Rights Movement and continues to be a fight today (and, yes, equal, civil rights and equal justice for all includes our LGBT community, Mike Pence); and some Hispanics may fail to remember Cesar Chavez.  And a too-large portion of all American voters don’t know or remember much at all.  Yes.  This is the cost of the dumbing-down of our country.  It is exactly like that old adage:  “If you think education is too expensive, try ignorance.”     If there are punks running wild and rough-shod over our country, it is that 1/10^th of 1 percent.  And all those who would rather remain ignorant.  Are we really as stupid as polls suggest?  Are we really as bigoted?  Are we really as indecent, uncivil, and obscenely ill-informed in such great number? 

Well, we can’t be stupid any longer.

Hillary stated something during the first debate that has not garnered the attention it deserves:  Words matter.  Words ought to be measured and precise.  Words ought to be deliberate and well thought out before they are spoken.  Because language is power as surely as knowledge is power.  “In the Beginning was The Word…and The Word was God…” I love language.  I understand its power.  Now, I feel something coming on, something welling up inside of me, and…I am going to—quite deliberately and with great forethought—use the “F-word.”  Get ready.  Here it comes.  I am a feminist.  FEMINIST.  Yes, I am.  I believe in the advancement, opportunity, and equal protection under the law of women. You see, there is nothing obscene about that.  This much-maligned “F-word” has been redefined by those who love the status quo, those afraid of powerful women.  Why else would patriarchy be so prevalent, so ancient, so brutal if women represented no threat?  In Hillary we have a powerful, intelligent, accomplished, incredibly well and deeply informed woman who can rock the world in a very, very good way.  I believe.  I believe.  Indeed I do.  And, at this most important, revolutionary time in our lives, our nation, our world, I call for change, too.  Elect Hillary Clinton to the presidency, and that is just what we will get.

I just have two more words for you of great power, great import that await their place on my lips:  Madame President.

~Joan