Sandi Glauser, Commentary

QuoteApparently [Pastor Bradford] Bryant, as well as the conservative coalition (Mission: America) that has launched a national campaign against the Day of Silence, does not agree with this sentiment. I can only assume that they find physical and verbal harassment preferable — more virtuous — than this tranquil and anti-violent mode of expression. How else does one explain their efforts to thwart a peaceful Day of Silence meant as a protest against abusive prejudice?

I'm truly baffled that anyone would consider students silently petitioning for nonviolence as an assault on America's family values. One has to wonder how fragile those values are if they are so easily endangered.

They justifiably feel that their right to proselytize are being threatened.  They seem to be of the opinion that they need to have the freedom to get in your face about what a horrible sinner you are (virtuous verbal harassment) so they can save you.  They call this "being compassionate," and any kind of political correctness interferes with it.

A moment of quite might leave them alone with their own thoughts, can't have that now can we?

I think we need to realize that most of these people are pissed off with pretty much everything that has occurred since about 1963.

African-Americans were granted voting rights and segregation came to an end. Rather than joining the 'war effort' and being 'patriotic' en masse young people began resisting conscription into the Viet Nam War. Other young people began to criticize their parents' way-of-life and 'tuned-in, turned-on and dropped-out.' Someone besides Friedrich Nietszche suggested that 'God was Dead' & the Supreme Court ruled that forced prayer in the schools was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court legalized abortion and, consequently, some 'freedom' for women.

Women began to protest against the ways we were viewed, middle-upper-class women opted not to be stay-at-home moms and entered the work-force, eventually even came to realize the fact that their socio-economic inferiors and women of color were as disriminated against, or more, than were they.

Gays and TG people followed suit. The American Empire suffered an initial defeat in Viet Nam and continued to decline vis-a-vis the rest of the world economically as other nations asserted their abilities to control their own economies and ideologies and as, and perhaps due in large part to, the USA became the world's only "Super-Power." (The economic output of military-related goods and services is much lower, about 5x, I think, than that which relies on consumer and other goods.) 

And as time moved into this century the ability of preachers and those who longed for the good ole days of repression of difference and inequality of power socially began and intensified their sense that their 'birth-right' (read: dominance) had eroded so badly that they were being left behind. Plus, as the economy 'globalized' the ignorant and uneducated lost the manufacturing jobs and the heavy industrial jobs, that had been their means of making 'the good life,' disappear to poorer countries and to workers who expected much less in pay and benefits.

Most of these people are profoundly lost in today's world -- and they are pissed off about it. Like the German proletariat after WWI they want easy scapegoats for their problems and their leaders see that in gays, lesbians, TGs, TSes, BDSMs and persons of color. And our 'leadership' is perfectly ready to have those groups blamed and scapegoated as it removes them from any of the discussions except those that revolve around whether one will wear an American-flag lapel pin in their lapel, pledge allegiance to the flag or has a minister who believes that there is a historical and brutal gap between the self-esteem and general esteem of people of color and white folks or not.

The Republicans have used this masterfully and we liberals have dismissed those folks as 'yahoos' without ever trying to begin to understand their pain and bewilderment at how their world changed in the past forty years.

Those 'heirs to imperial greatness' have been dispossessed in their minds and want to blame someone for it. So they blame Hillary, Barack, you and me and Barney Frank & Ted Kennedy. Their leaders and the Republican ministers of propaganda: Rove, O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Kristol, et al. encourage and use this rage and get their candidates elected and could give a crap what harm and misery are visited not only on us, but on their 'shock-troops' as well. In fact, the more pressure and hurt that can be applied to those folks the more gleeful that bunch becomes, knowing that the rage will fuel massive hatred and more votes for their hench-women and hench-men and a much larger bank balance for themselves and others like them.

What's the answer? I really don't know. But, I think that somehow getting to know those who hate you, or who you hate, might be a move toward something like understanding, on both sides.

But, as Gandhi answered when asked if satyagraha would work with a regime like the Nazis, "the misery and suffering would be great and the courage required of those who would undertake such a project would have to be greater still." I suppose my question to myself is, 'am I willing to die for the possibility of something better?'

Nichole

How does silence threaten values?

http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/story/114713
4/25/2008

"Twelve years ago, a group of students from the University of Virginia
wanted to call attention to the increasing incidents of violence and
harassment against gay classmates. Their efforts, now recognized as a
national Day of Silence on campuses across the nation, are still going
strong. This year the planned activities will be held in memory of
Lawrence King, a 15-year-old junior high student from Oxnard, Calif.,
who was shot and killed by a 14-year-old classmate because of his
sexual orientation."

Quote from: Nichole on April 25, 2008, 02:19:27 PM
I suppose my question to myself is, 'am I willing to die for the possibility of something better?'

Nichole

We all die.  For some us, life has lost it's appeal.  Others are afraid of death.  I will die.  When I die will it be by default or will my death have some meaning?

Quote from: Lisbeth on April 26, 2008, 10:29:07 AM

Quote from: Nichole on April 25, 2008, 02:19:27 PM
I suppose my question to myself is, 'am I willing to die for the possibility of something better?'

Nichole

We all die.  For some us, life has lost it's appeal.  Others are afraid of death.  I will die.  When I die will it be by default or will my death have some meaning?

Deaths all simply 'mean' that we are mortal. It's a life that's important and how one lives that part of the process. The dying is much the same for all, just the circumstances change.

There are many paths to understanding of others, not all involve being an activist or out. Sometimes the simple living of a life can be more than enough.

QuoteFor some us, life has lost it's appeal. 

For any for whom that is true, I have to admit that I can begin to understand the pain that leads you there. I stood on that ground myself once. I wish I could alleviate the pain and/or despair.

N~

Oh I think it goes back to long before the 1960s.  Perhaps as much as 100 years before that.  They were not all that thrilled with Darwin when he wrote the book.  And the campaigns qua crusades of William Jennings Bryant in the 1890s were not all that different from what we watch today - except the parties have flip-flopped (but hey, its what they do best). 

At its heart, its a revolt against 'modernism' and the modern world - just like so much of the fundamentalist Islam junk.  But its a weird revolt, one which has driven them more or less crazy.  Because while being able to detest, despise, and hate the by-products of progress (increased choice, market freedoms) they have nonetheless always been in love with the mechanisms and machinery of that progress: Corporations, technological innovation, market capitalism. 

And - this is really beautiful too in such a sublime way - they are attempting to claim a Conservative Movement, while being forced to pay lip service at least, if not outright obeisance to some of the most liberal documents ever written: The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and the Gospel of Wealth by Andrew Carnegie.  I'm amazed their heads don't blow up.