There is no good news on the screens these days.
There are two sources of violence currently in the country. The protest from the left have been extensive and need to be non-violent to actually work. Peaceful demonstrations in liberal cities are important to show the President-elect that his campaign tactics have sown some significant hatred that he will have to defuse in some way. He has put himself into a difficult position and unlike when he did this in business he will not be able to turn to bankruptcy court to get some relief. The moral bankruptcy he showed during the campaign will come back to haunt him but violent protests will come back to haunt his opponents as there will not be any quarter given by Trump and civil unrest is a leader's excuse for the imposition of strong armed tactics against the opposition. Protest now but protest peacefully. The lunatics are in charge of the asylum, don't set them off.
But what I would like to talk about today is the new Nativism that Trump has tapped into. Although the United States has as a founding principle the words at the base of the Statue of Liberty the citizens in residence have not always been so kind to those huddled masses. The "No Irish need apply" signs that you can buy on eBay today (http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/131804759911?lpid=82&chn=ps&ul_noapp=true) was a common sight in the past. The Italians and Hispanics faced the same hurdles and in many areas of the country the Hispanics are still not completely assimilated. Blacks have been around longer than either of those groups but given that for most of that time they were slaves they have had different hurdles to gain acceptance.
Why does a country that professes one thing act in a different fashion. Some of it is probably based on our biology. Our brains look for patterns as a way to simply our decision making and one thing humans brains are good at is recognition of similarities. By identify similarities we can apply learning we have acquired in situations that were not identical but close enough to make a sound decision based on what happened in the previous instance. We do the same with people judging them as like us or not like us. We do that in various categories: gender, age, race, the way they speak, the way they dress, etc. and use these to quickly assess another person. Stephen Colbert professes to not see a person's color but that is an ingenious way to get us to understand that we all do. The difference between being a racist or sexist is how we react to noticing these attributes. A racist immediately thinks trouble when they see a black person or if black a white person. Yes blacks can be racist too. If your reaction to finding your new boss is a women boss is immediately that she will be incompetent, bossy,.and moody you are being sexist. It is not always that simple. Sometimes you will find that although you would not have sought out a black friend your new black next door neighbor who you cringed to see move in turned out to be a good person who you enjoy or that women boss is really good at her job and easy to work for. Unfortunately learning research shows that the concept map of our brains that deals with these patterned responses is not easily persuaded to give up those patterns of thought. Saying you have a black friend does not make you not racist if your reaction to the next black person you meet moving into the neighborhood again makes you cringe. It will take a number of positive encounters in a row to change that and one or two negative ones will set back the clock. I was hoping a smart, classy black President would help all Americans to the realization that people are in fact people and have the same desires, hopes and dreams. But the opposite seems to have occurred as anytime he did something that confirmed that black people wanted handouts (Obamacare) or were lawless hooligans the President would protect (police shooting responses from Ferguson on) their black people are bad counters seemed to reset.
So how have we made as much recent progress in acceptance of other nationalities, races, sexual orientation and religion as we have over the years? We are at the core also social animals and most of us are also wired to promote societal goals also. As we have more contact with people of different backgrounds and ideas that are part of our societal framework we will learn to accept them and then codify into law that acceptance. However I did take a long (12,800 mile) road trip through the country this summer and the mixing of these different people is not occurring outside the cities and the coasts and even there neighborhoods are rarely heterogeneous so the preconceptions of ethnicity in particular rarely get challenged enough to move everyone in the same direction as the legislative action is pushing them.
Onto the scene bursts Trump spouting that illegal immigrants are taking your jobs and Muslims are all out to kill you. That falls right in line with what the non-urban Americans see on the news nightly especially if they watch Fox News. Those in urban areas are surrounded by Muslims who are not trying to kill them and do not accept that because it does not fit their reality. The fact is that we have been at war with parts of the Muslim world since Israel was founded in the late 1940's. At first it was just arming the Israelis but under Bush I turned into fighting with the US Army and under Bush II having a protracted war in two countries. We are now involved in three countries although not with the troop strengths we had and mostly in support. It is a complex situation with religious overtones, both Christian versus Muslim and Sunni versus Shiite with the added nation versus nation and Kurds versus everyone. On top of this Christianity has always been an apocalyptic religion and has a number of sects that rejoice to see the End Times near. Coupled with the Muslim radicals hope for a final battle to destroy Christianity this is a recipe for world wide destruction and calamity. The Presidency is not an easy thing and there is little room for error and certainly not rash decisions.
As we are at war with Muslims even as we have Muslim allies it is convenient and common historically to paint those people we are fighting as less than human. I have in my 78 record collection a disc titled "Don't be a sap, kill a Jap" from World War II. We just paid reparations to the Japanese for their internment during that war. The people running the wars know this. The Christmas soccer game between the Germans and British in WWI drove the generals crazy mostly because it humanized the enemy. John McCutcheon does a nice job of capturing this in his song "Christmas in the Trenches". So Trump has fanned the flames that already existed and the problems have already started as Muslim women who wear headscarves are readily identifiable they will probably bear the brunt of the violence. I will deal with the illegal immigrant nativism issue tomorrow but for today I think our action has to be not only to go out of our way to be welcoming to any Muslims we meet but be prepared to protect them from violence. They are justifiably scared that with the election of a man who has nothing good to say about them they will be open and relatively unprotected from attack. We have to be willing as Americans to stop people acting outside of the ideals of our country even if it means bodily injury to ourselves. We must be brave for them as they are being brave to stay here given the current situation. The best way to radicalize an American Muslim is to antagonize them and make them feel they are apart from our society. The best way to stay safe is to make sure they feel safe. Back them into a corner and they will try to fight their way out.
Here is one women's suggestion as to how to deal with Islamophobic attacks. https://sojo.net/articles/what-do-if-you-see-islamophobic-harrassment. Of course all situations are different but here approach is non-confrontational and as we know escalating conflicts are more likely if a confrontation occurs.
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