On Politeness in the Face of Injustice

 

A debate around civility has taken the nation by storm, because White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee-Sanders was recently denied service at a restaurant in Virginia, which prompted the question: was that right or wrong of the restaurant owner? And now the controversy has touched our own sleepy community of Bloomington-Normal, Illinois.

Since we live in a social media age, anyone posting anything online must be careful — especially candidates for political office. This point was driven home by The Pantagraph, when they published a story about a Facebook post made by Jenn Carrillo, candidate for City Council in Bloomington’s 6th ward. Hamilton Nolan of Splinternews.com wrote an article entitled “This Is Just the Beginning”, a caustic and irreverent piece aimed at national media outlets and their pundits who bray about the dangers of incivility. This article was shared by Ms. Carrillo, who quoted from it: “when you aggressively [mess] with people’s lives, you should not be surprised when they decide to [mess] with yours” to which she added the comment, “it is our duty to make it intolerably uncomfortable to do evil. Do not let folks who value politeness over justice convince you otherwise.”

Yet that was not the end of The Pantagraph’s story, for they asked local public officials for comment, such as McLean County Sheriff Jon Sandage, who said this is “a post that in my opinion is intended to promote violence”; Bloomington Police Chief Clay Wheeler expressed disappointment because “we don’t have to go to such extremes of threats and violence”; the State’s Attorney, Jason Chambers, voiced similar sentiments by saying “Freedom of speech protects a great number of things, but that doesn’t mean that clear hints of violence against local and state officials is acceptable or good for our community.” Given that American government is government of, by, and for the people, Ms. Carrillo’s quote and statement should not be controversial. However, those who value politeness over justice were apparently shocked by the coarse language.

As a person with two eyes and the ability to read, what elides my senses is how Jenn’s statement is tantamount to violence, or even threatening to local and state officials. Nor do I understand why public officials would understand a rather benign sentiment as violent or threatening. Maybe it’s because of political expediency, or maybe it’s because of poor reading comprehension. It’s hard to say. But wanting “to make it intolerably uncomfortable to do evil” is a fine statement for an engaged citizen to make, especially when that citizen is running for public office, because it demonstrates what kind of politician their constituents can expect once elected to public office.

Furthermore, let us not lose the thread and forget what touched off this national controversy, creating this local one: the Trump administration’s “evil” policy of taking children from parents and stuffing babies into literal cages and internment camps. Tearing kids away from parents, without the promise of reuniting them, is objectively terrible. We cannot lose sight of this affront. If we do, then the offenders get off light, and this offense is particularly heinous. Jenn Carrillo meant only to encourage her fellow citizens to wake up and take political action — core features of any democratic system in which elected officials must respond to the citizenry. That there were people who condemned her statement says more about them than it does her.

Civility is a virtue. It is a good to be sought after, behavior to be encouraged. Civility is a skill which requires practice to perfect, because there are a set of rules, or norms, associated with it. What is deemed civil in one context may not in another; holding the door open for the person behind you, for example, would be considered civil and polite — however, if that person were a robber running out of the bank with cash in hand, it’d be pretty weird if you held the door open for them. Sometimes, being uncivil is the correct course of action. Therefore, now is not the time to be polite, for civility requires a basic set of rules, or norms, to practice correctly, and what this administration is doing should not be considered normal, and should instead be treated as the evil it self-evidently is.

What Americans Think It Means To Be American

Every two years, union-lovers across the world descend upon the city of Chicago (and sometimes Detroit) to stay in a union hotel, and talk about union matters. We learned about unionizing tactics and strategies so that when we leave, we can make the world a more labor-friendly place. It was the Labor Notes conference and I had a pretty rad time. I got to meet a lot of nice people, cool people, interesting people, smart people, and Canadian people.

There were a surprising number of Canadians in attendance.

Anyway, since I’m blogging now, I couldn’t pass up the grand opportunity before me: interviewing American workers about American identity — and some Canadians, too. (it’s always good to get an outside opinion!)

I asked people some variation of three questions: what does it mean to be American, what does it mean to live in America, or what do you think is the American Dream? Though I focused more on what it means to be American and focused less on what it means to achieve the American Dream. What follows is an examination of what I believe to be one part of the many facets of the American identity.

American pride

Larry Hopkins, a 51 year old rail crew transportation driver, was the first person I interviewed. He said to be American is to be proud; proud of your cultural heritage, and proud of where you come from. Larry didn’t go on to define what single culture Americans should be proud of, because he believed that we all come from different backgrounds, thus we’d all have different things to be proud of, and since we all had different things to be proud of — though we share a common history and common country — there was no singular culture for Americans to share. Rather than share a pride, Americans share their pride; our United States arise out of a mutual understanding, not out of a shared culture.

Matthew Thompson, 17, tended to agree. When I asked him what it means to be American, Matt said “to be a part of a culture that is a mix of cultures”. Since he didn’t believe there was one American identity but a meta-identity, I asked him if he thought there was a time when there was one American identity, to which he said no, and stated that, in the past, there had been a majority white identity, but never a unified national identity.

Others, however, questioned whether the pride was warranted, given America’s many different defects and social ills. Jasmine, of Canada, said that to be American is to like everything big, and believe that we are the best. She went on to say we have “poor work conditions” and allow people to die due to lack of healthcare. Furthermore, while America is extremely well guarded from foreign invasion, compared to other countries, we are less safe from malevolent forces emanating from within because of “gun violence, poverty which leads to gun violence and drug dealing”. Ultimately, “you have the opportunity to do a lot, but only for some”.

I’ll end the testimony section with the words of another Canadian, Gabrielle-Sophie, 21, of the Quebec region. On the whole, she found America “at the same time very repelling and very attracting”. How so, I asked? “It’s really difficult to understand American cultures…you see a lot of flags, ads for [the] Army, bumper stickers saying ‘God Bless America’, it’s very repelling”; in Canada, these things are not so upfront, they don’t have the love of yard signs or bumper stickers that we Americans do, and she connected it to the pridefulness of Americans. Where other cultures may have a tendency to hide their identity during day-to-day interactions — for fear of ruffling feathers or causing discomfort — we embrace our identity and wear our true colors on our sleeves and nonetheless strive for friendly interactions.

Gabrielle didn’t think America was all bad; the attraction of America did not implicate the abstract ideas she mentioned but rather the people she met; their stories of struggle and triumph, and our rich history of popular uprisings — the Civil Rights movement, the anti-war movement, our Labor movement — which challenged the world as it was, spurring change to create a world as it ought to be.

With all that said, how to synthesize it all into a final parting thought?

Like this: I’d say there is no such thing as an ‘American’ state-of-being, and that American pride can only be shown through action.

And isn’t this sentence a self-evident truth?

For while we like to believe in an American history where we all got along and believed the same ideals and bore the same values, we didn’t. Black folk weren’t even thought of as human, let alone American, for all of our country’s history. During World War 2, Japanese-Americans were removed from society and put into internment camps, for fear that their Japanese heritage would override their American identity, so they were not considered American. Prior to then, during World War 1, the same derision was this time applied to white German-Americans, who were treated with extreme suspicion in everyday life, because they might support the Kaiser since they were “Hyphenated-Americans”. And before then were the anti-Irish, anti-papist hysteria of the 1800’s — with the unforgettable “no irish need apply” posters — which culminated in the nativist know-nothing movement. And I’d be remiss to not mention the extermination and exclusion of Native Americans from mainstream American life. Basically, unless you were of Anglo-Saxon descent, you had to earn the title of ‘American’.

Because the definition of who is and is not ‘American’ shifts based upon the prejudices and predilections of the moment, this means there is no permanent, unquestionable, objective definition of American identity. If no observable or objective American identity is apparent, then how should we define it? Well, I would posit that American identity can only be expressed through action, that Americans are those who act American.

For example, if you see a group of teenage dudes doing tricks and shit on a skateboard, then you call them sk8erbois. I don’t know how to skateboard, so, unfortunately, I can’t be called a sk8erboi. Whatsmore, sk8erbois are defined by their activity — skateboarding — even when they are not doing that activity, and you might even identify sk8erbois by what they wear, because their clothing tends to be of a distinctive fashion sense, such as sk8er shoes and ripped jeans and a flat-bill hat and a shirt with at least one skull on it because skulls are cool. However, if you wear the sk8er outfit without knowing how to sk8 then true sk8er’s would rightly call you a poser trying to fit in, which is lame as hell and a total loser move.

Similarly, when you see someone wearing cowboy boots and a cowboy hat, you assume they come from America, but if they didn’t act American — like if they dressed as a sk8er without knowing how to sk8 — then you’re a poser who should not being wearing cowboy boots and a cowboy hat.

However, I tricked you with a bad metaphor! Because this metaphor would tend to have you believe that only those who wear cowboy boots and a cowboy hat are American, and this is almost certainly not the case! It is not what one wears which signals their American identity, but rather how one acts and behaves; to be a sk8erboi is to skateboard, and to be American is to share your cultural pride!

SO, to summarize: since American identity is not a state-of-being but rather expressed through action, and to be American means to be proud of your cultural background and heritage, then showing or sharing that cultural pride is an expression of American identity.

That’s all.

I Made a Blog and This Post Explains It

Hi. If you’re reading this you probably saw a tweet or Facebook post, so thanks for clickin and readin.

There isn’t an important topic I’d like to talk about today, so what I will talk about is this blog: its beginnings, its purpose, and what I hope it’ll end up achieving.

THE BEGINNING

Not too long ago I had this idea I could be a travelling one man show where I would sing and strummed a guitar (or banjo) and tell stories and perform magic tricks and get paid for it. Upon reflection, though, I deemed that scenario too fanciful — I could never make money doing that! — so I decided to take the more prosperous path and become a writer and create a blog.

My toughest problem in creating this blog was: what do I write about? Like, it’s easy to write, I’ve been doing it for years, all you do is hit keys on the keyboard — thank God, too, because my handwriting is unbearable — but people don’t want to read the blithering nonsense of a nobody. There needs to be a reason to read, a hook for interest, and it was hard to think of one. It was hard because I was afraid picking angle X might restrict me from talking about topic Y, or maybe angle X was too boring and bad and I should really go with angle Z, but angle Z would make it even more difficult to discuss topic A than if I wrote from angle X, so maybe it would be better to approach from angle X than angle Z, even if it restricts me from talking about topic Y.

So yeah it took me awhile to think things through and flesh out what I wanted.

What I finally landed on was the simple title at the top of this page: From the Heartland. I picked this title since I’ll be speaking from the heart, I live in the heartland of Illinois, and the Midwest is the heartland of America; the mark of a truly great blog name, after all, is a triple entendre, so obviously I went with it.

THE PURPOSE

The general topics I want to cover are political and cultural, but not pop culture, more like folklore and ethnic American culture. The reason for why I decided not to cover Pop culture is because, to me, it feels empty and vacuous, and I don’t want to study a subject I believe to be devoid of meaning. And my rationale for why Pop culture feels bereft and barren is that it’s not truly popular culture but culture of popular people, ya know?

Like, think of the styling of Pop music or Pop fashion. Do you think those styles started organically in the public, or rather created by a select few and disseminated to a wider audience? I think it’s the latter, which is what I mean when I say Pop culture is really the culture of popular people, because it’s first conceived of by successful music stars or fashion designers and then spread to the public, as opposed to the opposite, which would be a sound or design becoming popular among the public and then adopted and adapted by a successful few.

You could also think of it in terms of high school, where the cool kids might start wearing cool bracelets, and everyone else starts wearing those bracelets because they want to be cool like the cool kids.

Basically, if Pop culture accurately reflected a popular American sound, fashion, identity, or thing, then I would cover Pop culture. But I’m not going to cover Pop culture, because it doesn’t accurately represent any of that; instead, the purpose of this blog will be to search for a common understanding of ‘America’, to seek a distillation of ‘American Spirit’, including a popular notion of what it means to be ‘American’, to describe the lives — past and present — of Americans, and paint a picture of what America could or should be in the future, with the ultimate goal of finding, and then telling, the perfect All-American story, which encompasses everything I just listed.

Essentially, I want this blog to produce popular culture.

THE DREAM

I’ve laid out how this project started, and what I hope to accomplish, so here’s where I’ll tell you what I hope it achieves.

Most of all, I want this blog to give me a better understanding of me, my surroundings, and my place in it, because, like many 20 somethings, I feel removed or isolated or detached from the place around me — a feeling compounded by screens and the prominence of digital life — because the difference between reality and my perception of it is jarring.

Imagine a goldfish in it’s fish bowl being emptied into the ocean, and how that goldfish might feel immediately after being dumped: You swim around the same circle for 22 years and love it; you find purpose and meaning and security within the finite confines of your fish bowl around which you repetitively swim circles, only to find out that circular bowl was an artificial, arbitrary barrier meant solely to shelter and quarantine you from the outside world; and this revelation thunders through your existence after your bowl is upended and you fall downward into an endless expanse of ocean, in which you are expected to find a coral reef located somewhere in the water’s vast abyss, and that coral reef becomes your new home, a place you must adapt to by carving out a niche for yourself, so that you may be useful and productive and ultimately thrive in this strange setting, your new home, in a coral reef, to be found somewhere in the endless expanse of ocean water. That’s sorta what I think it feels like graduating college.

Anyway

What I hope this blog achieves can be broken down into three buckets: short-term, medium-term, and long-term. Short-term, I hope to make this a semi-professional product with a sleek design and regular postings of interesting stories. Medium-term, I want to hit 5,000 readers and be able to travel outside the Midwest to interview and tell stories of people living elsewhere in America. Finally, long-term, it’d be dope to hit 50,000 readers and to write full-time, or get co-opted by a bigger institution than just me writing a blog only friends and family will read.

SO, if you are reading this, it means that you are on the ground floor of what could be a really tall building; think, like, Giza Pyramids big. But, as with every pyramid scheme, I need your help building it! Therefore it would be super cool of you to like and share and subscribe, because I want to make a gigantic pyramid, and I need your help to build it, so I’ll even pay you for liking, sharing, and subscribing, because everyone wins in a good pyramid scheme.

That’s all.