Monday, December 6
We vs. Us
Is it a fear of the future? Is it religion? Is it economics, or racism? Is it fear of our so-called culture? Good old fashioned narrow-mindedness? Traditionalism? Fear of the unknown, the unfamiliar? Is it just people not thinking? What is it that separates us progressives from the conservatives around me? Is it some combination of all that stuff? A lack of awareness of the needs of humankind? Selfishness? The need to let others think for you? The need to think for yourself? What makes people tick? What makes them want to restrict freedoms for other people? To not consider the common good? Why do groups of people hate other groups of people, particularly groups organized around religions?
I just finished reading Philip Roth's "The Plot Against America," in which a Nazi-supporting Charles Lindbergh runs for president in 1940 and defeats FDR on a stay-out-of-the war platform. (I read it as part of my MELDAR* reading group.) Now, it's a heavy book, a typically good Roth read, with some startling modern-day what-ifs about the Ashcroftites in the Bush administration, and good ol' Dubya himself. The plot against America as described in the novel never happened, but it doesn't seem so far-fetched, not the anti-Semite "Just Folks" campaign or the Office of American Absorption, which is set up to send inner city ghetto kids to go live in middle America and soak up red-state American Christian values, and eventually, as the story moves forward, to break up the political power of ethnic groups (in this case, Jews) in America's cities. Remember what happened to Japanese-Americans not long after this book is set, such as the Amache "relocation center" in southern Colorado, which we visited last February when we were down there for the Snow Goose Festival).
They might have to pick a different "minority" to pick on (gays? Muslims? left-handed non-practicing Buddhist pagans?) next time, and I hate to be alarmist, and maybe it's just too much Roth in my system right now, and maybe it's just because I live on the edge of nowhere, or maybe it's just because I'm afraid of what mob-thought can do, but something like this (the Nazi plot against America from the book, or Japanese internment) happening again doesn't seem as impossible to me today (with Bush claiming a mandate) as it did a month ago, or especially pre 9/11.
*MELDAR = Multiple Eric Long Distance Association of Readers, a reading-for-writers duo of me and Mr. Krell, trying to learn/be inspired for our own fiction efforts. MELDAR reads two-three books a year, for the past three or four years.
I just finished reading Philip Roth's "The Plot Against America," in which a Nazi-supporting Charles Lindbergh runs for president in 1940 and defeats FDR on a stay-out-of-the war platform. (I read it as part of my MELDAR* reading group.) Now, it's a heavy book, a typically good Roth read, with some startling modern-day what-ifs about the Ashcroftites in the Bush administration, and good ol' Dubya himself. The plot against America as described in the novel never happened, but it doesn't seem so far-fetched, not the anti-Semite "Just Folks" campaign or the Office of American Absorption, which is set up to send inner city ghetto kids to go live in middle America and soak up red-state American Christian values, and eventually, as the story moves forward, to break up the political power of ethnic groups (in this case, Jews) in America's cities. Remember what happened to Japanese-Americans not long after this book is set, such as the Amache "relocation center" in southern Colorado, which we visited last February when we were down there for the Snow Goose Festival).
They might have to pick a different "minority" to pick on (gays? Muslims? left-handed non-practicing Buddhist pagans?) next time, and I hate to be alarmist, and maybe it's just too much Roth in my system right now, and maybe it's just because I live on the edge of nowhere, or maybe it's just because I'm afraid of what mob-thought can do, but something like this (the Nazi plot against America from the book, or Japanese internment) happening again doesn't seem as impossible to me today (with Bush claiming a mandate) as it did a month ago, or especially pre 9/11.
*MELDAR = Multiple Eric Long Distance Association of Readers, a reading-for-writers duo of me and Mr. Krell, trying to learn/be inspired for our own fiction efforts. MELDAR reads two-three books a year, for the past three or four years.
