[FRIAM] Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening

[thompnickson2 at gmail.com]

Dear fellow congregants,

 

One of the things we talk about is our bemusement at Trump supporters.  One
expression you often hear these supporters say is that they admire him
because "He tells it like it is!"  They can say this while acknowledging
that almost everything he says is false.  So, if he is lying most of the
time, what is he telling the truth about? 

 

I think I know.  As I keep insisting, I am not a boomer.  I am from the
Silent Generation, the Lonely Crowd.  My mother's life hero was Eleanor
Roosevelt.  It was I, aged seven, who brought the news of the President's
death to my parents, and I was startled to seem my mother burst into tears.
Crying was not her thing.  My folks were publishers. We had black, Jewish,
gay, lesbian, working class, authors visiting the house.  But - and here is
the point - when they visited, they visited as such.  Not that I was told as
a child explicitly, but it was conveyed to me as a child, somehow, that
these folks belonged to a different category.  And my education, in
Massachusetts, in the 40's, was devoid of any explicit contact with anybody
in any of these categories. 

 

Ok, fast forward 70 years to Santa Fe.  I befriend at Ohoris an extremely
tall black man, grizzled, slow moving, thoughtful, with an intricate,
international biography full of remarkable connections and coincidences.  He
fits in every conceivable way my childhood stereotype of the "old wise black
man".  I sit in rapt attention to his stories. I look up to him, which,
given his height, is my only choice. But, as we continue to meet, a tension
begins to rise between us that is coming largely from me, but I cannot
control.  He becomes aware that I am seeing him through the stereotype of
the old wise black man.  Because I cannot admit to it, he is imprisoned by
it.  Our conversations are based on a lie.  He disappears from Ohoris and I
never see him again.  He would rather eschew good coffee, than live in my
lie.  

 

This is what Donald Trump is truthful about.  He tells the truth about his
own stereotypes.  He is truthful about himself.  That what he believes is
FALSE is irrelevant to his base.  He admits to thoughts which they know many
others find distasteful.  It is hard to live in a world which has moved on
from one's childhood, a world in which others find one's basic
categorizations distasteful - in fact, a world in which one finds one's own
basic categorizations distasteful.  

 

To break Trump we need to come to a new understanding and acknowledgement of
type-isms.  There are always going to be type-isms.  We human beings do that
sort of thing.  Raised in a particular way, at a particular time I see a
tall grizzled black man as wise, and everything he says and does is read
through that lens.  That's abduction.  This person wears a dress, this
person is a woman, this person is gentle, that 's abduction.  (Well, it's
abduction-deduction, but let that go.)  Human beings naturally form identity
groups that trap ourselves and others in false abductions.  So we need to
design our society to counter these. (Libertarians beware.  Here come Nick's
white vans, again)  In this case the white van takes the form of aggressive
taxation of the rich and aggressive education of the poor, and of
institutions that promote the random mixing of our citizens (like public
universities and armies - or conservation corps).  

 

Could my friendship with the tall black guy have been rescued?  Could we
have laughed about my stereotypes?  Perhaps I should have said, early on,
"Look, I'm sorry, I keep seeing you  as Uncle Remus.  I am sure, as I get to
know you better, I will get over it.  Please be patient with me, and please
call me out whenever you feel confined by it. "  

 

A Liberalism that does not free me is not worth the name.

 

Nick 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> 

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20200905/12e15865/attachment.html>