Prohibition

I don’t know why it is that religious groups (with good intentions) seem always to speak out on banning, forbidding, outlawing, and prohibiting things.  It seems to me that religion should speak more of encouragement than suppression, more of tolerance than intolerance, more of blessings than suppressions.  Be that as it may,  religious groups in the early 1800’s  considered alcohol (specifically drunkenness) a threat to the nation and pushed for Prohibition.  

The first temperance legislation occurred in Massachusetts in 1838, “Prohibiting the sale of spirits in less than 15-gallon quantities." Congress responded to these religious demands in 1920 by ratifying the 18th Amendment, prohibiting the manufacture, transportation and sale of intoxicating liquors (though not the consumption or private possession of such).  Prohibition was called “the noble experiment” by President Herbert Hoover, who wrote in 1928, “Our country has deliberately undertaken a great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose.”  The New York World newspaper in 1931 took a different view:

Prohibition is an awful flop.

We like it.

It can’t stop what it’s meant to stop.

We like it.

It’s left a trail of graft and slime,

It’s filled our land with vice and crime,

It don’t prohibit worth a dime,

Nevertheless we’re for it. 

Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia

Prohibition didn’t stop what it was intended to stop.  Prohibition opened the door to bootlegging, gambling, prostitution,  gangs with “tommy guns”, Alphonse Capone, and the Mafia. Crime and disorder reached unprecedented levels  during the 1920’s—despite the fact that the Amendment was intended to do just the opposite.  Even Al Capone said, “Prohibition has made nothing but trouble,” and he made $60 million annually because of it!  

Prohibition is “the action of forbidding something, especially by law.”  Sometimes the “forbidding” creates “nothing but trouble.”

What Do You See?

A friend told me the other day that he remembered something I said to him years ago and that had helped him in every situation in which he has found himself since.  I was eager to hear what it was I had said that he remembered and found so helpful.  He said I told him (nearly 45 years ago)   “worse things have happened than that which is happening now, and somehow we made it through, which is a sure sign that we can make it through the present dilemma no matter how difficult it may be.”  I don’t remember saying that, but he remembers.  We easily forget the words we have spoken, but the person to whom we spoke them may remember our words forever.  Be careful what you say. 

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know these “worse times” have, indeed, occurred in our lives and in the life of our nation and our world.  The simple exercise of “remembering” our own life journey or a casual glance at the history of our nation and the world will confirm this truth.  Worse times than that of our present time and circumstances have occurred, and we made it through.

It has to do with how we “see” things—the capacity to see a vision.  Each of us lives by some vision.  It may be a depressing vision (things are worse now than they have ever been).  It may be a limited vision (seeing only the present moment without being conscious of what has gone on before).  It may be a vision which sees everything falling to pieces or a vision which sees everything coming together.  Whatever the case, consciously or unconsciously, each of us live by some vision.  If it is a vision that sees nothing but disintegration and chaos, we will be fearful.  If it is a vision that can see that things have been worse and we made it through, then we will be filled with hope “that this, too, shall pass.” Hope is a form of faith and tends to produce what it sees.  Despair is a form of faith and tends to produce what it sees.  

“Worse things have happened than that which is happening now, and somehow we made it through, which is a sure sign that we can make it through the present dilemma no matter how difficult it may be.”  Our vision makes all the difference.  What do you see?  Do you see the world falling to pieces, or do you see the new possibilities growing out of the present moment? 

What do you see?  The tree or the Eiffel Tower?

Mistakes

Yesterday I wrote that the Armistice was signed on November 11, 1919 and that was a MISTAKE.  It was not simply a typo—it was a mistake.  The Armistice was signed on November 11, 1918—one year before my mother was born, not one day after she was born.  What constitutes a mistake?  A “mistake” (noun) is “an action or judgment that is misguided or wrong,” an error, fault, inaccuracy, omission, slip, blunder, miscalculation, boo-boo.  When used as a verb, a mistake is simply  “to be wrong!”    I was wrong and inaccurate when I wrote that the Armistice was signed on November 11, 1919—and because of that boo-boo I shall probably always remember with great accuracy that the Armistice was signed in 1918.  Sometimes we learn from our mistakes, but not always.  

There is nothing wrong with making mistakes, but (as someone has written) we should try not to respond to them with encores.  George Bernard Shaw said it this way, “Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time.”  To err is human.  Andy Rooney spoke of the “50-50-90 rule: anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there’s a 90% probability you’ll get it wrong.”  

When I retrace my journey of life, I become fully aware of how “mistaken” I have been about so many things along the way.  I’ve been wrong so many times.  I’ve goofed-up, miscalculated, slipped-up, blundered, and made many a boo-boo.  I am somewhat comforted by Dr. Seuss who wrote, “There are no mistakes in life—only lessons,” but somewhat disturbed by the fact that at times I didn’t catch on to the lesson.

We all make mistakes, but there are some who are unwilling to admit such blunders.  Some have a need to be right even when they are wrong.  This, too, is human, I suppose, but without confessing our mistakes, we never learn anything new.  The mistakes of the past unheeded, make for the same mistakes to be repeated.  Sometimes that is the price of the need to be right even when we are wrong.

Lunenburg, Nova Scotia

Triumphant Hate

My brother and his wife dropped by for a visit this week.  We’ve talked non-stop of family memories, school friends and neighbors of long ago, politics, social issues, travel experiences, and our own concerns, opinions,  and issues.  It has been special time, a special visit with John and Reola.

Our mother was born in the year 1919.  Reading Frederick Lewis Allen’s Only Yesterday for the umpteenth time (an account of what happened in the US between the years 1919-1929—the first ten years of our mother’s life), has been fascinating. 

On November 11, 1919 (our mother was born on November 10th) the Armistice ending World War I was signed.  Americans celebrated that day, some posting signs on their shops and stores which read “Closed for the Kaiser’s Funeral,”  Over 155 tons of ticker tape and torn paper were dropped from the windows along New York’s Fifth Avenue. The mood of the American people was mixed.  For some it was a “pious thanksgiving,” but for many others it was a time of “triumphant hate.”  Crowds gathered all across the nation to burn the Kaiser in effigy, or to carry a coffin (made of cardboard boxes) down the street, shouting that the Kaiser was within it, “resting in pieces.”  Over two million soldiers were still in Europe and in the trenches on that Armistice day, making ready for the march into Germany.  As the lights were turned back on, and American cities became “white” again, the new era of peace began—but it was a peace that seemed to embrace the “triumphant hate” more than it did the “pious thanksgiving.”

This “triumphant hate” grew out of many things. The influenza epidemic was just ending in 1919.  That epidemic took more American lives than the war itself.   Thousands of Americans went about in fear, with white cloth masks over their faces. Even after the Armistice was signed, the war casualty lists continued.  Mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters, read those lists day after day, in fearful apprehension that their son or brother’s name might yet appear even though the war was over.  There was a deep resentment about America being engaged and entangled in the affairs of the world—and most Americans simply wanted to be free of those connections for fear of getting entangled again.  Americans didn’t care about what happened elsewhere in the world.  There was a strong emphasis on “America First!”  This “triumphant hate” permeated the whole of American society during the decade recorded by Allen in Only Yesterday.  In some ways, I sense a “triumphant hate” directing our current journey as a nation.  Does history repeat itself?  

Our mother (center) with siblings circa 1928

God Has A Long Face

The title of this blog comes from a novel written in 1940 by Robert Wilder.  I thought of using “God Has A Sad Face,” but Wilder’s term, “Long Face” (“an unhappy or disappointed expression”) seems the better of the two.

During World War One, hundreds of thousands of southern blacks migrated into the industrial   north.   One afternoon in the summer of 1919, a seventeen year old black boy was swimming in Lake Michigan.  One part of the shore was set aside for whites and another for blacks.  The boy took hold of a railroad tie floating in the water and drifted over that invisible line dividing the two areas.  Stones were thrown at him by the whites.  He let go of the railroad tie and drowned.    The black community blamed the whites of stoning him to death and a fight ensued.  This incident set off a bonfire of racial hatred that mushroomed into a week-long civil war in Chicago that  included beatings, stabbings, gang raids and shootings, along with the destruction of houses and property.  Fifteen whites and twenty-three blacks were killed, five hundred-plus people were injured and a thousand or more were left homeless.  

White supremacists in 1920 thought the dark-skinned races constituted a worse threat to western civilization than the Germans or the Bolsheviks. Jews, Roman Catholics, and similar groups  were considered as having divided loyalties and, therefore, dangerous to America.  The KKK was born in 1915, proclaiming itself the defender of whites against the black, of Gentile against the Jew, and of the Protestant against the Catholic, inflaming the fears of the time. After fighting a war to end all wars and to make the world safe for democracy, the United States became a hotbed of white Anglo-Saxon bigotry and arrogance.  Was America Great in 1919?  In 1943?  In 1963?  God Has A Long Face and a face speaks volumes.  

Perspective vs. Perception

The New York Times headline this morning is the “shooting” in Las Vegas last night—early reports suggesting that 50 people were killed and over 200 hurt. The police have confirmed that the suspect is dead, apparently killed by the police.  The NY Times reported in 2015 that a “mass shooting” (“shootings that left four or more people wounded or dead”) occurs at least once a day in the United States.  “…An average of 18 people die every day (in the US) as a result of a fatal shooting,” according to a 2013 report.  The United States, with five percent of world’s population, is home to nearly one-third of the world’s mass shooters (statistics for the period 1966 to 2012).  

The mass shooting at the Orlando gay nightclub last year was the deadliest mass shooting in the history of the United States.  Or was it a terrorist attack?  It depends on your perspective.  The presumptive presidential candidates at the time saw it differently.  Hilary Clinton said, “This is the deadliest mass killing in the history of the United States and it reminds us once more that the weapons of war have no place on our streets.” Donald Trump said, “It was the worst terrorist attack on our soil since 9/11, and the second of its kind in six months.”  A CBS Poll later confirmed that people viewed the Orlando shooting based on their political affiliations.

Our past, our friends, our news media, all contribute to how we see Orlando, San Bernardino, and Las Vegas (and anything else for that matter):  a mass shooting or a terrorist attack? Perspective is a point of view, but perception is an individual’s interpretation of things.  We use the words interchangeably, but the difference may be significant.  If my point of view (perspective) determines or holds captive my interpretation of things (perception) I may never grow, change, or develop either socially, intellectually or spiritually.  We must rise above our “point of view!”

On the Nile--Egypt 2010

The Rhyme of History

Only Yesterday (1919), writes Frederick Lewis Allen, there was the Big Red Scare conspiracy.  Every labor movement was suspected of communist influence (the Bolshevist).  The New York World reported  that there was “no Bolshevist menace in the United States and no I.W.W. (Industrial Workers of the World) menace that an ordinarily capable police force is not competent to deal with.”  Yet this (“fake news?”) did not deter the craziness that enveloped the nation.  That craziness was promoted and nurtured by A. Mitchell Palmer, Attorney General of the United States, (who enjoyed being called “The Fighting Quaker”).  He rounded up so-called Communist leaders (foreigners who did not look like “Americans”) for deportation to Russia and carried out other raids which “set a new record in American history for executive transgression of individual constitutional rights.”

Attorney General Palmer’s propaganda against the so-called “borers from within” (terrorists) worked.  Many Americans (without any substantial evidence) began to fear and to hate.  “I believe we should place them all (whoever the enemy should happen to be) on a ship of stone, with sails of lead, and that their first stopping-place should be hell,” became the raucous chorus among the “super-patriots.” These super-patriots set up all kinds of patriotic societies to further the hysteria, “all wrapped themselves in Old Glory and the mantle of the Founding Fathers.”  In order to keep their organizations alive they conjured up new and ever greater menaces threatening the safety of Americans.  University professors were blacklisted if they spoke in opposition to these ludicrous conspiracies, school teachers were made to sign oaths of allegiance, opposing political or economic ideas were considered treasonous.  The intolerance took many forms—including anti-Negro, Jew, and Roman Catholic feelings, and feelings toward all other groups which to the then dominant American group—the white Protestants—seemed alien or “un-American.” This all happened Only Yesterday—here—in the United States of America.

A few days ago I used a popular aphorism, “History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes.”  The maxim is often attributed to Mark Twain, but, as a columnist of the New York Times wrote, “I’ve found no compelling evidence that he (Twain) ever uttered this nifty aphorism.  No matter—the line is too good to resist.”  It is too good to resist—and—it is also too true to ignore.