So Where Do You Get The News?

What is fake news and what is the real (true) news?  Is Fox News reporting truth when it says Congressman Adam Schiff, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, “is inventing crimes” and that he “has no evidence of collusion?”  Is Schiff, according to Fox News “making this up because he’s sleazy,” because that is what “Adam Schiff does?” “Is Adam Schiff really “the sleaziest member of Congress” and “a conspiracy theorist?”

All this was reported by Fox News on Monday after Donald Trump did his “tweet” thing about Schiff on Sunday, accusing him of doing something that has never happened before—“Unlimited Presidential Harassment.”  Is the only real or truthful news that which Donald Trump suggests?  He says so.  “Just remember,” he said, “what you are seeing and what you are reading is not what’s happening…Just stick with us (who? Fox News?), don’t believe the crap you see from these people (who? Other Cable News Outlets?), the fake news.”

Who is telling the truth about the city of El Paso.  Trump makes his own claims about the border town and its wall.  But the county commissioners  complain that Trump has “continuously made inaccurate claims about the United States’ southern border, including El Paso.”  They are, they wrote, “disillusioned by President Trump’s lies regarding the border and our community.”  The Mayor of El Paso also pushed back on Trump’s distortions about the city.  Who’s telling the truth?  What is fake and what is true?

Mr. Trump doesn’t care what the local leaders or people say or claim.  And he says so.  He said it again at his rally in El Paso on Monday night.  “I don’t care if they’re Republican or a Democrat, they are full of crap when they say it [the border wall] hasn’t made a big difference.”   

He knows more than the Intelligence agencies, more than the generals, and he has accomplished more in two years than any other administration in history, plus he won the 2016 election by a landslide—Oh! Lest I forget—he also claims the largest inauguration crowd (in spite of the pictures).  

So where to you go to get the “news?”  

Ethnocentrism

Throughout the centuries people have always thought of their particular culture (society, religion,  nation) as being superior to all others.  “America First”  is not by any means  new; it is actually a primitive view.  In 1907, a Yale University sociologist coined a word for this “tribal tendency” to be first, or the only, or the superior to all others; he called it ethnocentrism.  He defined ethnocentrism as the belief that “one’s own group is the center of everything, and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it…Each group nourishes its own pride and vanity, boasts itself superior, exalts its own divinities, and looks with contempt on outsiders.” 

Ethnocentrism is the belief that the members of one’s own party, society, religion, culture, or nation hold the truth and all others are wrong.  In the extreme, ethnocentrism is the belief that one’s own party, society, religion, culture, or nation are the only true human beings.  

The early explorers and settlers in the Americas saw the native tribes as less than human.  They described them as “talking animals,” “beasts in human form,” implied that they were “formed from decaying debris left behind by the Great Flood.”   Even though Pope Paul III proclaimed in 1537 that Native Americans were human beings with rational souls,  no one has paid much attention to that proclamation even to the present day.

Ethnocentrism was not and is not limited, however, to the early explorers and settlers of the Americas.  It existed in the native tribes as well.  The word Kiowa means “the real or principal people.”  The Navajos called themselves Dine'é which means “the people.”  Many other tribes called themselves “men,”  (meaning the true men).  These tribes saw the European intruders as less than human. It was “Kiowa First,” and “Navajo First” from their perspective.

“The Way” suggests that there is no such thing as Spaniard, German, or European, Greek, or Navajo, or Kiowa  or America First (Galatians 3:28)!  A New Age beckons and we must be done with our foolish notions.

High Hopes

Frank Sinatra sang a song that keeps running around in my head this morning called “High Hopes.”  I’ve always had “high hopes,” but sometimes I wonder if such “hopes” are futile. These high hopes are part and parcel of what I see as the “Way.”  The early Christians were called “followers of the Way” in the beginning.  But the “Way” has been lost along the way and now we have some Christians who go one way and some Christians who go another way (many claiming their way is the only way). It is all rather confusing.  Doing it our way or my way (which by the way is another Sinatra song) has taken us a long way from being “followers of the Way!”  

What was/is the “Way?”  The “Way” was and is the path that Jesus (and many others along the way) pointed us toward—a Way to live, to love and to be—a Way to be joined in community, not consisting of any one particular people, but inclusive of all humanity, anywhere and everywhere, including Jews, Samaritans, Romans, the poor, the maimed, the hungry, the sick, etc.  What a “Way” to go!  That’s the Way we are all called to go as human beings—not just those who follow Jesus, Abraham, or Mohammed, or Joseph Smith.  This has nothing to do with that oft-scorned term “political correctness;” it has everything to do with becoming fully human.

To be on the Way—not my way, not your way—but the Way that Jesus and others (including our American forefathers and our very own Constitution) have pointed toward for centuries means we have to change and change drastically. In Luke’s gospel Jesus took notice of how  party guests were trying to secure the places of honor around the dinner table, which we as individuals, groups, and nations do all the time.  This is precisely what we are doing in this present day when we say “America First.”  We want to sit at the head of the table, and in choosing that way we make all the other party guests somehow less important than we are.  In fact, we even want to decide who should sit at the table.  This prevalent attitude has long been with us.  It is nothing new.  It is very discouraging, but still I try to sing….with high hopes.

Next time you’re found, with your chin on the ground

There is a lot to be learned, so look around

Just what makes that little old ant

Think he’ll move that rubber tree plant

Anyone knows an ant, can’t

Move a rubber tree plant

But he’ got high hopes, he’s got high hopes

He’s got high apple pie, in the sky hopes

So any time you’re gettin’ low

“Stead of lettin’ go

Just remember that ant

Oops, there goes another rubber tree plant

Oops, there goes another rubber tree plant…

Three Score and Ten Plus Six

Yesterday was my three score and ten plus six (76) birthday.  Birthday wishes from friends and family via Facebook and through phone calls, cards, Email and  text messages were much appreciated.  These birthday wishes “made my day.” “There is no cure for birth,” wrote George Santayana, nor is there a cure for death, “save to enjoy the interval.”  I intend to continue “to enjoy the interval,” and appreciated the birthday wishes supporting that intention. 

My  interval has had, and will continue to have,  ups and downs.  Ups and downs go along with  being alive.  Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously.  And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things (all the downs, as well as the ups) in your gratitude.”  

My interval has been an adventure and my daughter suggested in her birthday wish for me yesterday that I have “many more adventures” to come.  I sure hope so! But I must add that my interval’s greatest gifts have not been my adventures or journeys to distant places, or the books I have read, or my educational opportunities, nor the dreams that I have dreamed.  No, my life’s greatest benefactors have been persons—“Star Persons”—who, like that Bethlehem Star which guided the wise persons of old—have guided me.  I am, at three score and ten plus six, so grateful for the Star Persons who have been a part of my interval.

And the "interval" continues....

Propaganda

“Dehumanization is aroused, exacerbated, and exploited by propaganda,” writes David Livingstone Smith in his book, "Less Than Human."

There is a lot of propaganda being touted these days about the southern border of the United States.  That the people seeking entry are criminals, drug dealers, rapists, caravans of "invaders" creating a national security emergency are bogus claims, but they serve to ignite in gullible minds the sense that these people are somehow subhuman or less than human.  

“In a speech delivered at London’s Royal Albert Hall in 1936, against the background of the gathering storm of fascism in Europe, Aldous Huxley argued that dehumanization is the primary function of propaganda.

Most people would hesitate to torture or kill a human being like themselves. But when that human being is spoken of as though he were not a human being, but as the representative of some wicked principle, we lose our scruples.… All political and nationalist propaganda aims at only one thing; to persuade one set of people that another set of people are not really human and that it is therefore legitimate..." to keep them out. (Excerpt From: David Livingstone Smith. “Less Than Human.”)

It’s Me, Too, O Lord!

It’s “Not my brother, not my sister, but it’s me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer.”  This Afro-American spiritual, “It’s Me, It’s Me, O Lord,” reminds us that we are not immune to the very same things we “lay on” the shoulders, actions, words,  and minds of those we criticize.  When I criticize Mr. Trump or any one else for what I see as faults and short-comings, I must also be conscious of my own tendency to do and be the very things I find so repugnant in others. “There is a tombstone near my childhood home in England which admonishes the passer-by:” wrote M. Esther Harding, “The faults ye see in others take care to shun.  If you’ll only look at home there’s enough to be done.” 

The “us vs. them” mentality resides in all of us.  We have a tendency to favor those who are like us (insiders) and discriminate against those who are unlike us (outsiders).  This is known as “outgroup bias.” Republicans view Democrats this way and vice versa—and the list goes on ad-infinitum—east/west, rich/poor, black/white, etc.   

In his book, “Less Than Human,” David Livingstone Smith includes a quote from David Hume’s, “A Treatise of Human Nature” (1740) that still speaks today.

“When our own nation is at war with any other, we detest them under the character of cruel, perfidious, unjust and violent: but always esteem ourselves and allies equitable, moderate and merciful. If the general of our enemies be successful, ’tis with difficulty we allow him the figure and character of a man. He is a sorcerer: he has a communication with daemons … he is bloody-minded and takes a pleasure in death and destruction. But if the success be on our side, our commander has all the opposite good qualities, and is a pattern of virtue, as well as of courage and conduct. His treachery we call policy: His cruelty is an evil inseparable from war. In short, every one of his faults we either endeavor to extenuate, or dignify it with the name of that virtue, which approaches it. ’Tis evident that the same method of thinking runs thro’ common life.”

Yes, “It’s Me, It’s Me," Too, O Lord, standing in the need of reform and change—standing in need of more compassion, care, love, and empathy.  

Why I Oppose Trump

David Livingstone Smith’s “Less Than Human” (Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others) is a powerful book. I recommend it.  The book is especially instructive for us as a nation given our current leadership.  I have opposed Donald Trump vigorously as you know well.  I have not opposed him because of his political party, but because of his constant dehumanization of others. My opposition to Mr. Trump began when he first announced his candidacy in 2015 on the escalator of his ostentatious Trump Tower and immediately dehumanized immigrants from Mexico.  “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best.  They’re not sending you (people like you gathered here)…They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us.  They’re bringing drugs.  They’re bringing crime.  They’re rapists.  And some, I assume, are good people.”  At that moment, I opposed him and his ideas, because I saw that he did not value persons (which for me is a central tenet of my religious belief, and which, for me, is the essence of the American Dream).

Mr. Trump continues to denigrate people, not just those crossing the southern border of the United States, but his fellow politicians, the press, and all others who are not in his camp.  He lies continuously.  His denigration of persons, his lies, his putting down of others not in his camp, his projection of all our national problems on former leaders and other countries is FACT—not my opinion.  

Why do I oppose his verbiage?  Why do I oppose his fear-mongering and putting down of others?   I oppose it because it goes against the grain of my religious faith and my understanding of the American Dream.  

Smith writes:  “Think of the word dehumanization. It literally means something like ‘removing the human-ness.’  Now, take someone and imagine that their humanity has been stripped away from them.  What’s left?  When the founding fathers dehumanized their slaves, what remained of them?  When European colonists dehumanized Native Americans or Nazis dehumanized Jews, what remained?  In their eyes, what was left was a creature that seemed human—had a human-looking form, walked on two legs, spoke human language, and acted in more-or-less human ways—but which was nonetheless not human….dehumanization is the belief that some beings only appear human, but beneath the surface, where it really counts, they aren’t human at all.”