To Trade Advantage for Truth

In the best of all possible worlds
no one would shout to our President
that he is a liar, while he is addressing Congress.

In the next-to-best of all possible worlds
the grown-ups would scorn the boor, and tell him so.

Ours is the third- or fourth-best. Maybe fifth.
Our President is Black, and it has become plain
that a fiercely angry opposition is not really talking
about an economics crisis, or either of two wars,
or whether every one of us ought to have health care.

Lunatics and racists have been showing up
at Obama appearances with guns; real guns,
complete with permits and an abused Second Amendment.

"You lie!" Congressman Joe Wilson shouted. "You lie!"

Everybody knew Joe Wilson wasn't talking about health care.
The proposed language of the health care bill was explicit:
illegal aliens could not join the program, even though
no one pretends that a sick person coming to an
emergency room should be thrown out onto the street.
There are human decencies that all of us should observe,
and we will, and want to, because we aren't lizards.

(We are, down deep, lizards, too, and that explains a lot.)

I have no psychic need to humiliate Joe Wilson.
He has humiliated himself better than we could.
But what is really at play, here, is not just the lack
of courtesy in a public forum. It is racism, barely disguised.
It is contempt for Barack Obama. It is contempt for a human.

I would like to let Joe Wilson discover that he behaved
like an ass, like the fool many of us have been
from time to time, and that we have tried to regret.

I would like to pretend that, "You lie!" was just
the remark of a socially handicapped asshole. It wasn't.
It was born within a long social tradition .
It was White fear. It was racism, simply and terribly.

If I were Black, as some of Joe Wilson"s colleagues are,
as one of my daughters, and sons-in-law, and grandchildren are,
I would be angry, almost beyond my ability to say,
that Joe Wilson stood up, in a mostly-white, mostly-courteous,
Hall of Congress and shouted to our President that he was a liar.

He didn't mean to say, "liar". He meant, "Black bastard!"

I am not Black.
I am a pink, old, White man.
I have all the color of bread dough.
I am a human being; one of the human beings.

If I were a Black person, I would want to censure Joe Wilson.
I would want Congress to admit the truth.
I would want everyone to know that Joe Wilson
wasn't just a boor, but that he was afraid, and horrible!

So maybe we should put political calculations aside,
and tell the truth, even if a lot of people don't understand.

I will trade a lot of tactical maneuvering
for a moment of honesty.

Comments

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