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Magnifient Illusions and Plain Directions

OK!  I am a liberal.  I admitted it with my latest posting.
I think that living in a country with a proliferation of races
is a fine thing!  Maybe someday we will be a melting pot but,
until then, a good stew is a healthy way toward good health.

It is the mistaken belief that we were founded as a nation
of good Christian gentlemen from northern Europe
that has confounded our thinking about who we are.

First, the whole continent was populated with Native Peoples.
This was not a nation of trees and grass and yellow corn.
Everywhere there were nations of people who had been here
for thousands of years.  We had bad eyesight.  We couldn't
see that they looked just like human beings; like us.

Almost as soon as the Spaniards and the English and
other a whole lot of other misguided colonists came here,
Africans were brought here, against their will.  Later,
Chinese laborers were encouraged to come, to dig caves
for wine, and to build railroads.  They stayed, too.
Starving Irish, and hungry Scandinavians came.
Italians, and Germans, and Hispanics, and Japanese.

We have been seeing the United States at its worst,
lately, in the sense that a lot of people seem to perceive
enemies everywhere; not from the outside:  from inside.
They are afraid, and their fears are built on a lie, or if not
a lie, a complete misunderstanding of who we are.

We are not a nation of Christians.  We never were.
We were, and perhaps still are, a majority of Christians,
but we are Jewish and Muslim and Atheists and . . .
well, I don't even know how to describe what I see!

The people who are afraid, the people who are raising hell,
are the people who assume that we are a nation of people
just like them:  Christian, probably evangelicals, White,
people who hate government (that is to say, a common
intention for what we should do), who distrust Asians and
African Americans and Native Peoples and people who
speak any other language other than crippled English. 

They are afraid. 
They do not know
that we are one human race.
They think that pink skin
or lame English or
a first-century worldview
is what makes us superior.
They do not know that
we are a human race.

It is a terrible thing to live between an illusion about who we are
and an honest recognition of how we are becoming decent.
If you are an Evangelical with illusions of your absolute truth,
or a White person with pretenses about your accidental birth,
or a coffee-shop-guru with a headful of cheap economics,
you will not recognize that we are a nation of magnificent diversity!

We are human beings!
We are lamentable!
We are magnificent!
We are possibilities!

Pay no attention--or pay intelligent attention--
to the fear mongers.  We are what we shall become!

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