Wholesomeness and Hope

I grew up in Norman Rockwell's version of America, small town of 110, Grandparents one direction 20 miles away, the home of the President of the United States, Allied Commander who had just won the war a decade earlier, just 15 miles away.  Other than the atomic bomb and tornado drills, hope for the future knew no bounds, for migration through the huge middle class was open to everyone from that vantage point.  Life was so wholesome that there were no curse words hurled around or sexual situations on TV.  Lucy and Ricky slept in separate twin beds!

Play was unrestricted.  We climbed anything we could find and rode our bikes all the time.  We were real Mark Twain characters, wearing no shoes in any weather allowing it, building snow forts in weather that allowed that, ever forming worlds from our imaginations.  One of our favorite pastimes was playing Cowboys and Indians when no one was available with a glove and ball to play catch.  A good guy would round a garage only to find the bad guy on the other side shooting him with his cap gun.  Of course, you could always claim that you were OK because he only got you in the hip!  Now, why we thought that getting shot in the hip would just be something to shake off you'd have to go back in time and ask us.

So, lets get to the rub.  What could possibly be wrong with thia idyllic picture, a wealth of love and nurturance, joy at just being alive.  Why, nothing as far as it goes.  But, to punch one hole that few think of, the Wild West wasn't a game between white folks and Indians getting conveniently shot by the good guys, the Cowboys.  It was genocide on a scale actually larger than the holocaust extermination of the Jews just one decade earlier.  What if you changed the name from Cowboys and Indians to Nazis and Jews instead?  It wouldn't seem so innocent.

Then you look around.  Everyone was white.  Of course.  All the leaders on TV were and the brown people like the Mexican family that lived in town or Ricky Ricardo on TV were pretty much just more white folks, even if Ricky had that funny accent.  This was Norman Rockwell America after all and we might as well have lived in Shangri La with Walter Cronkite to assure us of how it was!

The 60's changed a whole lot of that.  I mean, we'd had glimpses from the South on TV before that, but suddenly the world turned topsy turvy. There were assassinations and wars and oh so much civil unrest.  Suddenly, it became clear that a whole lot of people weren't white and that they decidedly were not happy.  We went away to college, met them and suddenly the rural boys were on a crash course in what racial unrest was about.  When you date a Puerto Rican girl who grew up in a Spanish Harlem tenement with more people than your home town had, a lot of fertile ground for discovery exists on both sides!  Neither was right, neither was wrong, but there was a whole lot of bridge building ahead to really know one another.

To make a long story short, let's roll right ahead to the current day, Kansas small town kid moves to California metropolis.  Many of the small town kids he grew up with stay in Kansas for their entire lives, and now the small town kid in California seems suspiciously less wholesome to relatives and journey mates  who stayed behind.  He accepts things that violate the norms with no concern. His world, they imagine, has very little resemblance to the Norman Rockwell world, while many of his new journey mates view his Kansas kin as ignorant, primitive people from a fly-over state.  The Kansans aren't dumb and they resent these "elitist" views filtering down to them through media with anger and resentment. The cultural battle lines are drawn between red and blue, most of it powered by imagination for very little of it is powered by facts.

Having lived in both cultures, I can say that neither side is fully wholesome or fully degraded, but both are pretty much the same human beings once the surface grime is cleaned off.  Kansans are just as smart as Californians and Californians are no more evil than Kansans.  Both try to put on airs and pretend they are more and the other is less.

Donald Trump, like all populists, absolutely relies on that division and stokes it on a daily basis. He appears authentic to a Kansan because his unfiltered communication doesn't sound elitist.  He seems to champion their causes even when his actions do little to actually help them.  The crudity becomes a bit of a sales bonus to some Kansans, while to many coastal Californians he is totally inauthentic because nothing he says is factual.  To them, you can't be authentic and lie at the same time, especially since he has picked them as the enemy to start with.  So, what can possibly be done to mend those fences, to unify the nation?

If you would have hope, you must invest in that which is universally wholesome, that which makes individuals and societies morally sound and healthy. Honest examination of our past where we should feel shame can lead to tolerance and nurturance; caring for those in need without all the judgment can foster compassion; loving without concern for taint can generate tolerance. These are the healthy pathways to embracing one another again, returning to the joy of living.  Rockwell would need to add a few more colors and shades to his palette, but he could do it.

We have a long way to go, but I have hope!

Sanjana, wiser than I in my youth, gave us this week's topic. Please check out her and my other blog mates' takes on the same topic at their blogs, Ramana, Sanjana, Padmum and Shackman!