A HOOD IN THE SAFE

Yesterday my spirits were lifted as I got the results of my lab work at the doctor's office. Not only was my cholesterol down one point and my blood sugar down one point, but I had lost one pound and my blood pressure was 132/64. Hey! Not a lot, but every little bit of improvement helps at this stage of life. I could be going downhill instead of up! As I passed by the lab, I stuck my head in and sang the first two lines of La Cucaracha in Spanish to Roy, the lab tech. He had taken my blood several times over the past year, and although he is Hispanic, he told me he never learned Spanish growing up. Like me, though, he knew a few Spanish songs. He joined me in the last line of the verse.. marijuana que fumar! Then we broke out laughing. Mrs. Holcomb, my fifth grade teacher, taught our class this little ditty without conveying the meaning to us. When I worked at FEMA, a young woman from Mexico told some of us that this is a Mexican folk song about a cockroach. "Why are you walking around in circles, with a limp? (She demonstrated this.) Because you have been smoking marijuana?" I now find that very funny! Obviously, marijuana was not the issue in the 40s that it is today. There have been many different versions and verses, and some verses even held political connotations at times. I left the office smiling and in a good mood.

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While I was out and about, I decided to check out a half-price bookstore someone had told me about. Some of my favorite authors' books are not carried in our local library. I guess they consider them too controversial -- or "new age". I immediately spotted one that I had not read by one of my favorite spiritual writers, Deepak Chopra, M.D. titled "The Deeper Wound". Checking the flyleaf, I realized he had written this shortly after 9/11 in 2001. I knew this was a serendipitous sign for me, so I quickly made my purchase and came home. It was only two days until the anniversary of the horrendous event our country suffered nine years ago. My joyful mood suddenly began to sink into a sort of melancholy. This past week I had been checking a few headlines on the Google news site. Much to my dismay, I read about the minister in Florida wanting to burn Qu'rans on the anniversary of this terrible attack. Common sense should tell one that this would only antagonize the Taliban and Al Queda. They would use this event to stir up anti-American feelings, to recruit new members to their terrorist organizations, and most importantly this would further endanger American troops still in Iraq and Afghanistan! Was this pastor of a tiny (50 member) church trying to attract attention? Surely he could see how "un-Christian" an act such as this would be. What if it provoked another attack on America?

I picked up Dr. Chopra's little book and scanned some of the contents. He speaks of the stages of suffering and healing in the face of tragedy. He says, "In the natural grieving process, layers of fear and suffering come to the surface. If this process is denied or cut short, the trauma turns into a deep and lasting wound." I have not read much further. It's as though I have at least part of an answer to what has been happening in our country lately. So many in our country have skipped this phase of grieving over the 9/11 terrorist attack.. indeed it is a painful process, which causes much fear when we try to understand it. Now the "deep and lasting wound" is making itself known by way of the anger, hate, frustration, and fear we see expressed by many in their alliances with people and groups who can better express their feelings. Their "wound" is being lanced and the infection pouring out.

Not only are some Americans still harboring resentment against -- indeed, some even hate -- anyone remotely resembling a Muslim, the intervening years have caused us even more pain. Wars, the economy collapsing, joblessness.. The conditions are ripe for these people to accept hope in the form of a person (a savior) or a cause that will allow them to vent, and perhaps to finally heal. The Tea Party seems to satisfy these needs in many today.

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As you all know, I have been trying to avoid the negative TV newscasts. In fact, all newscasts. Recently I was surfing the channels to find the weather channel, as we were having heavy downpours of rain that showed no signs of letting up after two days. As I did so, I happened upon the History Channel. This day they were presenting the history of the Ku Klux Klan. For some reason, I decided to watch. Even though the original Klan, which formed after the Civil War as well as the second wave of the Klan, formed in 1915, was filled with those who avowed to be Christians, and many were upstanding citizens of the community, it was taken over by hate groups that used threats and violence to restore white supremacy. It was originally filled with Democrats (that was a shock to me, but explained something about law enforcement, a Sheriff I used to work for, and the Democratic party - which I will write about in a future blog), and their threats were often against white Republicans as well as immigrants. Today's Klan members are known for their far right political beliefs. As I watched and listened I became more agitated, as what I was hearing about the Klan's history kept reminding me of something. Then it dawned on me.

From Wikipedia: "In 1915, the second Klan was founded. It grew rapidly nationwide after 1921 in response to a period of postwar social tensions, where industrialization in the North had attracted numerous waves of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe and the Great Migration of Southern blacks and whites. The second KKK preached racism, anti-Catholicism, anti-Communism, nativism, and anti-Semitism. Some local groups took part in attacks on private houses, and carried out other violent activities. The violent episodes were generally in the South."

Replace some of those "antis-" with anti-Islam and anti-Mexican immigration, and what do you hear? I find it very scary, and looking at the history of how the Klan once took over many positions of government through fear tactics, I wonder how many of the current Klan members have joined forces with the Tea Party movement. It seems a perfect environment for their brand of hate.

I know that the Tea Party movement is supposedly all about "taxes". Recently someone wrote me that "we pay 50% income taxes" today. Really! Forbes.com writer Bruce Bartlett in a March column said, "For an antitax group, they don't know much about taxes." He went on to write about an interesting experiment conducted with over 500 Tea Party demonstrators on Capitol Hill. When asked how much federal taxes are today:

"Tuesday's Tea Party crowd, however, thought that federal taxes were almost three times as high as they actually are. The average response was 42% of GDP and the median 40%. The highest figure recorded in all of American history was half those figures: 20.9% at the peak of World War II in 1944."

The individuals I have spoken to are angrier about the immigration of Mexicans and the Muslims that are in this country than they are about their taxes. At a Community Dinner at a local church last night I heard so much hate from one woman it made me physically ill when I got home. She said to me, "I don't understand it... why don't those Muslims stay home? They have countries of their own." When I commented about my ancestors being immigrants, she jumped up in a huff, and said "Well at least yours were not illegal!" I was dumbfounded -- I didn't know how to answer such a statement. (In the early 1700s there was no such thing as an "illegal" alien. All were welcome in this country.) As for the millions of Muslims in the United States, as far as I've heard, most of them are legal immigrants, as well as second or third generations born in America.

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As I pondered the history of hate groups in our country, I recalled a story about one of my great-grandfathers, whose own grandfather had fled to the United States in the mid-1800s (yep! another immigrant!), after the overthrow of the Hungarian monarchy. (He was a Count, and a tax collector, of all things!) My great-grandfather was beloved by all his ten children as well as the community he lived in. He was a devout Methodist, a rancher, and also had a general store, which housed the first telephone company in the area. My mother was a 14-year-old who was working as the telephone operator the day her grandfather was dragged to death by a mule.

During the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s one of my distant cousins was doing research on this side of the family, when she discovered that upon my grandfather's death, among the items that were found in his safe was a white KKK hood! No one in the family knew of this, or if they did, they never talked about it. It goes to show that even decent, good, loving people can be fooled into supporting causes that are inherently wrong.

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To the Tea Party -- remember that the first Boston Tea Party was in protest of "taxation without representation." We have representation in this country. If the ones we elected (you did vote, didn't you?) are not representing you as you wish, have you called or written them about important issues or pending legislation? You do not need to join forces with an angry group, led by people who have mainly their own interests at heart, to vote officials out of office and new ones in. Study your candidates carefully -- not just on FOX News, then make that trip to the voting booth in November!

From The Star online: “If Americans were paying attention,” says DeWayne Wickham in USA Today, “they'd realize that the Tea Party candidates who have been winning Republican primaries left and right are threatening to 'turn this nation and its founding document upside down.' Kentucky's Rand Paul and Utah's Mike Lee want to undo the birthright citizenship. Sharron Angle, the GOP candidate for the Senate in Nevada, suggested that angry Americans might take up arms against Congress. This is dangerous, irresponsible talk the U.S. hasn't seen since the 1850s, when the Know Nothing Party tried to close the door on immigrants, and a similar 'warped sense of entitlement' plunged the nation into civil war.”

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As for the anniversary of 9/11, there is a wonderful article on the Good News Now site about a retired NYC firefighter who lost his son in the World Trade Center. It's titled "I don't Understand All of This Hate". If he can feel that way, why can't we?

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Dr. Chopra says in his book, "A principle of physics states 'When an electron vibrates, the universe shakes.' Let us then, you and I, be those electrons that vibrate at the level of consciousness to bring peace, harmony, joy, and love to the world."

May we all reflect upon those attributes tomorrow as we mourn the loss of so many....

And may we conduct ourselves in such a fashion that our children and grandchildren will not find anything to shame them when our safe is opened at the end of our life!

Peace and love,
Marilyn