At first, as I watched the horrific ugliness in Charlottesville, VA, I felt angry. "These stupid thugs!" I exclaimed. "Don't they have anything better to do than join idiotic causes and mindlessly chant expressions of hatred and untold suffering?"
Then I learned that many of them have good jobs and are thereby contributing to society. And I felt sad. My God! How can these beautiful young men, with so many gifts and so much promise in them, turn so ugly? What has gone so wrong in their young lives?
Finally, I realized that these young men are part of a society and culture that lives in the back woods of the American psyche. I paused and looked into those woods. And I felt fear. Fear for these young men. Fear for their victims. Fear for our country.
Deep in that human darkness;, the "Superior Christian White Man" still reigns supreme, as he did when he owned slaves on his plantation. Uneasy, he has to find ways to confirm his White supremacy. To begin with, he refuses to concede defeat in the Civil War, and is waiting for the South to rise again. He certainly does not consider Blacks to be his equal in any way. Very importantly, in the 1930's he found a modern "savior" for the White race in Adolph Hitler's notion of the White Superman with a demonic hatred for Jews and other "inferior" people.
As an offspring of the back woods of the American psyche, the "Superior Christian White Man" is an angry, hateful child in an adult's body. So, for example, he is big enough to wield a heavy club or drive a car into a crowd. Yet, he is small. He stands for nothing real or positive. He confounds reason and lives in dark human, spiritual emptiness. He must be told by spiritual adults, "When you act hatefully, there is no humanity in you."
Often encouraged and "inspired" by badly educated, disoriented preachers, he shows his allegiance to his Christian God by chanting hatred toward people of color, Jews, and all who are different from him. He and his misguiding pastors must be told by spiritually adult Christians, "There is no Christ in your Christianity!"
The "Superior Christian White Man" is a living example of someone who has fallen into evil. Evil is not the opposite of good; it is the absence of good that should be presence in any given society, culture or situation. In the back woods of the American psyche, human development has been arrested. Educational and social evolution is stymied. Where such human emptiness abounds, prejudice and hatred fill the vacuum.
I wonder: do these beautiful young men know that 600,000 lives were lost in the Civil War so that America would not be an inhuman country that enslaved our fellow humans? Do they know that almost 400,000 Americans died defeating Nazism, whose hateful slogan they chant over and over again? Do they know what the Holocaust really did to millions of fellow human beings? Do they know the horribly violent history of the KKK? And if they know, do they care? And if they know and don't care, then what happened to them when they were younger? Certainly, they were deprived of the normal, loving human education and upbringing that they deserved.
These beautiful young people, with galaxies of possibilities for good living withing them, must somehow be stopped in their tracks, taken up and lovingly re-formed into the human persons God intends them to be. We owe this both to them and to ourselves and our country.
The back woods of the American psyche does not exist only in the southern United States. It exists throughout our country, among men and women, and tragically, in our President, who is a hopelessly empty man. He understands nothing and cares about no one and nothing but himself. And he surrounds himself with a whirlwind of aggressive confusion to ensure that he remains empty of understanding and of caring for others.
We live in an especially dangerous and fearful time. America is under attack from without and particularly from within. Some politicians are putting their self-interests aside and are beginning to openly question the President's ability to govern. We must encourage more of them to do so. And we must speak up every time we get the opportunity, and demand a better educated, more just, more united, peaceful and loving country.
Then I learned that many of them have good jobs and are thereby contributing to society. And I felt sad. My God! How can these beautiful young men, with so many gifts and so much promise in them, turn so ugly? What has gone so wrong in their young lives?
Finally, I realized that these young men are part of a society and culture that lives in the back woods of the American psyche. I paused and looked into those woods. And I felt fear. Fear for these young men. Fear for their victims. Fear for our country.
Deep in that human darkness;, the "Superior Christian White Man" still reigns supreme, as he did when he owned slaves on his plantation. Uneasy, he has to find ways to confirm his White supremacy. To begin with, he refuses to concede defeat in the Civil War, and is waiting for the South to rise again. He certainly does not consider Blacks to be his equal in any way. Very importantly, in the 1930's he found a modern "savior" for the White race in Adolph Hitler's notion of the White Superman with a demonic hatred for Jews and other "inferior" people.
As an offspring of the back woods of the American psyche, the "Superior Christian White Man" is an angry, hateful child in an adult's body. So, for example, he is big enough to wield a heavy club or drive a car into a crowd. Yet, he is small. He stands for nothing real or positive. He confounds reason and lives in dark human, spiritual emptiness. He must be told by spiritual adults, "When you act hatefully, there is no humanity in you."
Often encouraged and "inspired" by badly educated, disoriented preachers, he shows his allegiance to his Christian God by chanting hatred toward people of color, Jews, and all who are different from him. He and his misguiding pastors must be told by spiritually adult Christians, "There is no Christ in your Christianity!"
The "Superior Christian White Man" is a living example of someone who has fallen into evil. Evil is not the opposite of good; it is the absence of good that should be presence in any given society, culture or situation. In the back woods of the American psyche, human development has been arrested. Educational and social evolution is stymied. Where such human emptiness abounds, prejudice and hatred fill the vacuum.
I wonder: do these beautiful young men know that 600,000 lives were lost in the Civil War so that America would not be an inhuman country that enslaved our fellow humans? Do they know that almost 400,000 Americans died defeating Nazism, whose hateful slogan they chant over and over again? Do they know what the Holocaust really did to millions of fellow human beings? Do they know the horribly violent history of the KKK? And if they know, do they care? And if they know and don't care, then what happened to them when they were younger? Certainly, they were deprived of the normal, loving human education and upbringing that they deserved.
These beautiful young people, with galaxies of possibilities for good living withing them, must somehow be stopped in their tracks, taken up and lovingly re-formed into the human persons God intends them to be. We owe this both to them and to ourselves and our country.
The back woods of the American psyche does not exist only in the southern United States. It exists throughout our country, among men and women, and tragically, in our President, who is a hopelessly empty man. He understands nothing and cares about no one and nothing but himself. And he surrounds himself with a whirlwind of aggressive confusion to ensure that he remains empty of understanding and of caring for others.
We live in an especially dangerous and fearful time. America is under attack from without and particularly from within. Some politicians are putting their self-interests aside and are beginning to openly question the President's ability to govern. We must encourage more of them to do so. And we must speak up every time we get the opportunity, and demand a better educated, more just, more united, peaceful and loving country.
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