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White Christian Male: “I Feel Oppressed!”
Recently I was talking to a friend of mine. He is a 50-ish Caucasian male, Christian, employed, and heterosexual/married. He informed me that he feels oppressed. My jaw dropped in amazement. After a moment of silence on my part, while I processed this, he went on to tell me WHY: he thinks that he and his kind are now persecuted and ridiculed by the media, that everyone else has governmental protections for their rights-he cited those protecting minorities and equal rights for women, and that Christians are daily being harassed. Now, mind you, this is in a smallish town in the mostly white white white Appalachian foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains where there is nothing BUT Christians around! I can hit four churches with a rock from my apartment…and those are just the ones from the MAJOR denominations. This place is still tribal and patriarchal. I could not stay quiet in the face of this errant nonsense. I understand that if you watch a steady diet of right-wing news, you will get fed this erroneous view. I find it on Fox and Breitbart and Infowars, sites that I visit regularly. I do so in order to find out just what people like my friend are viewing. (Trust me, this is not something I enjoy.) I challenged him to give me some concrete examples of HOW he was oppressed: Had he ever been arrested for “driving while white” or had the local police view him with suspicion b/c of his skin color? Had he or his ancestors ever been forced to leave a region or country b/c of their race or religion? Had he ever been denied a job or promotion b/c of his gender or sexual orientation? Had he ever been denied the right to vote b/c of his race, religion, gender or sexual orientation? Had he ever been denied the right to run for office b/c of his religion? Had he ever threatened with death b/c of his race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation? He was quite taken aback by these questions. He wanted to know why I was asking them. I told him that unless he could answer YES to any one of these questions, he had no right to say he was oppressed, that oppression had not to do with a “feeling” or “discomfort” but with real consequences in the world and to THINK ABOUT THAT the next time he heard a white Christian man talking about his oppressed status. I told him about my relatives who never made it out of the German death camps b/c they were the wrong religion (Jews). Then I told him about friends who were fired from jobs for being queer. Women are STILL paid only 79 percent of men’s hourly wages. And 7 states currently have laws even now prohibiting atheists from running for public office. So…HE wants to talk about feeling oppressed??? Smh. And the internet trolls all whine about liberals being crybabies!
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I Blame Religion
With increasing evidence that many individuals are either unable or unwilling to employ the critical reasoning skills necessary to discern between what is factual and what is not and thereby conflating fake and actual news, I’ve been considering the possible reasons for this alarming lack of judicial faculties. There is much I COULD say on the topic, as in a former life I have taught Formal Logic and Critical Reasoning courses. But over the course of many years, after teaching students, listening to other profs talk about their students, reading, and observing patrons at the libraries where I’ve worked, I place the blame for this squarely on the back of relgion, particularly the American brand of Prostestant Christianity. It places BELIEF, a uniquely personal and private belief that you have been saved (which of course cannot be objectively verified), above anything else. As long as you testify positively to this, everything (and I do mean everything) else falls by the wayside. Some might point to the Bible, saying that it is factual. That merely illustrates my point and highlights the believer’s maleable relationship with reality. At any given time, no two sects of Christians will likely believe the same set of facts from the Bible; in fact, one might be hard-pressed to find two individual Christians who each believe the same set of facts from the Bible. (N.B.-I’m using the term “facts” here ironically. I highly doubt that most anything found in the so-called New Testament has any basis in history and is largely myth. The Tanakh MIGHT record some events that happened in ancient times (but only a few) but it is also mostly mythological.) But Christians cherry-pick. What displeases them, for whatever reason, they discard. REMEMBER THIS-IT’S IMPORTANT! God says keep kosher, observe the sabbath, and, later on, the more incendiary whatsoever you do to the least of these, you did for me. Let’s not do any of this, too inconvenient, not modern, been superseded, etc. etc. It’s not what we believe. ….It’s not what we believe. That’s it in a nutshell. If your view of reality is that what is true is determined by what you FEEL and what you BELIEVE, rather than by factual evidence, then of course you will fall for fake news. You will believe preposterous claims like the ones made about Hillary Clinton being involved in child sex scandals or the ones claiming that Sandy Hook was a hoax. You will believe, despite actual hard evidence that shows otherwise, that Donald Trump won the popular vote. You will believe that that China or some guy in a basement somewhere, not the Russians, hacked the DNC, despsite what U.S. intelligence agencies have to say.
What can be done? In a perfect world, stop indoctrinating children with pernicious religious doctrines. Should they wish to become relgious as adults, fine. That would be a decision made with a more informed consent. START TEACHING CRITICAL REASONING SKILLS AT AN EARLY AGE! FORMAL AND INFORMAL LOGIC COURSES AS REQUIRED COURSES IN HIGH SCHOOL (IF NOT BEFORE)! Have parents expose children and teens to actual (as opposed to fake and “faux”) news media-show them the diiference between real researched articles by journalists with credentials and false, often conspiratorial, news articles or shows that are often little more than alarmist headlines by persons who have little to no trustworthiness. I am not a parent (nor do I play one on TV). But I am a human being and a citizen so interested in the continuation of the species, one, and of the fate of our country, two. So, teaching kids to reason is not optional. IT IS VITAL.
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Trump’s Continuing Attack On the First Amendment
With his tweet stating that those burning the American flag should have their citizenship revoked and/or face a year’s imprisonment, Trump again went to war against the First Amendment. Let’s have a look at it, just in case anyone needs a reminder:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the government for redress of their grievances.
I have pondered the question of whether or not he actually knows what it says. If yes, then he is more machiavellian than I care to contemplate and is very deliberately setting about challenging it. If no, which is what I suspect, then he needs a refresher course in basic American civics. Despite what he may think, even the POTUS is not above the law. He is reportedly considering a registry for Muslims and during his campaign ran on the promise to ban all Muslims from entering the country; he has threatened repeatedly to open up libel laws, sue various news media, thrown journalists out of his rallies, ridiculed a disabled jounalist, and made insulting remarks about news media that published articles he found less than flattering. Since the election, he has held few press conferences, abandoned having a press corps, and instead communicates by tweets. He has shown his usual hostility to coverage that does not cater to his ego (CNN-how dare they report factually!) and then went on further to show his contempt for the FA with his flag burning tweet.
This is all part and parcel of a disturbing pattern. Trump does NOT LIKE anyone having the power to disagree with him or show him in any light that is less than wonderful. That would be fine, were he just a businessman. But he will be POTUS. He lashes out immediately via twitter to vent his ire. Will he be able to translate his consuming ego and its march upon the First Amendment into real action? Will the the press (and even perhaps blogs like this one) lose their voice to dissent? Much depends upon his Supreme Court appointee(s). He doesn’t have the power as POTUS that he might wish; there ARE checks and balances. Yes, he does wield executive order, but that only carries for certain things. The next four years will be interesting. (I’m reminded of the Chinese curse-“may you live in intersting times!”
