Good Morning.
Like millions of other people, I watched the terrible events that took place at Charlottesville, Virginia over the past two days. Unfortunately I wasn't surprised by any of it.
I grew up at a time and in a place where 99% of the world's population wasn't allowed to move into the "best" neighborhoods, where there were quotas for Catholics and Jews in the private schools, and where the country clubs were restricted to the point that Jesus Christ would not be eligible for membership. I mean, a bronze-skinned carpenter from the Middle East really wasn't the right sort to have in the club dining room, but see you in church on Sunday.
I lived in the deep south during the civil rights movement when George Wallace was governor and the Ku Klux Klan was running around in their sheets, lynching people from the nearest tree and sending a clear message of warning to sympathizers by lighting huge crosses on their lawns. This was their version of Christianity, and they're still at it. Of course
their cousins across the pond, the Nazis, had also been determined to get rid of God's apparent creative mistakes and I have seen the vestiges of what they did; I have seen the ashes inside the cremation ovens at Dachau.
I have friends who worried about their last name being something other than Anglo-Saxon and suffered a fair number of snubs because the name ended in a vowel. I had a couple of black friends during my time in the south who had to live in an old slave shack, despite the fact that they were highly educated, one of them a graduate of West Point and a flight instructor - not that it should happen to anybody. I had guests one time in my home who told me in language I cannot repeat here that they would not eat the toast I served them for breakfast because they had watched me purchase the bread from a black clerk at a convenience store.
I know people who have been ostracized by family, friends, employers, the government, and the churches because they're gay. I attended a church meeting once that was deliberately organized by the clergy as an anti-gay forum. I heard a well-dressed old lady declare, while holding a cocktail and a cheese straw, how dreadful it was that a black family was living in the White House. I heard a successful businessman grumble that the churches should abandon their ministries to the Native Americans living in poverty on the reservations because they're not worth it. I know people who absolutely believed and still believe that Barack Obama was a terrorist out to destroy the United States and some of them had military-style weapons lined up in the closet in case a civil war broke out. I once heard someone say without a bit of hesitation that Treyvon Martin deserved to be shot because, you know, all those people do is break into other people's apartments and steal their stuff, and something needs to be done about it. I know someone who is convinced that the guy who shot Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is a Mexican even though his name is Jared Lee Loughner.
And in the past couple of years I have heard a man who is now in a position of supreme power encourage angry, retaliatory
behavior, call anyone who gets in his way childish, degrading names more often used by a schoolyard bully, and make his
views known about women with foul-mouthed commentary. He has surrounded himself with extremist, nationalistic staff people because he obviously feels comfortable around them. He is the idol of David Duke, head of the Klansmen who marched with their torches and their hate in Charlottesville. Why do so many people refuse to see the disgracefulness in all of this? You tell me because I don't get it. I have always thought diversity is rather wonderful, sort of like an unending stroll through an art gallery.
Best regards,
Elisabeth
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