I was listening to Coble’s pick for Feel Good Friday as I went on in my feed reader–Digby talking about preemptive raids and police in riot gear, Pesky showing it, Keith Olbermann on the verge of tears, and Josh Marshall talking about how whoever put together the montage behind McCain apparently going out and getting a picture of Walter Reed Middle School, which is in no way connected to McCain, because they apparently didn’t know what the hell Walter Reed is–and I’m going to admit, I started crying.
In part, because what breaks my heart about Christianity, especially the stout Midwestern Protestantism I grew up with, is the commonly held belief–even when it’s not enumerated from the pulpit–that Christians have had something wonderful happen to them, even if they sometimes lose sight of it, that has put them on a better path to someplace wonderful, and you, too, can join them. It is, on the ground, a hopeful stance, even in the face of so much worldly stupidity. The Midwestern Protestant Ethos is to square your shoulders, fix your hat, and keep walking, arm in arm, forward, possibly towards the church basement for the potluck. And hearing that music juxtaposed with those images was just too much for me this early in the morning.
But the other thing that upsets me is just the god damn ignorance that has come to permiate our culture. This idea that we can somehow continue to be America and not embody the things America stands for. We don’t “preemptively” arrest people. We don’t send police into crowds to stomp on children. We don’t round people up onto a bridge to tear gas them. We don’t burst into their houses and shoot them on the word of criminals. We don’t laugh about how silly it is to extend people the rights they’re guaranteed in the Constitution. We don’t mock the very mechanisms that got us where we are today. We don’t use people’s difficulties and tragedies to score our own points.
Except that we do.
On all sides.
I don’t know. I wanted to hear something hopeful this morning, too. In honor of my friend, Coble, I, too, picked a hymn:
—————
And, just to balance that out, a little not-proselytising of my own:
Filed under: America how can I write a holy litany in your silly moo
I never ever liked “I’ll Fly Away” because it always seemed so much like washing your hands of the world and giving up and sitting back and thinking wistfully about how death was a welcome release. It kind of depressed me.
Then when I saw O Brother with Kraus and Welch’s version I kind of changed my mind a little bit. I don’t know what it is about that particular cover, but I think they nail the ‘better side’ of that song–the bit that’s about greeting death happily as a chance to journey onward and not as a thing to be feared. So that cover helped me make my peace with that song.
As for Ann Wilson….
I just love her. There’s something about Ann Wilson that makes me happy. Maybe it’s because she, like Meat Loaf (sorry, Mack), coloured outside the lines of rock. She’s a girl and she’s not tiny and she rocks harder and better than 90% of the other folks in the business.
I am sorry, though, that my feel good song did not make you feel good.
[...] I selected for our reflection and it still moves me each time I sing it. I saw Kat’s post and Betsy’s post and this is what came to mind. No Comments so far Leave a comment RSS feed for comments on [...]
Looks like we’re having a virtual sing. (Do you know that “sing” is not ever used as a noun in New York? I’m a stranger in a strange land up here.)
Oh, Coble, no worries. It made me that sad happy that church always makes me now.
Bridgett, you need to look farther downstate. Yiddish speakers* (oddly enough) do use “sing” as a noun.
*Both Workman’s Circle/YIVO types and Hasidim
Have you seen the video of the police taking turns spraying a protester with chemicals and shoving their bikes into her? I think it would take a week to unpack it.
I don’t think this country has ever had one uniting ethos. Not in practice, anyway. From the very beginning it has been a struggle between what the founding documents* say we are and what we really work out to be. Some of the struggle has been the inevitable products of human nature; some of it has been conscious disagreement over what the U.S.A. is supposed to be. But most often we’ve chosen to paper over our massive failures by telling ourselves we’re better than that (while we count our money). If there’s anything we’re better at than anyone else in the world, it has to be patting ourselves on the back for how great we are.
*Said founding documents– especially the Constitution– weren’t handed down from heaven on stone tablets. They were the product of great disagreement and hard-fought compromise. The real genius of the Constitution is that you’d be hard pressed to understand why some of the things were designed the way they were unless you knew the full historical context. In other words, it is as brilliant a document for what it hides as for what it lays out.
Samantha, I can’t bear to watch that stuff. It just makes me so tight in the chest.
CS, yea, point taken.
Aunt B: I know how you feel, but I have to watch it out of a sense of horror.. sort of the “face the truth” thing for myself.
Awesome video…thats a tough song, and she delivers it.
Interesting, C.S., that we have similar takes on the Constitution…I have long maintained that it is a wonderfully flawed document, and begs to be constantly updated to reflect the times in which we live.
this is the video to which Samantha was referring, unless there are multiples
http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/myfox/MyFox/pages/sidebar_video.jsp?contentId=7364281&version=1&locale=EN-US
it is awful. Aunt B it would make you tight in the chest, I think. But in case anyone else wants to watch it.
Though awful, it’s not as uncommon as one might think. when I was a street medic in Miami for the NAFTA protests, I saw stuff like this, although the cops really went beyond everything I could expect when they pepper-sprayed all over the inside of the volunteer-run clinic (where the already-injured had been taken). sort of a scorched-earth attitude to protesters.
On most subjects, the original drafters of the Constitution agreed with you. They believed that human knowledge was constantly being “perfected” and with it, that the Constitution should be amended when a overwhelming consensus of those few people actually enfranchised should so desire it. (Remember, the big swell of universal white male suffrage lay thirty or forty years in the future. In 1789, about 6% of the nation’s residents could vote for the highest offices and on matters of national importance. You can guess the demographic.) If they didn’t think that the Constitution should be changed, they would not have included an amendatory process. They wanted gentle, not radical change, so they made it a fairly cumbersome process that moved deliberately and with plenty of time for a national discussion — at a pace suitable to serious governance which now appears quaint.
However, on a subject like slavery, the Founders consented to a document that placed slavery outside of the amendatory possibilities. So, some things were more foundational than others.
I was actually talking to Mack about this the other day, how weird it is that the two biggest pieces of news out of Minnesota got no coverate. How is it not news that Ron Paul’s drawing as big or bigger crowds than the RNC? How is it not news that there are protests and scary police response to them?
I keep thinking of folks who remember seeing young people getting hit with fire hoses on the news and how that made them unable to deny that there was something wrong with segregation (as opposed to it just being a weird regional custom) and I can’t help but wonder if the effectiveness of that isn’t want keeps those images off our nightly news now.
What, you mean the “liberal media” wouldn’t want that?
/snark