Getting Over It... Together

Last year our tiny dictator posted a post about posts. Unpublished G:TB posts. Well, this one has sat in the hopper for quite a long while. It never really come together, it sounds thoroughly preachy, and it wasn't finished. But with a semi-local milestone in the news this morning -- which will undoubtedly elicit some of the same shopworn outcries from traditionalists, rednecks, and racists -- well, here we go...

Studying people is interesting.

I was a Sociology major who also took a number of Psychology courses. I earned full Psych credit by completing the requisite guinea pig assignments for upperclassmen's Psychology dissertations... including double-dating with Dave and some unlucky co-eds, then writing about whether we remained "date-anxious" after the encounters.  It was an ordeal, but I got through William and Mary by learning about humans, our crazy cultures, and the ridiculous stuff we say and do. Despite my marks, I learned a lot.

People love to root for a cause.

A football team.
A political party.
A god, and and a very particular strain of dogmatic do's and don'ts that go with that god.
A cure for cancer.

You can levy your own opinion on whether time, money, and emotional energy being poured into each of those four things in equal volumes is a societal ill or just the way we homo sapiens are.  But we root for a million different things out there, and we root hard.

We cheer.  We congregate.  We celebrate.

We bemoan. We bitch. We abandon, only to identify with another "home team" and start anew.  Not very often, but it can happen. (Rob, TR.)

Such identification gives us joy and pride.  Go ahead, posit the argument that it "shouldn't" because groupthink is potentially dangerous and frequently mindless.  Share a post about that on Facebook, counting the hypocritical Likes.  

Doesn't matter, this instinct has pervaded our world from the time we donned cave skins to tunics to knickers to zubaz pants (cave skins to zubaz is not an evolutionary marathon, mind you) and beyond.  That's just how we are. We sign on with a group of like-minded nitwits like ourselves, rally and cry for the good guys, boo and beat on the bad guys, and talk about it afterwards for the rest of our silly, little lives.

Enter Southern pride and the joy of being identified as a rebel.

You could study US history between the Reconstruction period through the modern era and delve into the phenomenon of Southern humiliation-turned-hubris as a coping mechanism.  (I'm sure I was supposed to study that at some point in my illustrious undergrad career.)  Or you could just watch "The Dukes of Hazzard," an Ole Miss football game, or Deliverance in a bar in the Bible Belt.  (Ever think you'd hear that Ned Beatty got what he deserved?)  Tradition, honor, glory, and the beating back of oppressive aggressors is part of the charade of revision history over the last hundred-fifty, but no truths can be heard over the hoots and howls of revelry in certain parts of the country, not to mention the Dixie horn from a '69 Dodge Charger with stars and bars on the roof.

Not all association with the Confederacy is an approval of human bondage and enslavement.  In fact, a hell of a lot of has nothing to do with that.  It's just belonging.  Banding together with fellow humans to navigate our lives as part of a team.  Our team.  With symbols like sweet tea and cornbread, trucks and tractors, Lee and Jackson. Ignoring images, memories, and any true ties to the hatred and evil and oppression of our fellow humans from days gone by.  We aren't anything about that horrible stuff; we just want to break bread, love the Lord, and get down the dusty road that is Life with folks who see shit like we see shit.

There can be energy and positivity in such affiliations and groupings. The endearing image of the underdog... the humble survivor... the rebel... this draws in most humans.  Hell, Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker were rebels! (So is Luke Skyywalker.)  Massimino to Tarkanian, Stirling Bridge to Rorke's Drift. It's natural, and people can't help but want to be a part of it.  Don't assign that horrible history to us because we embrace and honor the best in those rebellious confederate symbols while living the best lives we can, being the best we know how to be to our fellow humans in this century.

Yeah, I do get it.

The thing is, right now, that doesn't really matter.

You see, good people, you and I do not get to decide what logical associations exist between our identified groups, teams, leaders, or heroes and some very bad things.  And once those associations become ubiquitous, I'm sorry, but we're screwed.

You can be a huge fan of someone or something for a very long time -- all your life -- and then one day it's impossible to appropriately acknowledge rooting for them.  This happens seemingly all the time. 

• You loved Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids?  You're like school on Thanksgiving... no class, turkey. Love it! And he was commencement speaker at my college graduation! Tough shit. He's a rapist. (A free one now.)
  
• You love the Washington pro football team through and through and through and through (despite common sense and your utter disdain for the owner)? Yeah, about that... turns out that team name is pretty friggin' racist. Caricature out front shoulda told you. Oh, and Chris Rock in 1991. (NSFW)
• You were wondering whether your alma mater's best football player ever (by a substantial margin) will get in the NFL Hall of Fame? Sorry, he's also a rapist. And in prison. For a long time.
• You loved Mad Max and Lethal Weapon? Well, Mel's a huge bigot.
• You look like Kevin Spacey, according to too many people you meet? Bummer, Whitney. You look like a sexual assaulter.

Dammit, man! How is any of that fair? I had nothing to do with that crap.

What if you grew up of meager means in the Deep South, where one of the things that brought you rare joy was a sense of pride in a community that has as its emblem a Confederate flag and extols virtues like bravery and courage and heroism from names such as Lee, Jackson, Stuart, and Davis? And you're even named after one of them? And you have no hate for any race, you just want to get along and keep feeling that pride?  You just want the feeling of belonging to a like-minded congregation of good people with family values and decency, a feeling that takes you back to those glorious days of yore?

I'm sorry. Doesn't matter at all. Today is Wednesday, and as Ronnie told you, Tuesday's gone with the wind. All those days are gone.

Today another nail was hammered into this particular coffin. The statue of one Robert Edward Lee was removed from its perch on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia. You know, there are symbols everywhere, good and bad, and the elimination of this increasingly electric lightning rod of a symbol of the Confederacy is in itself as powerful a symbol of change as I can conjure from my vantage point here in the Commonwealth. Lordy, I would never have believed it if you'd bet me even 10 years ago -- with a Black President in office at the time. No, sir. No, ma'am. No how no way they'll let that happen on that street in that town.

Here we are. Nobody said or sang it much better than Sam Cooke: 

It's been a long / A long time coming / But I know a change gonna come / Oh, yes it will

And with such change, it's not all that rosy when it happens, where it happens. Relief and a renewed sense of optimism that things can get better, yes, for sure. But it's not rosy. For both sides of the coin, there's just reflection on the wretched things that have gone on. For one side in particular, there's also the stark absence of the point of personal pride on which you've hung a whole lot for a very long time.

And that doesn't feel too good. And it's not any of their faults that things have changed. It's not fair, in a lot of ways.

Doesn't matter. Tuesday's Gone and it's Wednesday morning.

Many bemoan "cancel culture" with a broad brush, citing micro-detail-paintbrush lines as instances of fallibility therein; it's true that with FB as mighty as the AK these days, occasionally scenarios exist where loud axe-grinders and bitter bastards manipulate public thinking maliciously and erroneously. But by and large, we'd all rather live in a world where people are truly held accountable for dirty deeds like never before.

Of course, there's heavy-handed, condescending advice about not attaching yourself so permanently to any one person or group or team or cause or band (Dave, with permanent ink) or what have you. Because whether you like it or not, a change is gonna come. Yeah, well, that's easier said than done.

But as you see people these days aligning themselves so completely with one political faction or another that they lower themselves to spitting gobs of venom and vitriol all over their own neighbors very publicly for the crime of carrying a differentiated outlook . . . well, I gotta believe that there may come a day that there will be bales of regret stacked up out back on those folks' lower forty. Anyway, I'll keep studying people as I do, and they'll keep doing anything except making that habit boring.

In the meantime, I don't need to bash people over the head with "Get Over It" like the reconstituted Eagles did in 1994 via that clownish single. Bleh. If you really want us all to just get along, like Mr. King (not Dr. King) said, then we have to encourage us all to get over it together. Collectively. Moving to a new era of peace. And cornbread. Sweet tea and unsweet tea. And Ronnie Van Zant. And Neil Young.

And thoughtful, thought-provoking monologues like this one. And the song that follows it.  Enjoy.