I didn't wake up this morning expecting anything profound or even mildly good. As usual, I was presently surprised, this time by one of the English professors at East Central (my university). Below you'll find his letter, which was dispatched to us via campus email. (I did get his permission to repost. Really. :D)
Honestly, this is so close to my own views on the subject it's almost scary. Anyway—here it is. (Long, but worth the read, promise.)
"I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now ... I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people's dream died there. It was a beautiful dream ... the nation's hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead."
--- Black Elk, Black Elk Speaks
Yesterday a white supremacist, anti-Semitic, holocaust-denying terrorist broke into the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. and opened fire with a rifle killing a security officer before being shot himself. This man had long published his hateful views on a website, blog before he took action. FBI and Homeland Security officials have been warning that terrorism by American citizens will likely rise due to economic hard times, the election of President Obama and the perceived liberal socialism in America.
Interestingly, the same day just before the shooting occurred at the Museum, Rush Limbaugh was pontificating on his radio show that Obama (he never refers to him as President Obama) "like God" doesn't have a birth certificate" since he (Limbaugh) has never seen it. Limbaugh and others continuously fan the flames of disrespect for our elected President and for the political process that is currently the choice of the majority in this country.
My purpose is not to tell you what political party to belong to or how to vote (in case you are wondering I am Independent and have voted for both Democratic and Republican candidates in many elections at all levels of government in my lifetime. On some issues I am rather liberal, on some I am rather conservative -- though I think these terms have lost their original meaning).
My purpose is to tell you that the hatred, the willful denial of facts, the undermining of a democratic process, the inflammatory rhetoric, the refusal to acknowledge the rights of American citizens who have properly been in this country for generations or who have been accepted via the immigration process, the blind ethnocentricism -- all this leads only to chaos and threatens the peaceful existence of us all.
My purpose is to tell you that the reason the course called "Ethnic Literature" exists in the curriculum of ECU is to help us all appreciate the diversity of our rich American society and to help us understand the many things we all have in common, and to help us all grow more tolerant and respectful of differences. The reason people do not respect others is because they do not respect themselves, do not respect life and they have a deep insecurity that only hatred makes possible for them to temporarily stomach, until one day, some act out in violent ways. It is a fact of human existence, whether in individual relationships or in social groups or political factions, any insecure person must bring someone else down in order to prop up his/her own lack of inner peace. In other words, much of the nonsense we hear splattered across the airwaves, television and internet is simply the projections of one's misguided fear and failure onto an audience he/she hopes will gulp down his/her unsupported and simplistic reasoning like a stupid fish swallowing a baited hook. If I am blind, incompetent, misinformed and/or hateful, I must project those insecurities onto you, so then there will be others like me -- a fellowship of the insecure. Like a junior high clique where character assassination is practiced by stupid cowards -- sometimes understandable for twelve-year olds, not so for adults.
My purpose is to tell you that in a democracy we have the right to speak, hopefully with civility and with honest engagement of fact and sources, and we also have the right to vote. Beyond this we have the responsibility to live with and respect opinions and views and people that we may not initially like or always agree with. If we fail in this responsibility, then we will soon no longer have the rights we all enjoy.
Obviously all people who are in opposition to President Obama's political policies are not terrorists nor are they wrong to oppose President Obama. But if we devalue honest dialogue, if we resort to name-calling and personal attack, then we are no better than our opponent, and logically, have no basis to make our case. The democracy has only one option, then, but to degenerate into chaos, where only force and violence can restore order. For me, in spite of inconveniences of our system, I prefer dialogue and tolerance to force, for in force, I may overthrow you, but someone else, eventually will overthrow me. What is the point of this endless cycle, then, of revenge? Wouldn't we then be just like the Muslim terrorists that all of us fear and that right-wing folks in America continuously point to as barbarian and evil?
The passage I quoted above is from a Sioux named Black Elk who was in the Battle of Little Bighorn and at the Wounded Knee Massacre later in his life. His recollection of the slaughter should remind us all that as serious and as heinous as terrorism from overseas is, our own home-grown terrorism is even worse. It is one thing for our overseas fanatics to terrorize us, it is far more serious and immoral for us, in the name of democracy, to terrorize our own citizens.
If you think I am just overstating things as a liberal professor, I would simply ask you to consider the family of the slain security guard from yesterday's hateful attack. Put yourself in the living room of his family. How does it feel? What did this man and/or his family do to deserve this other than have the wrong skin color? I ask you to consider the thousands upon thousands of people who survived prison camps and witnessed the gas ovens of the holocaust. What did they do wrong besides have the wrong religion?
I ask us all to renew our commitment to not live by stereotype, to go beyond the surface of simplistic name-calling, to learn to judge people by their acts, not their ethnic heritage or religious persuasion or any other factor you may disagree with.
As a citizen, I fear the more we refuse to read and learn of our past, the more confused and impotent we become in the present and the more doubtful a successful future becomes. After all, this is America, you have the right to be dumb. But what happens if enough of us practice that right? We will lose that very right. As a professor, I ask you to read, read, read. Read Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl. Read the books on the Bibliography of Primary Sources listed on your Blackboard. I understand that many of the American, neo-Nazi type terrorists are not dumb (a common misconception). Often they are highly educated, intelligent, but hateful people. Given this, the good citizens also ought to be educated, well-read people. That includes you, hopefully. Oh, and by the way, the reading will not only give you perspective by which to make decisions, it will enrich your life. By enriching I mean, you will never again be bored, ignorant, lacking for stimulus or confused about that which is beautiful and necessary. In life, we don't always know what to do, but we can always know what not to do. That is an absolute worth knowing and a virtue worth practicing.
Peace!
Kenneth Hada PhD
Associate Professor
English & Languages
East Central University
khada@ecok.edu
5 hours ago
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