On tea bagging, corporate protesters, and faux outrage

Generally speaking, human beings are freaked out by change. Especially a lot of change, all at once. It's unsettling and scary, and people tend to resist it by either clinging to what is familiar or by fearing and deriding the strange new thing. This is true even when the change is needed, even when it may be essential for survival. We like routine, the familiar, the habitual. We don't like to change and grow unless we have to, because it's often painful. Obama's election signaled a shift in the social and cultural makeup of this country. We all know Obama talked ad infinitum about change during the campaign, but I don't think America totally grasped the degree of the change that was coming. (Yeah yeah, insert your 'see, told you, Obama's a secret Muslim/Nazi/Socialist/Communist' joke here.) I mean that having a black/bi-racial/non-white/non-traditional President of the U.S. is unnerving to many Americans because it strikes at the core of how they have always viewed themselves as a nation: white, Anglo-Saxon, Christian. That's the default setting in their mind. And culturally speaking, that's how it's been for a couple hundred years...but now it's shifting. The browning of America is more than underway: Caucasians will soon fail to be a majority in America and merely be a plurality (i.e. the largest of the minority groups, but under 50% population.) I think it's fair to say not everyone is cool with this happening. Doesn't mean if you're a white guy who made a sign and yelled at a rally recently that you're a racist - but if not, there's a good chance some of your fellow Tea Baggers are. Do the math.

But this isn't about being Racist! with a capital R, it's about people's fear of the unknown (change) rising up as the cultural norm that frames their world view is shifting below their feet. That it's happening at the same time as an economic meltdown turned into a vicious recession, which is coming on the heels of a difficult few years of overextending ourselves in two wars and diminished standing in the world following our misguided response to 9/11, is truly unfortunate, and I think is really the reason for such deep seated emotion being seen. America was a little shaky coming into this year, and now we're seeing the social cracks revealing themselves as more and more strain is being placed on society. I worry, if this level of vitriol and outrage is resulting over changing health care, what about changing immigration policy? Or changing our consumer and manufacturing habits regarding climate change, or our food production? We have so many major challenges facing us, all at once and all of them urgent.

I really worry about our ability as a nation to keep it together, especially since 1) neither side seems capable of listening to the other, 2) politicians and pundits seem more than willing to stoke populist fears and play on people's worst instincts, 3) most of them are funded by powerful interests who are perfectly happy raking in their profits and will fight (and spend) like hell to maintain the status quo, and 4) our media sources are increasingly parochial and insular - we keep feeding ourselves with only what we want to hear, and demonize and make caricatures of the other side, on nearly every issue. (Bush was a fascist? Obama's a Nazi, or a commie? Sotomayor's a racist? Come on. This sort of language doesn't help, it only makes things worse.) And the sad, frustrating thing is that it seems to be working - the corporate interest noise machine is not just obstructing progress by obfuscating the truth, it's poisoning the well...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-e-burns/an-open-memo-to-progressi_b_255918.html

I'm glad I'm not President because I don't have a solution, just the knowledge that nations have crumbled under lesser circumstances and there's no guarantee that the United States of America will continue to exist on this Earth forever. It's up to each generation to take action to keep it thriving and alive, and we've got to work together, as a country, as partners in a joint venture, to make it happen. I wish I saw more willingness to do that out there, both online and in the streets.