The Secret

So many people, even some of my relatives, are talking smack these days about finally being fed up... not with the riots or crime in the streets, or the ineptitude of local governments to deal with these things... but with conservatives... or any people like me who support our president. They blame this one man for all of the civil unrest, the breakdowns in the urban areas, especially Democratically run major cities, and even the deaths from a global pandemic. They blame us too for supporting him. And they speak as if this new, righteous intolerance of the president and his ilk is absolutely reasonable.

They watch the major networks and trust that they are sifting reliable information, and well, according to them it's time to ratchet up the condemnation and persecution of all Republicans and their constituency. They speak with the solemn, self-assured haughtiness of Puritans about to round up the witches. “It's too bad about them... those who disagree with us, those who have totally different sources of information; life's wastrels who have taken the wrong path, who have somehow come to such wrong conclusions, and now endanger our carefully constructed paradigm.”

The “Left” reacts to the latest actions taken by the president as the last straw, even though in reality he drew that short straw the day he was elected, when President Obama and VP Biden went to work immediately to totally discredit him, in the process misusing their powers and the once impeccable lever of the FBI... and others. Thus three and half years of baseless accusations which they cleverly seeded, and the subsequent fruitless investigations, have created a pervasive distrust and suspicion... Mere suspicions then reinforced by the Media who whipped up every accusation, usually derived from undisclosed sources, and then spoon fed hungry, impressionable intellects. And they have shaped many false conclusions, (perception is reality) which have sent these high-minded reformers marching, demonstrating, some rioting, some even disowning their own relatives.

It is impossible, to my greatest frustration, to change the mind of a person against their will... regardless of what facts may exist, so I will give the conservative arguments a rest. Here is another angle which I wish my self-satisfied relatives would consider. What is missing from our country, and what is impossible to form unity without, is... forgiveness. The kind that is the product of grace... First embodied by God's grace, defined by many Christians as “unmerited favor.” Sadly, tragically, America has lost its use of forgiveness, and a close relative, Forgetting.

The old, oft-used quip in our American mindset used to be “Forgive – and forget.”

When Iron Tail, Blue Horse, Little Bull, Red Shirt, Little Chief and Flies Above rode with Buffalo Bill in The Wild West Show in London, they were forgiving and forgetting... more or less. Each had his own blend of these precious values. When Civil War veterans from both sides met and broke bread together after that terrible war, they were forgiving and forgetting. The country as a whole could not have healed and prospered without these things.

When the Japanese people went to work and built an enviable new economy after the horrors they suffered at the end of WWII... under American Democracy, they were forgiving and forgetting.

When Jack Roosevelt Robinson led his race into professional baseball, they did not take a knee... they swung away. They knew better than anyone about apartheid... but they still embraced the opportunity to change the face- and the future of America. And they did. White kids like me were soon collecting baseball cards with their faces on them... and they were heroes in our impressionable eyes. And it was because they entered the game with dignity, and forgiving and forgetting, changed history and helped correct injustice in our country. Soon every sport had its own Jackie Robinson, and America was never the same. When Sammy Davis Jr. ran with the “Rat Pack,” he did the same for the American entertainment industry. And on and on it went.

What was their secret?

Racism and injustice could never be totally stamped out, but in my America, and I have known a wonderful cross-section of Americans from all walks of life, there has never been any discernible organized racism, and yet an overwhelming organized, institutional war against it. I just spent the majority of my adult life in a racially “blended” southern town, and the most discussion of race and its inevitable stepchild, racism, was when talking to my black friends, not my white ones. As best as I can tell, the whites have been “over it” for some time. But the blacks seemed to hold on to the old hurts and suspicions. Some could forgive, but some could not. And some quite transparently, would never forgive or forget. Distrust and cynicism shaped their very identities. And in a very inadvertent process of natural selection, the hopeful, ambitious, forgiving blacks moved up and out... and the others stayed in town and languished and had kids. Kids who also did not forgive or forget.

So today we have many groups of distinct blacks... but two main ones, those who forgave and prospered, and those who held a grudge and lived out their self-fulfilling prophesies. The latter group is louder, angrier, and more frustrated than ever, after generations of government assistance, and still they struggle in poverty and hopelessness. Their communities are tortured with drug addiction, fatherlessness, and illiteracy, and they rightfully no longer believe anything politicians say. Today you might say that many are now biting the hand that has fed them. But what is killing them and future generations are the ideas that they have fed their children.

And after years, decades of internal and external struggles, discontented blacks now lead the way to fight, resist, and even disband the police- who are the last protection they have in their neighborhoods, many of which look more like war zones. Insanity and contrarianism seems to have followed desperation.

This must be true, because bizarrely, in the midst of the supposed racial divide in this country, there is a growing contingent of conservative blacks who support President Trump; Lovable black spokesmen and spokeswomen who are successful and optimistic and declare that this is not your mother's America, once embroiled in racism. They are the children of those who forgave and forgot.

 Forgiveness is not just the nice words of Jesus, it is a legacy, and it is a life source. People with it can move on, live out their full potential. It is a powerful gift to be able to put the hurts of the past behind. And it cannot be done without forgiveness. God's Grace, and personal grace.

As the teachings of Jesus wane in influence, and the Media relishes in every questionable word or act by any Republican, and people begin to fashion their own moral absolutes without a Biblical foundation, forgiveness has been dispensed with. That is because forgiveness is not a natural response. Revenge and eternal racial and cultural conflict are the norm, illustrated well in the Middle East, or Africa, or anywhere where the teachings of Jesus never took root. And now Leftist Americans are joining the intolerance of the Palestinians... or the Iranians, or the Jews in Israel, or the warring primitive tribes of the world from one end to the other.

In this new “woke” era of America, Iron Tail should arise from his scaffold and apologize for forgiving, or forgetting, or whatever he and his other Sioux chieftains did, and take up his tomahawk and rage for social justice. President Grant should also go back and hang Robert E. Lee... and all the so-called Confederate traitors. Jackie Robinson should refuse to play baseball until all baseball-loving white Americans get down on their knees and beg absolution. Sammy Davis Jr. should give Dean Martin a poke in the eye.

Well, now they don't have to. A generation who never experienced any of the wrongs or systems which persecuted people in the past have taken up the tomahawk for them, and are whacking back at a society that has only provided them the most open, prosperous society on earth; A monumentally delayed reaction towards the sins of our country, committed by our great-great grandparents, as if somehow this registers in our collective American conscience as changing anything. "Take that! Robert E. Lee. Take THAT! George Washington... Take that, anybody cast in bronze. Whatever you did, you lived back then and you were probably guilty of something... AND WE DON'T FORGIVE YOU!"

Oh, it was Jesus who taught us to pray... “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us...” He also warned, that those who cannot, will not forgive... will get the same from God.

The careful warnings and classic, grace-giving words of Jesus have been abandoned like an old phone book, and the Ten Commandments are considered silly obstacles. Taking the Lord's Name in vain, adultery, and dishonoring parents are just natural expressions of life. And today's ambitious career climbers pride themselves with their habits of covetousness and false witness. Our National politics are rife with all of these sins.

Without Biblical ethics and morals, we have evolved quickly into a society of ruthless, insolent, competitive liars and usurpers.

But the most evident complication for this generation is, since they no longer trust in God, the God who “in the end” judges and rewards all souls whatever their due- this generation must exact ultimate justice themselves. In this life. In this country. And they do not have any concepts of forgiveness or mercy. Christians know this as “Grace.”And in this new Leftist system, grace is as foreign as free speech, and there is no crime or injustice to be left unanswered.

The mobs terrorizing our cities are worse than the worst of the strictest Puritans, who were eventually outnumbered and rightfully neutralized. While their violent destructive actions are excused, even justified, other people are vilified and persecuted now for their thoughts. This is identical to the social atmosphere which produced our Civil War, and the bloody, godless French Revolution.

Public kneeling at games, reparations, rioting and looting, disowning your kinfolks- will not fix this country. Certainly hatred and intolerance, practiced by any group or individual towards any others, is actually everything the “Left,” and most Americans, once stood against. The insults, the accusations, and broad stereotyping became un-American several generations ago. Sadly, this new generation of protesters did not read about that in the history books. And it is too late to explain the “secret,” and encourage them to read all about it. And if they did, they would fail to find the untold truth in books, since they were long since gladly disposed of, and I bought them years ago at the public library. We have to trust Twitter and Facebook and You Tube to protect and convey important truths to our discontented youth. 

I'm afraid the "secret" will remain just that.