The Ice Flow

'Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.
Better it is to be of an humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide the spoil with the proud.'

Proverbs 16: 18-19

'We didn't start the fire, it was always burning, since the worlds been turning...'

Billy Joel - 'We Didn't Start the Fire'

'Funny how it's usually the bigots that make the public 'bigot' accusation first, and generally, as in this case, is a guy making the claim with zero factual backing.'

Curt Schilling on Facebook, responding to being called a 'Bigot' by Guru

Gee, Curt...you came to Boston, an overwhelmingly progressive place and set yourself up as Advocate Number One for the political goals of the Christian Right, championed George W. Bush, advocated anti-immigration policy, advocated anti-gay policy, advocated policies that would diminish the rights of single women...alienated Immigrant teammates (imagine being Manny, a New Yorker and a Dominican from a neighborhood with more Dominicans than there are PEOPLE in Boston, where 200,000 illegals live in FEAR every day of people JUST LIKE CURT...and be listening to Curt rap on the City and anti-immigration themes...) and you have continued to be a tireless blowhard for a GOP that received;

Curt Schilling's Official Blog

5% of the Black Vote

(influenced by a Mulatto candidate to some degree, but the GOP received only 11% in '04 and 9% in '00, despite successive African-American Secretary's of State)

43% of the Female Vote

(despite the Female Democrat losing and the presence of a Female GOP candidate for VP)

31% of the Hispanic Vote

(despite the Hispanics Democratic choice by a 2/1 margin in the primary losing)

21% of the Jewish Vote

(despite unprecedented outreach by Christian Right organizations seeking influence in Israel)

35% of the Asian Vote

Clearly, Guru is not the only one who sees bigotry in Mr. Schilling, his brethren and his party.

Three days ago, I had posted a note on a Facebook photo of our old friend, Morrissey, of his wife, Mrs. Mo, wearing a Schilling t-shirt. At the time, I didn't realize that the photo was Mrs. Mo (not really visible, just the shirt) and hadn't stopped to consider the propriety of politicizing the photo.

On the one hand, Curt is a Baseball Player, a dynamic winner who has been part of the only two championships Boston has known in 90 years - a natural choice for honor to a Red Sox fan...and having such a person sleeping in my home and another one as my right hand colleague here on VagabondGuru.com - I certainly have no issues with Red Sox fans and their passion for their team.

On the OTHER hand, as mentioned above...Curt, like the despicable Charlton Heston, before him (may there be a Hell, simply so that his flesh can burn for longandlong...), has long ago shaken off the role of being just a 'ballplayer'. There has been no more forceful advocate for the Right in the public sphere than Schilling, certainly not in the solid blue North East, where it is possible to go YEARS without encountering someone who shares his belief system. At every turn, on every topic, in the game and in society, he has been OUT FRONT, happy to identify his Baseball celebrity with Right-Wing, Evangelical politics.

It's a dilemma, an ethical one. Curt is a bad guy who has done a great deal of harm and will continue to do so as long as he draws breath, he has PROVEN who he is, countless times and has earned the rage and condemnation of every American - no less than others of his ilk.

But...Facebook is not a forum for argument, it is a place for friends and Mo has been the classiest of men in my experience, we disagree on much, but honorably, and I have never detected the types of venomous hatred that Schilling spews from Mo. In this case, the benefit-of-doubt should have gone towards my friend and I should have restrained from commentary. There have to be safe spaces where people can live their lives and hold to their preferences without being trampled upon...what Manny and Pedro might have felt about their workplace prior to Curt.

Took me two days of teeth-gnashing contemplation to understand that...my typical approach is to attack anytime a Right Wing presence is detected, and to use FULL VOLUME ABUSE in so doing.

I'm conditioned to respond this way, by a lifetime of the fight against the Religious Right, its ignorance and its all-encompassing bigotry. I watched Alexandra Pelosi's Documentary 'Right America: Feeling Wronged' on HBO this week and it is S-C-A-R-Y.

This problem is way beyond contain.

In every meaningful way, the vanquished ideals of the 19th Century;

...the Nativist instincts of the Protestant 'Know-Nothing Party', perversely intertwined with the Conservative Catholics who the KNP were seeking to expel in 1850 and who now, under Benedict, find common cause with their former tormentors against latter-day Immigrants and non-English speakers.

...the sense of racial entitlement felt by Southern and Western Confederates to live their lives amongst others of similar racial and cultural belief systems and to oppose 'progress' that would seek to dilute this ability.

...the belief that only that which can be extracted from the Earth, in the form of raw materials or agriculture is a desirable form of commerce.

...the belief in 'Creationism', 150 years after Darwin and 84 years after the 'Scopes Monkey Trial.

...an abhorrence of the Homosexual, the sexually active single woman, sexually aware teenagers.

Are alive and well in these 21st Century Americans. As Islam and its fundamentalist movement has stood in the way or progress for nigh on 1,500 years, its twin 'ankle weight' on Humanity, the fundamentalist Christians are prepared to hold on, hold out, obstruct and subvert America until it can LOOK and FEEL as they wish.

What I didn't realize until I watched this film, is that these people have ZERO intention of joining the 21st Century, making common cause with their Blue State brothers, the rest of humanity...ANYONE. They are dug-in, culturally, as deeply as the Japanese in World War II, their Confederate forefathers, Hamas in Gaza...it is possible to hear, when listening to their rhetoric and that of Benedict an actual LONGING for the 'Dark Ages'...something that most Westerners hear, recognize and revile in the ideology and theology of Al Queda and Zawahiri - a fanatical devotion to what WAS and aversion to what IS.

For years, decades really, I have tried to use logic, reason, rational thought to connect the historical and scientific D-O-T-S for those on the wrong side of this divide and had zero success. I've come to realize this is not, in any meaningful way, different from trying to counter Yankee-Haters with facts or perspective...only to realize that they too, do not CARE about the 'quality' of the game, about 'free enterprise' or the primacy of large places in all things - what they DO care about?

1.) Folks JUST LIKE THEM doing well.

2.) Folks just like GURU doing poorly.

However that can happen. Ethics, which I grapple with daily, are simply not a consideration to the 'Holy'.

If blathering on about Whitewater and Monica can defeat the Clinton's - do it.

If nonsensical idiocy about drug tests and salary caps can defeat the Yankees - do it.

It's not enough for them to do well, or have a CHANCE to do well, its important that those who represent modernity, urbanity and success do POORLY for them to feel better about the world.

And here is the thing, for an America crumbling in on itself, economically, culturally, politically, environmentally...it is impossible to imagine a scenario where the likes of Guru and Curt might combine their resources and energy to work TOGETHER - our world view and goals for America are as different as Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton - diametrically opposed.

We CAN make it if we can just rely on the Constitution and the guidance of the founders, free to be as each sees fit...but to the Evangelical (listen to Mike Huckabee...) the founders were/are a Secondary authority to that of scripture. These people REJECT the enlightenment, they REJECT a multi-cultural, secular society in tune with the wider world...they want, what they WANT.

Abraham Lincoln sacrificed the lives of 360,000 Americans to insure that the Confederate nightmare was not allowed to spread. But his assassination insured the cleansing could not be completed.

Enlightened thinkers of the day, believed that the South and the Right, thusly chastised, would JOIN modernity and adopt the ideals of Jefferson/Paine that guide the Declaration and Constitution.

They did not.

The 'reward' of Union victory was 100 more years of Racial segregation, anti-intellectualism, adherence to supernatural fantasy...

Lyndon Baines Johnson was a man of the South. He knew that America could not be whole if it did not resolve its racial wounds and that, until Black men were truly free in the South, America would not be free. He ALSO knew that White Southern Segregationists would never relinquish those rights willingly and he sent in the National Guard to insure those people would not be able to obstruct the intent of integration, 100 years after the Civil War.

Enlightened thinkers of the day, believed that the South and the Right, thusly chastised, would JOIN modernity and adopt the ideals of Jefferson/Paine that guide the Declaration and Constitution.

They did not.

What followed was George Wallace, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Tony Perkins, George H.W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Tom Delay, Grover Norquist, Bill Kristol, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hanitty, Ann Coulter, George W. Bush, Sarah Palin...Curt Schilling...The Cato Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, Homeland Security, FOX, Focus on the Family, Moral Majority, Christian Broadcasting Network, Southern Baptist Convention, Opus Dei...

There have never been meaningful triumphs for enlightened Americans without bloodshed.

There will never be meaningful triumphs for Israel without bloodshed.

There is no negotiating with people who claim supernatural or racial domain.

N-O-N-E.

Which leaves two choices.

Fight, persevere and see an America that is built for the 21st Century, free of 19th Century baggage.

Continue to live the 'wish theory' and see the likes of Curt Schilling advocating racist, regressive policies and attitudes and see MORE generations of Americans suffer the fate of the Post Reagan 'lost tribes' who have no real way forward in the Modern world.

Time's up America. Act, or perish. How do we heal the divide between us, which is and has been, irreconcilable, without killing one another?