This is not something that makes me proud. And although I understand that those who refuse to differentiate between the extremists responsible for the attacks on 9/11 and the moderates who had no part in the attacks are themselves a radical fringe of the public, they have nonetheless claimed an emotional place among the larger population. It is their voices that are carried out into the airwaves and their faces that are seen on the television screens that become associated with all Americans for those in other countries.  When not enough people rise up to denounce them, their attitude, their words, then these radical fringe are what the world labels as American. 

On a day that should be held in reverence and remembrance of those who lost their lives and of those who survived the unprovoked attack and those who risked everything in the name of service to others, it is a disgrace that these fringe elements are allowed to have the final word about how we observe the event that marked our lives and forever changed us. Not only should this not be a day to burn a Qur’an, but this should not be a day to even focus on the other. It should be a day to recognize that out of a great disaster, we rose to overcome, and a day to thank those who gave their lives and experience for showing us a better attitude,  a better way of embracing the event, a better way of defining the American spirit.

But we haven’t so far. Instead, we continue to let the kooks and the vengeful-minded tell us how we should feel, show us how to reserve the day for hate and fear — not for release, but for keeps.

When I think of September 11, 2001, I remember more than the shock of the attacks. I remember how an international community came together, not just worldwide, though that is certainly true. The United States was buoyed by words of sympathy and support from all around the world that day, from friendly and not so friendly nations alike.  But in my classroom in a university town in the Ozarks, my international students came to my office to support me and to share their words of kindness and  respect and sympathy for what had happened to my great country — my great country, their words to me.

I had vacillated between going in and staying home that morning, but after talking to my husband who had called to say he was locked down at the base and would not be home that evening and after calling my daughter’s school only to learn that it too was locked down and no one was allowed on campus, I was compelled to go to my students, to see that they were okay. The Ozarks were not exactly known for tolerance of outsiders, even if the small community was the home of one of the best engineering schools and had been home to professors from all over the US and beyond. I was very much scared for my students.   My visions of a few of our own extremists storming the university campus, demanding blood for blood entered my mind more than once as I prepared for the worst for my students.   But the long drive into Rolla was eerily quiet. Hardly any traffic was on the highway, a highway normally populated by big trucks making their way ‘cross country to St. Louis and Chicago and beyond. And as I exited for the town, the streets normally buzzing with student traffic were nearly void of walkers, save a few who seem to be walking in stilted calm. (All this would change by the time I got out of class.) Easily I found a parking place and walked toward the international center, not knowing whether any of my students would come, but hoping to learn about their safety, perhaps from the center’s secretary or from the dean of the international center. I went first to my office….and my students came.

Their homes were in Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Libya, Turkey, Japan, China, Thailand, Korea, Argentina, Columbia, and Peru. They were Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, Catholic, and no religion.  They had called their families just after the attacks on the World Trade Center, to let them know they were unharmed and to say good-bye, they told me.  They did not know when they would see them again or if they would be able to get back home soon, if they needed to.  But mostly they wanted reassurance from home; they were scared like the rest of us.  After a briefing from university representatives, these international students were then “locked down” in their dorm rooms for their own safety.  They were released for lunch and decided instead to come to my office.  They were glad I had come to work, glad to see a friendly face, hear a friendly voice, and glad to know someone was here within sight for them. None of their other teachers had come in that morning. 

They wanted to talk, so we talked. They shared their thoughts and disgust for what had happened and expressed their sympathy for this great tragedy to my country — my great country, they said.  It is a great country, they assured me.  I am always heartened when I remember that.  My students, who themselves were scared and a long way from the comforts of their families, were so respectful and full of heart for me and my country. Many times since then I have wished that those in the US who are full of hate and wish harm on others could have such an experience to recall, to remind them that the world is not full of evil, that everyone does not hate us.  There is good, too.  Perhaps then they would be better able to reject the hair-on-fire rhetoric that so dominates our radio and television today and refrain from mislabeling and stereotyping, be better able to put the emotionalism in perspective and deal in rational thought and civil discussion.    

I have lived in foreign countries and I know from personal experience the good and bad that exists in all, but I choose the good — not blindly, but with open eyes and non-prejudicial expectations. I choose to live up to what is good, right, and beneficial for all; at least this is what I strive for.  I hope that this day recalls more than shock; I hope it summons memories of all that is good within us and brings it out of us, encouraging us to overcome the infamy.  Granted, we have some work to do, some voices to overcome and to put in their rightful place, but we can do it…and I hope we can do it for more than a day.

But Jane Austen was not a Democrat! 

So true. And therein lies the beginning of their biases. So how to respond to that?

As it turned out I didn’t have to ponder that long when one of the women opposed to the label fired off an email to me.  Below is my response; I think even without knowing the contents or the bent of her email, you will be able to follow my remarks and gauge the tenor of hers.

I wrote:

Feminists are not the first to “bend” to a political party or are unique in doing so.  Nor are they any more “selective” than members of any other organization.  In fact, when it comes to methods and organizational prerogatives, feminists follow the established paradigm.  Their difference, though, is that they provide a voice for issues (and causes?) that affect women, and they were the first to recognize differences as strengths (NOT weaknesses) and were the leaders when it came to bestowing respect upon women who chose non-traditional paths.  They were maligned in the process and have not recovered from the pejoratives that seem to label their efforts whenever they try to do what is good and right for women.

To single out the feminists for having a “selective nature” seems to be accusing them of something bad when in reality such a nature only makes them human.  What’s so wrong with being selective anyway? Are you suggesting that they shouldn’t be selective? On what grounds? What about other organizations — AARP, for example? Should AARP not be selective? And what about selective moms who select Jiff?  My point is not to mock you but to ask you to explain what you mean.  There are a number of feminisms, by the way.  To paint them all with the same stroke of the paint brush seems to promote the same attitude of those who indulge in card-stacking against women.  Feminists do strive to level the playing field for women, to help them overcome the jeers and naysayers that would have us all believe that women do not belong anywhere in the public arena because by tradition, the public arena was a male domain and thereby off-limits to women.  The women who dared to enter that arena have always risked being labeled as “unfeminine” whether they were in reality or not.  But what does “unfeminine” mean anyway — that a female has not lived up to someone’s definition of the “little woman”?  Jane Austen was accused of being unfeminine because she did not have enough feeling in her stories and because she did not marry.  Maureen O’Hara was the only female to be a part of the men’s club that included John Wayne and John Ford, “real men” of a particular generation, because they respected her for being “one of the boys.” She could hold her drink and salt her language as well as they could; is she unfeminine? Gertrude Bell opposed the vote for women on class idealism, but she broke a number of records in mountain climbing and garnered much respect worldwide for her prowess in a number of “manly” activities — even traveling the desert without a male escort, mapping it and honing the respect of a number of tribal leaders in the process.  Even T.E. Lawrence sought her out for advice.  So did Churchill.  She never married, but had at least two affairs (one with a married man).  Was she unfeminine? The women in the army dress like men, talk like men, and do the jobs of men.  And a number of them find the army very suitable.  The military is hardly feminine by anyone’s definition.  So are they unfeminine?  Perhaps the issue is not so much femininity, but a definition that is so narrowly defined that it cannot but preclude certain individuals — a definition that was not created by God.

You may want to check out Caroline Norton while you’re on the Victorian website — and check out the marriage laws of Victorian England.  Scorn and public ridicule tend to be the reaction to any woman who wants to affect change or who promotes an issue of inclusion.  That hasn’t changed much over the years.  What surprises me, though, is that women can be convinced to work against their own best interests.  For example, there were a number of women who were just as convinced that they shouldn’t have equitable marriage laws or access to education or any other benefit that men had.  I guess that is much like the woman who is being beaten and then fiercely defends her husband for beating her.

Contrary to what you have written, feminists do speak for all women.  But women are not one-dimensional.  They are complex beings with sometimes subtle differences and sometimes huge differences even among a particular culture or ethnic group.  Over here I see a number of women who do not fit the conservative definition of femininity: Samoan women are hardly designed to be Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Bunnies.  A number of Hawaiian native women are not the petite dark-haired beauties that populated the calendars and postcards of yesteryear (an image conjured by a westerner, no doubt).  Some could easily pass for Sumo wrestlers.  And some could easily tote a cargo weighing a couple of hundred pounds or so on their shoulders. Their voices aren’t soft at all, but does that mean they shouldn’t be heard at all?  Yet, too, there are some women who enjoy the status quo and do not want women to work for change — it would jeopardize their positions, they believe.  In other words, in the world of needs and desires for women, one size definitely does not fit all — and one definition of feminism is not sufficient.  To suggest otherwise is to make women no better than stereotypes or caricatures — and thereby easy targets of jokes, and just as easily dismissed as unimportant.  Such is the deal on a great number of talk radio programs and “news” programs that indulge in “tokenism” hiring practices.  These businesses, through sophisticated PR rhetoric, would have us believe that they have done right by women because they have hired one, but they would never speak up for her.  Such businesses are led by those who invoke the letter of the law but revoke the spirit.

The feminist movement is about people, so of course, it aligns with a political party that tends to the needs of people, rather than to the needs of big business.  And really, can you honestly say that the Republican Party has done anything but malign the feminists?  It would be ludicrous for the feminists to align with the Republicans; feminists are their favorite whipping group for what’s wrong in society.  Do you then blame the feminists for exercising their sensibility in this matter?  What have the Republicans done for women anyway?  Didn’t Ann Coulter say that she would give up her right to vote if it meant that Republicans would stay in office forever?  (She’s such a fine example of femininity!)  Don’t the ratings of Rush Limbaugh go up every time he bashes women or refers to women in leadership positions as Femi-Nazis and racists? (And he’s all for furthering the causes of women!)

Though we do owe the feminists of yesteryear much gratitude for furthering the rights of all women, we do them a great disservice when we believe that their hard work did not require them to be hard or unrelenting or to confront the ideals of womanhood held by both men and women of their day.  The biases and hostilities they had to contend with are lessened today only because time has made them so.  Being removed from the immediacy of these events, we have the luxury of reviewing them in a less emotional manner and can make rational judgements about them.  The fear of their turning society upside down and destroying the home is gone, only to be revived by today’s headline-seeking detractors and ratings-consumed talk show hosts bent on keeping us all in an irrational state of mind — again.  However, were we to look at the agenda that today’s feminists have — without the hostility and the hair-on-fire rhetoric — we would see an agenda that is more diverse and yet just as inclusive as the suffragettes’ goals of yesteryear.  Here is a list of a few issues that the feminists promote (and in a number of cases, they have been the first ones that brought these issues to light and have since comprised the largest number of supporters who still fight for these “causes”)

   (1) Health care for all — especially in areas relevant to all women: breast cancer awareness/mammograms, cervical cancer prevention/immunization, birth control & hormone therapy (and if you believe that feminists only promote abortion when it comes to health care, you may want to check out www.feministsforlife.org )

   (2) Economic equality and opportunity — here and abroad (check out the websites devoted to international feminism, and check out the work done in third world countries; the work of feminists in Iran and India may also be of interest to you; Hilary Clinton has been involved in many of these international groups and is perhaps better known in those countries for her humanitarian work for women)

   (3) Educational opportunities for all women — especially in math, science, and sports — areas not traditionally open to women; women’s groups have sponsored math and science and space camps for girls; have given out numerous scholarships to women in sports and other fields to encourage women to continue their education as well as to broaden the economic opportunities for women

   (4) Date rape awareness and counseling — very controversial even today; many men and women do not believe that date rape happens and if it does then it must be the woman’s fault; even campus security will not intervene; in other words, young women cannot depend on the status quo network to come to their aid in this matter — gender does matter in this area and it isn’t the female gender that is respected in these cases; do you think even the church has a history of defending women in date rape cases?  I am so sorry to say that in these cases, the church leaders have been more prone to throw the first stone.  So where is a young woman to turn?  If not for feminists, there would be no one.

I strongly feel that we need to get away from the caricatures of the feminists drawn by those who feel so threatened by equality that they resort to distortions and propaganda to divert us from the truth of the issues.  By dehumanizing feminists, they make a story of the harm feminists have caused.  They present feminists as monsters that are bent on destroying the home and society. But that is just not so.  Feminists want there to be homes and societies where all people are safe, not just for those int power or in the mainstream.  And to have these ideas realized, there must be a few who guard against the tyranny of the status quo, the tyranny of the extremists, the tyranny of the powerful.  They are the ones most often maligned and marginalized.  They take the hits for us, so that ideas that are now thought of as foolish or unnecessary (or worse — subversive) will not always be thought of in those terms.  Even Susan B. Anthony spent some time in jail.  And Elizabeth Blackwell was accused of betraying her sex when she became a doctor.  Ms Rivera did much to raise the professional aspect of the secretary when she refused to take coffee to her boss — at the time, some people spoke of this as a nonsense issue; women were supposed to get coffee for men.  But it spoke volumes, no thanks to the ones who tried to trivialize it.  And the feminists were there to support her and all women, to rally behind them all, and to speak up when the din of the attacks became too loud to hear the woman’s side of the situation.  When Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and the like make up the din of the attacks against feminism, can we really hear what the feminists themselves have to say?  Can we understand what they are about or what their goals are?

Here it is:   The Top Ten Reasons Men Should Not Be Ordained

10. A man’s place is in the army.

 9. For men who have children, their duties might distract them from the responsibility of being a parent.

 8. Their physical build indicates that men are more suited to tasks such as chopping down trees and wrestling mountain lions.  It would be “unnatural” for them to do other forms of work.

 7. Man was created before woman.  It is therefore obvious that man was a prototype.  Thus, they represent an experiment rather than the crowning achievement of creation.

 6. Men are too emotional to be priests or pastors.  This is easily demonstrated by their conduct at football games and watching basketball tournaments.

 5. Some men are handsome; they will distract women worshippers.

 4. To be ordained pastor is to nurture the congregation.  But this is not a traditional role for men.  Rather, throughout history, women have been considered to be not only more skilled than men at nurturing, but also more frequently attracted to it.  This makes women the obvious choice for ordination.

 3. Men are overly prone to violence.  No really manly man wants to settle disputes by any means other than by fighting about it.  Thus, they would be poor role models, as well as being dangerously unstable in positions of leadership.

 2. Men can still be involved in church activities, even without being ordained.  They can sweep paths, repair the church roof, change the oil in the church vans, and maybe even lead the singing on Father’s Day.  By confining themselves to such traditional male roles, they can still be vitally important in the life of the Church.

 1. In the New Testament account, the person who betrayed Jesus was a man.  Thus, his lack of faith and ensuing punishment stands as symbols of the subordinated position that all men should take.

 When framed in this way, a number of men and women may rise to offense, providing counter points that sound rather similar to the ones other men and women have offered to support the ordination of women.  So my question is this: if the only difference between the two arguments is gender centered, then why is one the “correct one” and the other one just  “flat-out wrong”?  Could it be that denying either men or women on the basis of gender is the real argument that is just flat-out wrong? And let me offer another view: Do you really think the Holy Spirit minds whether the one ordained wears a skirt or a tie? If we truly believe that God is in charge, the one who calls and ordains, the one whose words are the guide in our lives, then are we humans focusing on the wrong things when we assert that we know better than God to allow a woman to do a “man’s job”?  Shouldn’t that be God’s call anyway? And shouldn’t that be God’s job, not man’s in the first place?  Oh, what hath man wrought when he denies the Holy Spirit!

John F. Kennedy knew what it meant to have “the finger of suspicion” pointed at him. In a speech to the Ministerial Association of Greater Houston, September 1960, he elaborated upon this major concept. “For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed,” he told the assembly and indeed the whole USA, “in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew — or a Quaker — or a Unitarian — or a Baptist.  It was Virginia’s harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson’s statute of religious freedom.  Today I may be the victim — but tomorrow it may be you — until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.”  Rather uncanny, don’t ya think, that we today are living in such a time, ripped by not just one national peril but by several, and still his words ring true for us.  But at the time, we in the South were greatly relieved, and even more so were the Baptists who had embraced the incident that led the Danbury Baptist Church to insist on a way to protect their religious freedom. Jefferson’s response, the letter in which he referred to the two spheres of church and state as having a wall between them, established a practical understanding of just how religious freedom for all was to be protected.  Our mythology then was to be grateful to Jefferson who had made an idea in theory via the 1st amendment into a de facto policy. Yet how ironic that now some 200 years later it is these Baptists that have had a change of attitude regarding that separation. Now they, like a number of denominations that have benefitted in the past from this distinction, want to tear down this wall and in so doing will tear down centuries of history that have served as the fabric of our founding, and they will rewrite history to connect their views with the past…or more aptly, use their ideology to diminish the past.

This is especially disconcerting when you also take into account the recent movement by the Texas State Board of Education as chaired by Don McLeroy, a member of Cedar Creek Baptist Church, who has often been criticized for pushing his religious views onto the public sector, especially in education. Under his leadership, the Texas SBOE  acted to rewrite the history textbooks to reshape the thinking of 4.7 million Texas school children, to reshape the attitudes of coming generations to look favorably upon these new views coming from both the conservatives and religious right. 

China, btw, did this in 2006.

China’s textbook revision began in Shanghai, and it began with a revision in history. “When high school students in Shanghai crack their history textbooks this fall they may be in for a surprise,” wrote Joseph Kahn in “Where’s Mao? Chinese Revise History Books,” an article that appeared in the September 1, 2006 issue of The New York Times. “The new standard world history text drops wars, dynasties and Communist revolutions in favor of colorful tutorials on economics, technology, social customs and globalization,” Mr. Kahn continued, and in a later paragraph pointed out that the old textbooks had not changed in the last 25 years of market-oriented reforms. “They were glaringly out of sync with realities students face outside the classroom. But critics say the textbooks trade one political agenda for another.”  These, too, were the concerns of the SBOE in Texas, which sought to align their own students with the realities they face outside the classroom by downplaying Jefferson’s role in the founding of our country and by renaming our economic system “free enterprise” and our government structure a “constitutional republic.”  Democracy is out, it seems, as it has been in China since its existence, but unrestrained capitalism or “free enterprise”  is in — in both places. 

The history, both in China and Texas, will no longer focus on national identity but on political and economic goals, less on events and more on cultural movements.  So in China, where capitalism doesn’t need democracy to thrive and Mao has been downplayed, J.P Morgan, Bill Gates, and the New York Stock Exchange are noteworthy; and in Texas, where Thomas Jefferson has been booted out and Phyllis Schlafly and Joseph McCarthy have been ushered in, McCarthyism and movements that deny women equal rights are praised.  If this is the way of the future in both east and west, can you imagine a time when the two have exchanged places ideologically?

And when that happens, does it mean that the wall of separation between church and state that has been our staple of religious freedom will no longer be recognized,  like Thomas Jefferson’s place of influence in the founding of our country?  “Free enterprise” can do a lot toward removing a face from history, it seems – in any country – and also a lot to muddy the waters between a government ruled by tyranny and a government ruled by a democracy….

and when those 4.7 million Texas school children become adults, they may not notice that Mount Rushmore is missing a face.

Aloha has three meanings: hello, good-bye, and love.  Aloha on Oahu often comes across as good-bye only as those who try to negotiate the slow island lifestyle are ignored if they have come to stay too long.  “Don’t come to Hawaii. We don’t need any more tourists,” said often by those who oppose all tourism, blaming it for a number of ills in Hawaii,  may not have originated with Haunani-Kay Trask and her followers, but it has certainly caught on among those who identify tourism as a hostile takeover of native lands.  Outside of the tourist district that is dominated by Big Business, Oahu has little to do with the blondes and fair-skinned people who so obviously aren’t native or Asian.  It is much like what is happening in Arizona with the newly passed immigration laws that mandate a show of papers from all who are perceived as illegal residents there except in Oahu, it is happening to “haoles,” the foreigner who happens to be Caucasian and a term that is often used derogatively by the native population (similar to “gringo”) — not that Caucasians are required to show citizenship papers, but that the attitude regarding who belongs and who doesn’t is the same.  For the fair-haired and fair-skinned, blending in is difficult, thereby making easy targets for those who want to discriminate or to be passive-aggressive toward those who look and behave differently.  This I did not experience on Maui where noticeably the people were more harmonious. Unlike Oahu, Maui was settled by a different class of people, not by a class that today could pass for teabaggers, the ugly American who thinks the world is only a stepping stone under his feet.  This is what buoys the silent (and sometimes not so silent) aggression of the Hawaiians and the Polynesians who were nearly wiped out by disease brought in by the crew of Captain Cook and other Europeans, and broken in all but vengeful spirit by the ugly Americans who arrived to take advantage of their dwindling population.

But Maui was open to the world.  Maui loved its sailors and whalers and foreigners who came not from the upper crust nor from the religious bent but from the classes that knew that their survival and well-being depended upon working together, a microcosm of the international world they experienced on the working ships of the Pacific — which incidentally didn’t mesh well with the upper crust and the missionaries but nonetheless assured a vision wider in scope than either the privileged or the mission-bound could have brought about.  Perhaps Maui just tried harder, having been once the favored island and still home to Lahaina, the original capital of the unified islands.  And perhaps Maui’s open spaces allowed for blowing off steam when people were rubbed the wrong way. Or perhaps their kind of aloha sought to de-stress rather than impress the newcomer with some time share deal or otherwise awesome buy just waiting for the fool willing to part with his money. 

The bigger shame, though, is that all of Hawaii agreed to put all their eggs in the one basket of tourism.  It is the most lucrative game in Paradise, but it is also the most exacting.  Capitalism at its worst. Cost of living is expensive in Hawaii, not because of wages of the laborers — the average wage is the same here as it is on the mainland and the average annual earnings are not any higher for the tour bus drivers than they are for the city bus drivers on the mainland.  Yet the cost of living in Hawaii is 10% higher, and Hawaii ranks in the top ten of most expensive places to live in the U.S.  Hawaii doesn’t even have a public education system to brag about and ranks in the lower third in the U.S.  When tourism failed to render the dollars of past years, the education system also suffered.  Furlough Fridays were implemented to stave off an all-out lay-off of state employees, including most visibly, the public school teachers.  This also presented an extra burden to the parents who were thrust into confusion about what to do when their children did not go to school on Fridays.  Daycares now had to expand hours and include school age appropriate spaces, lunches, and activities and extra charges were applied to cover the cost of extra employees needed to cover the many children that would be in their care many more extra days, not just the holidays.  Even the state departments, those who conduct business directly with the public (like the offices that provide driver’s licenses) curtailed their hours of operation to ease a thinning budget.  Such activities, though intended to save jobs, contributed much to the anger of those who are not served well by tourism in good times and certainly are not served at all in bad economic times.  More homeless appeared in the streets; more beggars made their homes in the public parks and beaches that had been the big draw of Hawaii tourism and the corporate powers that profited from that draw.  This did not bode well for the dispossessed or the down and out, instead fed the ire and fire of hate.  And, of course, all this is quite visible on Oahu, the home to state government, the place of hope or hate, and where everything of that tenor plays out in political drama while the traders in tourism try to convince the public otherwise.

About a week after our arrival in 2008, the Iolani Palace was taken over by the Kingdom of Hawaii Nation Ministry Trust, one group of many such groups who believe their duty lies in restoring the monarchy.  Their goal was “to establish the palace as a new seat of government, undermine the state government, and declare the secession of Hawaii from the United States,” according to the entry in Wikipedia.  A similar takeover was committed in April (four months before our arrival) when the Hawaiian Kingdom Government, another angry group bent on overthrowing the “haole” government, led the charge to take back Hawaii for the native-born (see KHNL news report dated August 16, 2008 and Associated Press article, “Iolani Palace closed indefinitely after takeover” dated August 18, 2008, and other such articles).  Such groups are the reason that a bigger celebration of the 50th anniversary of Hawaii’s statehood was not presented to the world, not because Hawaii was afraid of outside scrutiny of its very own recently elected President of the United States.

Such things happen on Oahu, not on Maui, and such things work to contradict an environment of peace and tranquility exploited by Oahu’s tourism but an environment that Maui seems to have without the exploitation so much….and then I learned that Maui is a spiritual place, home to Iao Valley, the sacred home of the ali’i who are buried there.  No wonder aloha is strong there!

Still much of Maui’s reputation was little  more than hearsay to us….till we landed in Kahului and the different kind of aloha, the slow aloha, began its healing work.

We should not have waited so long to visit.

Take the posting about Diamond Rio that insists that the people who oppose God have once again won the cultural argument by banning a song that had God in the lyrics (and title).  The song wasn’t PC, the posting accused, and so was not allowed airplay even though Diamond Rio got a standing ovation at a concert, implying that there were enough people who wanted to hear it on the airwaves, but the song was denied airplay anyway.  “I don’t know what this country is coming to,” was the personal comment accompanying the post.

A quick search on www.snopes.com showed that this post had been around since 2006 and had very little truth in it.  Diamond Rio did showcase the song at a concert where it received a standing ovation.  But to state as an undeniable fact that it was not allowed airplay is misleading.  It was never released as a single and only singles receive airplay.  It was, however, released on a greatest hits album.  It is also deceptive to imply that God was the reason the song wasn’t allowed airplay, implying that God is not PC enough for an audience that has lost belief in God.  Diamond Rio is country music, right?  So did the writer intend to imply that the country music audience is not a Christian audience?  and after the post already said that the song received a standing ovation at the concert?  disingenuous at least.  Not all country music has religious content and certainly a number of bands – traditional bands, too — do not use their songs to make personal statements of faith. Until they presented their song, “In God We Still Trust,” Diamond Rio was just such a country band. That is not to say that a number of country singers and bands are opposed to using God or religious messages in their lyrics – Carrie Underwood who sang about Jesus taking the wheel, for example, or Brad Paisley whose “When I Get to Where I’m Going” went gold, or Brooks & Dunn whose “Believe” won CMS’s single of the year in 2006, to name a few who obviously do use religious messages in their songs.  And they get plenty of airplay.  Carrie Underwood’s ”Jesus Take the Wheel” was not only a megahit for her, it also was a crossover hit, getting airplay on radio stations not exclusively country and appealing to fans of rock and country.  The argument that God is not PC just doesn’t wash, especially when you consider all the Bible verses that do admonish the reader to give minimum offense when speaking to others.  Even if the sender was unaware of all the other songs that include God or faith statements that do get airplay, those verses alone should have given more than a few of the kooks cause to pause.  Perhaps Diamond Rio just wasn’t able to make inroads in a genre that was already inundated, especially in a year (2006) that already had songs that not just exceeded market expectations (those mentioned by Underwood, Paisley, and Brooks & Dunn all went gold or platinum) but also were favored contenders for CMA awards and Billboard nominations.  That’s all there is to that urban myth.  There is no conspiracy to undermine Christianity by radio stations which, btw, include more conservative stations than liberal ones — if you want to buy into that liberal media myth and PC attitude. 

Also, there are a number of reasons that a song may be played at a concert but not later released.  Many bands use their concerts to introduce new songs to the public, especially if the song is something new and different for them.  Their managers and business handlers can then determine whether to release the song based upon reception and perceived sales.  Lyrics have very little to do with their decision-making.  Sales is the bottom line.  And the timing of the release date can determine whether a song will become a hit.  Many songs are pulled because the timing may just not be right.  In the case of the Diamond Rio song, the record company may have just determined it was too risky to put  Diamond Rio up against those singers who were better known in the message genre and were contenders for awards.  Instead, they would release the song on a greatest hits album when marketing could promote the idea of getting an extra song with the hits.

But all this agony over “what this country is coming to” could have been avoided with a bit of checking.

And then someone I don’t even know sent a message saying that Obama was out to destroy America. The hype is so over the top that I find it hard to understand how some people can buy into that, but they do. The writer, a male from the midwest, (I looked up his profile stats on FB) went on to say that Obama was a socialist and was doing everything he could to turn America against itself.  A friend wrote a response that pointed out the similarities between Obama and Reagan which enraged the male from the midwest. He called in his buddies who then hurled a number of insults and accusations at my friend.  It was just that type of thinking, they informed her, that is ruining this country.  One has to ask the question then, how is it that the things that Reagan did and the things that Obama is doing, though the same, can be both ”good conservatism” and “socialism” that destroys this country?  Logic escapes this trash talk, and facts are manipulated and distorted.  It is propaganda at its finest.  And these agitators do not take into account the differences between political ideology and government policy. They are experienced  and thoughtless self-proclaimed experts in hot button issues.  But they know nothing of government systems or how the different government systems work.  They respond to slogans and fear-mongering at its basest emotional level, but do not realize that they are no more than the sheep in Animal Farm who because they could not grasp the ideas put forth were bound to a black/white version of their world: two legs bad and four legs good.  Even the birds in Animal Farm quickly realized that sloganizing their situation meant excluding them from the animal community, but the sheep could not even tolerate such complexities, which led to their being duped by the very ones they thought were there to protect and support them.

Nonetheless, the world’s complexities exist, regardless of whether the sheep understand them or not, regardless of simple-minded sloganizing, regardless of emotional hype and hair-on-fire rhetoric.

The “Obama is a socialist out to ruin this country” is such a slogan that feeds into the fire frenzy and works to dupe the followers. A nation transformed to socialism requires a magnitude shift of historic convulsion, NOT mere changes in policy, and can’t be measured in years.  It requires several generations, perhaps even close to a century.  The U.S. is only a little more than two centuries old and socialism as a recognized philosophy is much younger than that.  The truth is that black/white thinking cannot explain something that is complex.  To say that Obama wants America destroyed is nothing more than hair-on-fire rhetoric that not only distracts from dealing with the complexities but also encourages obstructionism: why move to get anything done if you are too scared by words to push up your sleeves and work for the betterment of all? Scare tactics and word intimidation work, even when the person using them does not completely understand the definitions of the words he throws out — but then that isn’t his objective, is it?  He doesn’t want to understand; his anti-intellectualism stance refuses to allow him to comprehend anything more complex than directions on a Band-Aid box, and his fear that others may have a better understanding or a better grasp of the situation moves him to yell and rant against whatever cannot be summed up by “two legs bad, four legs good”  mentality.  The underlying motive is to manipulate the public into a knee jerk reaction that benefits him or his agenda — or his agency’s agenda.  And sheep make very good comrades in arms to accomplish that.

But isn’t such a strategy getting old now, I wonder, especially when those of us who haven’t been dumbed down have caught on to what this tactic really does?

America’s social history is full of kooks, con men selling snake oil that works cures for what ails you or slick salesmen selling gold watches for a dollar, but this new breed of kooks is even more deceptive — and dangerous: they are the bomb planters.  They don’t want any cures; they don’t even particularly care whether a gold watch is part of the deal or not.  They get worked up by watching the mayhem, the aftermath of their bomb explosions, having no conscience about how destructive they are or about their connection to the destruction…for their paranoia is the driving force against common sense, their timing preventing any pause to think morally.  And they always walk away after lighting the fuse.

Memorial Day is upon us and already the flood of patriotic flag postings have begun on Facebook.  Join this group if you love your country; keep this flag flying, etc.  All of this is fine, I suppose, and fills a need to annually show one’s support for the troops, their families, and the sacrifices they have  made over the years to keep our nation free and safe.

But — it puts me in mind of another flag, one that I and every other soldier wear on our right shoulders 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.  It’s not a flag image that we have photo-shopped or one that we have copied and pasted from Memorial Days past; rather it is a real honest-to-goodness flag, made of real honest-to-goodness flag material, and is attached to us via the modern marvel of Velcro.

This particular flag has been with me for a number of years now, since my last deployment and the switch from DCUs to ACUs.  Prior to that I had flags sewn to my uniforms and proudly wore them through two deployments to Iraq and two overseas assignments to Germany and Hawaii.

It meant something to wear those flags.  They were worn on flights in and out of country; they were worn on patrols and convoys through dust choked and sun-baked villages and towns; they were worn at schools that were being built, worn at homes of sheiks and local nationals that were willing to take the chance and show visible support for these men and women who had come from so far away to give them freedom and a shot at liberty and democracy.  They were worn at gyms and hangars at tear-filled partings and reunions.  But I suppose the most meaningful places we wore those patches were at the memorial services for those brothers and sisters who gave their lives and whom we honored and by whom we were honored having served with them.

Most recently I witnessed a moving ceremony for a unit that was preparing to deploy.  At the pivotal point of the ceremony the soldiers were instructed to remove the red, white, and blue flag patch from their battle buddy’s uniform and then replace it with a subdued, combat flag that would be worn during the deployment until their return.  So as I return to my home and get back on Facebook and see all of the postings for virtual flags and virtual support in cyber space, I carry the image of flesh and blood people, wearing cloth and tangible flags and uniforms, embarking on a real world mission to do a real world job in a real world place.

So here’s to you and your families, and to all who have served, and all who have given their lives so that all in this nation may remain safe, secure, and free.

Aloha Tower is a popular harbor, not only for its tourist shops but also for its reliability for being both a working harbor and a cruise ship destination.  Many sea pilgrims have sailed the oceans from around the world to disembark here at least for a night or two. Ships with foreign flags are docked here, some come with cargo that will be unloaded here to be traded or stored for pick up by yet another ship that will take it to California, or Hong Kong, or Japan, or maybe even down under to Australia and beyond. There is an Aussie bar not too far from the Tower and you cannot go 12 yards without seeing a restaurant with a menu written in Japanese.  Cruise ships also disembark here, a number of them are private, the toys of the most wealthy from all over the world.  Even now as we walk toward the back of the Tower, languages and dialects, native and foreign or a pidgin of all, drift in among the people.  Yet we are the ones who look like the foreigners here.  We are the fair-skinned blondes that have escaped the ravages of the sunburns and the perpetual eye-squint cemented by too-much sun.  We hide behind our Polaroid lens glasses and under our straw hat and baseball cap, neither a sunbather nor a surfer dude. In fact, when we enter the restaurant, we are greeted as newcomers to the island. “Aloha,” says the young woman dressed in short-shorts and a tank top that advertises the islands. “Where are you staying?”

It is always the same.  I think the greeters are taught to quickly calculate how much tourists are willing to spend by determining the hotel they stay in. If we tell the greeter we live here, we get very different treatment, especially if the greeter is of Asian descent.  Asians rule the tourist scene in Hawaii, and it is even expected that the people who work in the tourist industry on the island will speak Japanese or Chinese, mandated by most stores.  This would be no surprise were we in China Town, but we are in the heart of Honolulu, the heart of the tourist center.  Since this is Hawaii, one would have to be void of all curiosity to not wonder why a tourist is given a lei and  greeted with “Aloha” then expected to read a Japanese menu.  But that is how it is.  Recently a news report said that Hawaiian Airlines will offer non-stop flights to Korea because apparently Korea is the new Japan.  South Korean visitors may not even be required to provide a Visa or passport, Hawaii tourism is so eager to recoup its losses after the swine flu scare kept so many Japanese tourists from coming here and spending money.  And they do spend money.  “Hello Kitty” does remarkably well here — as do the American and European name brand merchandise.  Kalakaua Street is filled with merchants that cater to the expensive tastes of the Asian tourists.  That is why Gucci sets the price of the products even at Wal-Mart! And why the mall in the Aloha Tower boasts of stores with prices too high for the local resident.  So if you are strolling Aloha Tower, you must be a tourist. In our case, with fair skin and blonde or light hair, we must be rich American tourists who might be willing to part with our nuggets of gold that we brought with us in the yacht that just happens to be anchored a few yards away in the harbor — if the greeter can only determine where we are staying for the night.

We do not answer her.  Instead we call attention to the scene in the harbor, so near the table she’s led us to.  The sun hovers low on the horizon; its beams sparkle in the waves.  A barge effortlessly cuts through the water with a load of Matson trailers, filled no doubt with merchandise that will board an even bigger ship just across the bay.  Two dark-haired young men dressed in white shirts and black pants, servants clothing, bend over a coil of rope, tidying the deck of a yacht that flies the red sun of Japan. We are thrilled to be in the restaurant named for one of the most famous Hawaiians: Don Ho.  Pictures of him in his younger days are posted around the open-air restaurant and his music drifts downward from speakers that have been strategically placed along the shack walls and beams. We order two drinks: a pina collada and a local beer, before ordering a pizza that will be delivered on a surfboard-looking platter atop two 64 oz cans of pineapple juice, apparently done for the thrill of the tourists. We are impressed and thank our waiter who is also haole.  He smiles, probably thinking that he had pegged us right.  He comes from California, he tells us.  “Where is your home?” he wants to know.

We tell him just down the highway, along Pearl Ridge.  We can see his disappointment.  We did not just come in on the ship.  We did not just land on the ground.  And no, we do not want our drinks to be refreshed.  He does not come back for some time.

When we leave we run into — not one, not even two, but four —  busses of Japanese tourists, just let off for a night at the Tower.  They go helter-skelter to the marketplace and also to line up at the Navetek, a ship that offers sunset dinner cruises with an all-you-can-eat buffet that depending on the price of your ticket may include prime rib or lobster. In three hours they will watch the sun go down in the harbor, circle Diamond Head, hear authentic Hawaiian ukeleles, see Hula dancers, wear leis, and eat and drink till they can eat and drink no more before returning to the Tower and then to their waiting busses that will take them back to their hotels on Kalakaua Street or other parts of the tourist district.  The air is electric.  The speech is a mix of all things hopeful.  Babies and small children are not crying from tiredness yet.  Smiling tourists in newly bought aloha shirts and mu’umu’us and some with flowers in their hair overrun the pier.  A night to remember is a waiting promise.

My husband and I make our way through the throng and back to the parking lot with a validated ticket from Don Ho’s Restaurant.  We again lean over the concrete barrier to look at the water below.  We again marvel at the tropical fish that most people we know would have to go to an aquarium to see.  We stroll by the museum where the Falls of Clyde anchors.  “Too bad the museum has closed,” we say.  “Maybe it will reopen once the repairs are completed.”  But that is only idle chat.  It has been closed since our arrival over a year ago and is not any closer to completing the repairs.  But that’s how it is… in Hawaii.

“Would you bring me the extra key?” he asked.

“Sure,” I responded, my voice at first upbeat then trailed off into silence.

“Well?” He sounded impatient.

“We have an extra key?” I wanted to know.

***

I live in Hawaii which means that I have sun and surf every day of the year.  But I am also blonde and Caucasian, traits that identify me as a tourist.  Somebody is always trying to sell me something.  Can you say, “Time share”? 

“What I love is the beautiful landscape of Scotland,” I said. “I was told that you were from Glasgow. I once got a tour of that city by a very talkative cab driver who said — “

“Where’er you from? Somewhere in the South, I bet.  You have a southern accent.”

I smiled blankly — perhaps even a deer-in-the-headlights stare, her remark having caught me off guard and ultimately putting me in the position of trying to cover my surprise – an act that is automatic and deliberate in the southern circles I grew up in and one that I thought I had forgotten. So I stumbled, but only slightly.  Afterall, one didn’t want the other person to feel ill at ease (at least not too long) even if her remarks were rather pointed and off the subject.  Yet it had been a long time since I heard a remark like that — so long that in fact I didn’t think my “accent” was detectable any longer.  Even now when I go home to visit, my daddy accuses me of  “talking like a Yankee” which I thought meant I had lost that drawl.  But perhaps it meant only that I stumbled in a speech that required a different rhythm, like now, when I was confused by which tact to take. Do I satisfy her obvious curiosity or do I continue to stumble along to satisfy mine?  Do I become “genteel” or do I become assertive? 

“Arkansas,” I told her.

“Really?” She became too excited to contain herself. “Then you really must love Mike Huckabee!”

Inwardly I sighed. So it had been a ruse to get me back to Mike Huckabee!  I considered this for a moment: She didn’t strike me as mean or devious, just determined, though I didn’t know why she was so determined to talk about Mike Huckabee.  I didn’t find him to be a very pleasant topic of conversation — not that I hated him, but I really didn’t want to talk politics….but my conscience wouldn’t let me “fudge” either. 

“No ma’am, I don’t,” I told her matter-of-factly, hoping that an unethusiastic remark would at last get her off that subject.  She gave me a quizzical look, as if I had just spoken some complex idea that didn’t jive with the basic formula of H2O.

“But you’re from Arkansas.”

“Yes ma’am, I am. And I’m even from an area not too far from where he grew up in Hope, but I am not a fan of Mike Huckabee.”

“No?”

I shook my head.

“But surely you love his show?”

“On Fox? hmm.” Another dilemma. “No,” I told her. I got up to leave.  This was getting nowhere, and my politeness to her was only encouraging her to frustrate me.  All I wanted was to talk about Scotland and to share a few stories with people I thought would in turn tell me a few stories of Scotland.  The waitress had directed me to this older couple with the assurance that they were from Glasgow and were great yarn-spinners of the homeland.  I was disappointed.  I had not yet heard a story of Scotland because this woman was so fanatical about Mike Huckabee. “I think I’ll go get a drink,” I said. I slowly got up from my squatting position, a position I had gotten into to better hear her talk, the music otherwise overpowering and prohibiting any kind of audible conversation. I was now sorry that I had done that, too.  The cramp in my joints was not worth what I had heard from her.

“Have you ever seen it?  Because if you haven’t you ought to,” she said, putting her hand over mine.

“Yes, I have seen it a time or two. And I don’t care for it either.”

“Well,  we just love it.”

I smiled.  She could love it; I was not begrudging her her opinion. I just wasn’t going to encourage this conversation any longer.

“He is so calm. You’ll appreciate that when you get older.” 

“He’s a nice guy, but I am not a fan of him or his politics.”

“His show’s not political. Are you sure you’ve seen it?  He plays that  ole timey music, you know.  And the way he talks to the people, it is so calming.  He is certainly in charge. I feel so calm with him.  When you get older, you’ll like him.  We old folks like to be calm and contented. But you really don’t like him?” 

I frowned at her. “No ma’am. I am not a Baptist.”

“Oh, but you don’t have to be Baptist to like him. He appeals to everyone.”  She patted my hand.

I sighed. “Well, maybe that is true, but I don’t believe in his views, religiously or politically, and I really don’t like the mixing of the two.”  I pulled my hand away.

“But he loves his wife.  Surely you can appreciate that.”

“Well, he doesn’t exactly have a monopoly on that, does he?” My patience had grown thin and I sounded sharper than I intended, but at that point I cared little about what she thought of me. I had tried to be polite, had tried to move her in another direction, but she was either too obtuse to get it or too stubborn to move on.  I really didn’t want to say anything to offend her, but now she wasn’t only refusing to drop the subject she also wasn’t wanting to let me leave. Her hand had now grabbed my wrist as if she had just thought of one last thing to tell me…. she said nothing. I let out a slow breath to show my disgust.  ” There are lots of men who love their wives,” I told her matter-of-factly, ”just maybe  not in the Republican party.  But when you have people like Ensign who has an affair with the wife of his aide and then pays thousands of dollars to keep the affair secret or Sanford who runs off to Argentina to be with his mistress and everyone said he went hiking in Appalachia, then maybe Huckabee stands out.” I looked at her squarely in the eye and smiled the smile that clearly said ’enough is enough.’  Then I told her, “ But I really don’t want to talk about politics, do you?”

“No.” She shook her head.

“Good.” I sat down in the chair next to her to massage my knee.  “So tell me about Scotland.  When was the last time you were there?”

“Me? Oh, I’ve never been to Scotland.”

I looked at her long and hard, clearly taken aback by her remark, and then I shook my head.  ”Never?”I asked.

 ”Never,” she affirmed, shaking her head. “I’m from Memphis.” 

“Memphis?” Again I was in disbelief. “As in Tennessee?”  I saw her nod. Oh, Lordy! Only three hours from where I grew up — an area not too far from where Mike Huckabee grew up. I tittered, slowly and with hesitation as the irony of the situation dawned on me.  So there I was trying to talk to someone who I thought would enlighten me about living in Scotland and there she was talking to someone from the South who she thought would enlighten her about events back home.  And the even bigger irony was that I was in Hawaii, at a Scottish festival, sitting by a woman I could very well have sat by had I never left home.  Well, don’t that just beat all!  And the low soft tittering which I had heretofore contained in deliberate hesitation and slow gulps of air bubbled forth now into a full giggle with no sense of manners. I was beside myself.

Then Victoria, my new-found friend, pointed to the man who sat on the other side of the table, the man with eyebrows to rival Andy Rooney’s and who was as lean as she was round. “My husband is from Glasgow and would love to go back, but I have no desire to go.”  This somehow did not surprise me. It was all just as plain as daylight — I could as easily envision him in a kilt and a tam as I could her with a mint julep. Why hadn’t I seen this before?

“Well,” I said with a wry smile and turned to face the gentleman sitting across from her. “I hear you’re from Glasgow.”

The man with the Andy Rooney eyebrows nodded.

“I once was in Glasgow,” I began. The man indicated that he was listening, so I continued.  ”Got a tour by a very talkative — and informative — cab driver who told me that the difference between the people in Glasgow and the people in Edinburgh is that the people in Edinburgh walk around with their noses in the air.” I rushed through that, I knew, so I paused to catch my breath and to let my words disintangle themselves.  “Is that true?” I wanted to know.

Her husband grinned and nodded his head.  “That is most certainly true!” he told me.

Finally… relief had arrived.