Dedicated to the continued struggle of the Tibetan people on the 65th anniversary of the March 10, 1959 uprising
“The misuse of language induces evil in the soul.” —Socrates
“See how we put bits in the mouths of horses that they may obey us, and we control their whole bodies. And observe ships. Though they are so great and are driven by fierce winds, yet they are directed with a very small rudder wherever the captain pleases. Even so, the tongue is a little part of the body and boasts great things. See how great a forest a little fire kindles. The tongue is a fire, a world of evil. The tongue is among the parts of the body, defiling the whole body, and setting the course of nature on fire, and it is set on fire by hell. All kinds of beasts, and birds, and serpents, and things in the sea are tamed or have been tamed by mankind. But no man can tame the tongue. It is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who are made in the image of God. Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so.” —James 3:3-10 (Modern English Version)
James hits the nail on the head: words with evil intent which spring from the mind and tongue inflame the world in pain and misery. These words have more power than we may think. They create a wave which has the power to transform them into actions. This has become all too apparent in our age of social media as an increasing number and intensity of violent events break out like fires, fanned by the power of words, as we have been warned in the New Testament teaching. Ironically, among those who are complicit in the spread of hatred and violence are those who call themselves Christians.
This post has been one of the most difficult for me to finish. It keeps writing itself as the evidence mounts. What to add? What to eliminate? When to be satisfied with the results and just stop? The examples just won’t quit. and it is apparent: we are a nation inflamed, a world inflamed, and we must stop it?
It is by no coincidence that successful dictators have also been successful orators. The Holocaust began with the assault of words against the Jews of Europe. Hitler combined his oratorical skill with occult symbolism, false mythology, racist genetic theory, a well-defined genre of artistic expression, architectural splendor, badges and uniforms, the whole package. Remarkable for an era which predated the ascendency of visual media, an extensive repertoire of photographic images. by his chief photographer, Leni Riefenstahl, were studied to select those which conveyed just the right imagery. But greater than them was the power of the written and spoken word.
Words can be altered to focus and distort their meaning. Slogans and buzz words are a reduced thought form; clarity and truth are lost in the process. The term that describes this thinking is reductive: tending to present a subject or problem in a simplified or even crude form. From the reductionism of slogans and terms comes the deterioration of logical thought processes. It all goes downhill from there.
Madeline Grant expands the definition when she writes of reductive claims which create a special form of falsehood. The over-simplification of a term reduces and twists it into a form which, in her words, “erases a host of histories and experiences in the process.” In its distorted form they resemble Dr. Frankenstein’s monster.
We hear much of “woke”, which has its origin in blues singer Leadbelly’s 1935 song about the Scottsboro Boys, nine black teenagers wrongly accused of rape and sentenced to death. It warned of the dangers of a racially prejudiced justice system, concluding “best stay woke”. Thrown about almost casually, it is extensively (over)used. In Florida, legislation known as the “Individual Freedom Act” but more commonly referred to as the “Stop WOKE (Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees) Act” (clever, eh?), the bill was passed by the Florida state legislature and signed into law by Governor Ron DeSantis. It was designed to block certain teachings about race and diversity in schools and workplaces, particularly any notions that individuals might be privileged or face oppression due to race, sex, or national origin, which DeSantis has criticized as “woke indoctrination.” Critics have accused it of attempting to whitewash history by making it less honest and inclusive of the facts and violating the First Amendment. It has produced some controversial assertions, such as the claim that slavery had its benefit such as learning new employment skills. In August 2022, Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker of Tallahassee concurred with the argument against the workplace portion of the bill, placing a preliminary injunction against its implementation.
The Great Replacement Theory is another notion currently in vogue. Its history reaches back further than our own: the narrative of fascism has always been to create fear and panic over being replaced, “us versus them”. It has been and is a constant feature. And, of course, it relies upon reductionism to convince people that it is true. As Jason Stanley, author of The Politics of Language and How Fascism Works says, it puts us on wartime footing, and wartime allows us to suspend the rule of law. The arguments used are ludicrous on their face: immigrants are both lazy and yet they’re here to steal your jobs. How does that compute? Currently, unemployment remains just over 3% and wages are increasing, yet manual labor jobs at the low end of the wage spectrum go begging as growers beg for workers to care for and harvest their crops. What’s going on here? Blatant lying and lazy thinking are answers, coupled with the people who believe it. Instead, we need to think of the future of our country and what immigrants can do and have always done. They start at the lower end of the scale and work themselves up. This is what is called the American Dream. By doing so, they contribute to our Gross National Product and our Social Security system. This is our history. You can’t love America and hate the idea of why America was founded.
Words can become laws, and laws can kill. It may come as a surprise, but there are no Federal protections mandating water and shade for outdoor workers (many of whom happen to be immigrants). In an age of rising global temperatures, the Florida legislature passed a bill last week that prevents any city, county, or municipality in the state from adopting legislation aimed to protect outdoor workers from extreme heat. It follows a similar
Efforts to ensure potentially life-saving water breaks, rest and shade for construction and agriculture workers have failed largely due to industry pressure, a growing trend across south-western states, where heat related deaths are on the rise. This did not happen in a vacuum. Over the past few months, growing industry opposition has come from billionaire developers, powerful industry associations and their lobbyists opposed to any level of worker progress and advancement in the state. The legislation mirrors Texas’ “Death Star Law’ which preempts city governments from passing local workplace safety mandates. It went into effect even though a district judge ruled it unconstitutional. Laws are words and words can kill: Between 2011 and 2021, 436 people died due to work-related heat exposure, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, although data on occupational heat injuries and fatalities are likely “vast underestimates”.People of color are especially vulnerable to extreme heat. More than 40% of all outdoor workers in the US are Black or Hispanic. In Florida outdoor workers include as many as 200,000 migrant farmworkers toiling in the fields, 83,000 landscape gardeners and almost 70,000 construction workers.
Without delving extensively into philosophy, here is a pair of applicable terms which confront the idea of reductionism. The French philosopher Jean Baudrillard speaks of the simulacrum, which is a copy, due to our reliance upon symbols and signs, that depict things that either had no original, or that no longer have an original. He says that it “…is never that which conceals the truth—it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true.” On the other hand, a simulation is the imitation of the operation of a real-world process or system over time. It operates to progressively disguise the profound reality of the simulacrum, until it is pure pretension with no relationship to reality. In my, opinion, simulation is winning.
Reductive terms can turn out to be insidious and affect us in ways which were not originally intended. One of the most prevalent is pro-life. There is much thoughtful consideration which remains to be done as to when (not if) abortion is permissible, but least helpful is the injection of the theocrats and politicians (often one and the same) into what should be left to doctors. For example, women with ectopic pregnancies or non-viable pregnancies must delay or be denied medical care at the risk of their lives because the new theological-legal establishment puts fear in doctors who would ordinarily perform what is medically necessary boggles the imagination.
The state of Wisconsin has introduced the term palliative care to what is called maternity hospice. These two terms were previously associated with care of the terminally ill, so the shift is notable. It is now part of what is described as the “comprehensive care we offer to families who have received a fetal diagnosis. We recognize that families facing fetal concerns experience a sense of loss and grief, and at the same time are searching for hope.” What, then, is maternity hospice? It is “an innovative and compassionate model of support for parents who choose to continue their pregnancies following a prenatal diagnosis indicating that their baby has a life-limiting condition and might die before or shortly after birth.” In other words, what were once clear-cut indicators of maternal health and fetal viability now involve an additional layer of scrutiny. The key question, of course, is who can decide this and whether there will be legal consequences if parents and doctors are deemed to violate the requirements of ever-increasing restrictions. Who’s in charge here? The devil is in the details.
Disastrous results followed Idaho’s aggressive enforcement against doctors who exercise their judgment to provide abortion services. The number of obstetricians in Idaho decreased from 227 in 2022 to about 176 in 2023, a decline of 51 doctors. Only 22 of 44 counties in Idaho have access to any practicing obstetricians. Idaho makes it a crime with a prison term of up to five years for anyone who performs or assists in an abortion. After the reversal or Roe vs. Wade, many maternal care doctors in restrictive states are deciding whether to stay or go. They weigh tough questions about medical ethics, their families and whether they can provide the best care without risking their careers or prison time. “In a time when we should be building our physician workforce to meet the needs of a growing Idaho population and address increasing risks of pregnancy and childbirth, Idaho laws that criminalize the private decisions between doctor and patient have plunged our state into a care crisis that unchecked will affect generations of Idaho families to come,” Dr Caitlin Gustafson, an OB-GYN and the board president of the Idaho Coalition for Safe Healthcare Foundation, said in the news release.
At this point the most we have to show for this misery is the anger of opposing sides. Regardless of what courts and legislatures have decreed, it is far from settled. The debate reaches much further than abortion alone—there is the decidedly un-pro-life specter of the execution chambers being fired up, with apparently little consciousness of the glaring hypocrisy this presents.
The execution of Kenneth Eugene Smith with nitrogen gas, a previously untested method of capital punishment has drawn widespread scorn and outrage. Smith was pronounced dead in an execution that lasted about 22 minutes. With a mask over his face pumping in pure nitrogen gas, Smith appeared to convulse for several minutes after the gas was turned on. “He was writhing and clearly suffering,” a U.N. Human Rights Office spokesman said at a briefing in Geneva. The office had previously warned officials that it believed the method, known as nitrogen hypoxia, “could breach the prohibition on torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” Rather than looking for novel, untested methods to execute people, could we make life imprisonment mean exactly that and leave issues of life and death to God? Isn’t that the pro-life solution?
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, attempting to put a happy face on the distorted facts, said the execution was a “success” and described it as “textbook.” He told reporters that nothing unexpected occurred during the execution, including Smith’s “involuntary movements”. He continued, “As of last night, nitrogen hypoxia as a means of execution is no longer an untested method – it is a proven one. To my colleagues across the country … Alabama has done it and now so can you. And we stand ready to assist you in implementing this method in your states.” He said Alabama “will definitely have more nitrogen hypoxia executions,” adding that 43 death row inmates in the state have already elected the newly tested method.
While Alabama officials called the method humane (easy to say if it’s not you being killed), others, including three Supreme Court justices, said more should have been known before it was used. In her dissent of the Supreme Court’s rejection of Smith’s recent appeal on Wednesday, Justice Sonia Sotomayor mentioned Alabama’s failed attempt to execute Smith by lethal injection in 2022. “Having failed to kill Smith on its first attempt, Alabama has selected him as its `guinea pig’ to test a method of execution never attempted before,” Sotomayor said. “The world is watching.” Amid a shortage of drugs used in lethal injections, states have been searching for new execution methods. Alabama, Oklahoma and Mississippi have authorized the use of nitrogen hypoxia for capital punishment, but Alabama was the first to carry out an execution using the method. Pro-life, indeed!
All of this exemplifies a persistent failure of our age: the ability to apply logic, reason, and civility to our affairs. If those who call themselves pro-life were truly so, they would brand as ludicrous the proposition that mothers who undergo abortion and their doctors should be killed, harking back to some mis-applied Old Testament notion of an angry God [see the post, Farewell, Angry God] ; they would decry the factory farms that cause our food producing animals to needlessly suffer; they would contribute to no-kill animal shelters who save dogs, cats, and other innocent creatures from a continuing holocaust; they would recoil in horror from watching videos of razor wire placed across the Rio Grande which injure those who attempt to cross, regardless of their legal or illegal motives; they would question the wisdom of denying federal food assistance to children under the guise of ludicrous objections such as “not supporting socialism” or “fighting childhood obesity”—these children, remember, are from mothers who chose (or even did not choose) to give them life, so must they suffer for some shallow political objection? The pro-life argument strangely loses its urgency once these children are born. Thoughtful citizens would work—really work—to keep weapons out of the hands of those who should not have them, including 18 year olds wacked out on video games, drugs, mental stress—this coupled with parents who either don’t know or don’t care what their children are doing and what they will become. Back to the failure of reason: the antidote for all this so-called pro-life business is to go back to Albert Schweitzer’s ultimate prescription, the ethics which surpasses all ethics: “I am the life which wills to live in the midst of life which wills to live.” [see the post The River Must Flow] This says it all—nothing more is necessary—but it takes courage, conviction, and, yes, logic to apply it and really make it work.
Then there is the matter of voting. “Stop the steal” has been now cleaned up a bit as the more modest “election integrity”. People from totalitarian countries have borne witness to the dangers faced by exercising the right to vote, but who could have foreseen even a few years back that, here in America, serving as an election official would place your life in danger? Yet there are many who have either resigned or question their commitment to continue working in this current environment. Just ask Shay Moss and Ruby Freeman in Georgia. They testified how their lives have been turned upside down. But these are among the most extreme examples. Many others have suffered, are suffering, or will suffer in lesser ways if we are to make this democracy work. There are fewer things more sacred in a democratic culture than the freedom to vote, but it is being hijacked before our eyes. Most disturbing are the threats to voting officials, including dissemination of their home addresses. This has caused many of these essential workers to resign. Then there is the hijacking of the voting process itself. If you can’t beat an issue at the ballot box then make it illegal to make it a voting issue. Does that sound like freedom to vote to you?
What is the relationship between voting and the abortion debate? Not trusting the voters to exercise their will, a proposal recently passed by the Mississippi House would ban residents from placing abortion initiatives on the statewide ballot. Mississippi has among the toughest abortion restrictions in the country, with [at least] the procedure banned except to save the life of the woman or in cases of rape or incest. In response to the bill, Democratic Rep. Cheikh Taylor said direct democracy “shouldn’t include terms and conditions. Don’t let anyone tell you this is just about abortion,” Taylor said. “This is about a Republican Party who thinks they know what’s best for you better than you know what’s best for you. This is about control. So much for liberty and limited government.”
In 1965, Barry McGuire sang (and P.F. Sloan wrote) “the eastern world, it is exploding”. It is still exploding, and predictably will for years to come. While the localized conflict dates from the founding of Israel, three remarks can be made: (1) Israel’s outrageous treatment of Palestinians has only served to bring more violence to its door; (2) those who have denied Israel’s right to exist from the beginning have only fanned the flames; and (3) hatred of Jews can be laid at the feet of the founders of Christianity, who have allowed it to perpetuate through the years. Among the efforts to correct it, a curious edition of the Gospel of John by Dagobert D. Runes (1967) includes this in its introduction: “The message of Jesus is offered here without hate or revulsion against the people of the Savior….In Chapter Eight of this Gospel the Lord speaks of the Jews as “The Sons of the Devil, doing the Devil’s work”. How could the living Christ have spoken in such manner of His own kin, His own parents, His own people? Such denigration…has brought indescribable misfortune upon this much-maligned people—blood-filled misery that culminated in the holocaust of recent decades but in truth was no less sanguinary in previous centuries. Some of the great Christian leaders of our time have risen to the occasion and have called for dialogue and council in order to take the sting of Deicide and the charge of devilry out of Christian liturgy and dogma….in places it is obvious to the historian as well as the theologian that serious mistakes infiltrated the New Testament…. such allegations as that the Jews are the sons of the Devil could never have been made by the blessed Jew Jesus but by some irate zealot.”
Images as well as words may precede killing. Anti-Jewish hatred has pervaded Western art, politics, and popular culture for centuries. These are joined by everything from fine arts and to everyday toys and household items which promoted negative attitudes and stereotypes about Jews. For those who wish to see examples, the Katz Ehrenthal Collection contains over 900 individual objects from Europe, Russia, and (yes) the United States depicting hateful stereotypes spanning centuries and continents. It should be noted with relief that a small portion of the collection documents antisemitic episodes. These same stereotypes were used by Nazi propagandists in the 1930s and 1940s to intensify negative stereotypes of Jews. Already regarded as second-class citizens, they were characterized as “degenerates, criminals, and racially inferior corrupters of German society.” These beliefs have persisted, and are now focused on immigrants at the Southern Border.
Does it strike you as strange for a nation of immigrants to have such a history of anti-immigrant sentiment? It is as if each newly-arrived national or racial group must take its turn to bear the brunt of it—frequently from those who have preceded them, “our group” against “their group”. It’s in the Bible too, which documents the primitive history of the Hebrew incursion into the “Promised Land”. Scripture-spouting bigots like to pick and choose these verses to support their views. However, the broad sweep of prophetic literature underscores the moral path of kindness to “the stranger who lives among you”, notwithstanding the American history of wave after wave of new settlers who, in the words of the old U. S. Citizenship term, become “Americanized”, assume their place in our society. It is an ugly history, however. The older groups frequently expressed their hatred and discrimination of the newer groups. Phrases such as “poisoning the blood of our society” and “vermin”, recycled from a previous era, are now commonplace. As an example of the current rhetoric: “They’re coming from jails, and they’re coming from prisons, and they’re coming from mental institutions, and they’re coming from insane asylums, and they’re terrorists. They’re being let into our country, and it’s horrible.”
To be purely pragmatic, any society such as ours with a declining birth rate and a dwindling Social Security fund would seem to welcome an infusion of willing workers who would contribute to the “American Dream”. It is ironic to me that those born elsewhere embrace the idea, while many native-born citizens do not, although it works against their best interest. The demands of logic would support a thorough debate and passage of comprehensive immigration reform, but inflamed rhetoric rules the day. Earlier this month, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released a 10-year budget forecast that determined immigration will help add $7 trillion to the United States’ Gross Domestic Product over that span. That statistic is clear evidence of immigration’s material benefit to the country. Immigration is our strength in the U.S. (contrary to the white nationalist talking point).
A variety of tactics have been used, like shuttling migrants to other cities, thwarting a bill that could have curbed border crossings, and even staging an impeachment of the Homeland Security Secretary for purportedly aiding a migrant “invasion.” The purpose of these stunts seems clear: to make Americans feel so afraid of the presence of migrants — and so frustrated with attempts to fix immigration issues — that they wish for a dictator to make their problems go away in the most draconian ways possible.
The recent declaration that “migrant crime” constitutes a “new category of crime” causes some in Congress to lean even further into the anti-immigrant hysteria. House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan has issued a subpoena to Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra for documents related to alleged crimes committed by migrant children. In other words, he is fishing for reports of migrant children committing crimes, presumably so such stories can be used to malign immigrants more generally. Jordan seems set on continuing the anti-immigrant theater, despite ample evidence that migrants are no more likely — or, according to some studies, much less likely — to commit crime as people born in the U.S. In the last couple of weeks, we’ve seen right-wingers like Fox News host Sean Hannity and Tennessee Rep. Tim Burchett spread allegations that migrants have committed crimes, only to be forced to walk back their claims when they’re proven false.
The history and treatment of Mexican immigrants mirrors that of other groups which have preceded (and followed) them, and prejudice against them follows a familiar pattern. I must reply to those who in their bigotry criticize those who “do not speak our language” (Spanish speakers and others). The facts speak for themselves; linguistic and cultural assimilation follows a predictable pattern, The first generation lives more or less as an insular group, keeping to themselves and associating with those first language speakers like them. Their children through their dual exposure become bilingual, fluent in relating to both groups. By the third generation, the survival of the first language is rare indeed and must be learned if the children wish to speak it. It is a universal pattern. As a teacher I observed an after-school program where these children were taught Spanish. Greek schools, Japanese schools, and others are common as well. They exist to “re-enculturate” children which would otherwise be estranged from their linguistic and cultural roots.
Looking back to the 1930s, despite the Bracero program, American growers continued to recruit and hire illegal laborers to meet their labor needs. The program could not accommodate the number of Mexicans that wished to work in the United States. Many who were denied entry as a bracero crossed illegally into the United States in search of better wages and opportunity. Nearly 70% of people who were attempting to immigrate to America were denied because they were viewed as undesirable for a variety of reasons, including age, gender, or other factors. While the Mexican Constitution allowed citizens to cross borders freely with valid labor contracts, foreign labor contracts could not be made in the United States until an individual had already legally entered the country. This conflict, combined with literacy exams and fees from INS formed significant obstacles for Mexican laborers wishing to seek higher wages and increased opportunities in the United States.
Food shortages were common in Mexico while most of the foodstuff produced was exported. Hunger and misgovernment, combined with population growth, prompted many Mexicans to attempt to enter the United States, legally or illegally, in search of wages and a better life. This growth was exponential, resulting in the population nearly tripling in a short time period of forty years. The Mexican government’s interference with the privatization and mechanization of Mexican agriculture added more problems to finding employment in Mexico, providing yet another reason for Mexicans to enter the United States in search of higher wage jobs. With the growing concern about unassimilated immigrants, and the diplomatic and security issues surrounding illegal border crossings, popular pressure caused the INS to increase its raids and apprehensions beginning in the early 1950s leading up to Operation Wetback. The Korean War and the Red Scare also prompted tighter border security to prevent presumed communist infiltration.
Mass deportations also affected the growing patterns in California and Arizona; although the United States had promised farm owners additional Bracero labor. During the Bracero program, “an estimated 4.6 million workers entered America legally, while other immigrants that were turned away still entered” because of the work opportunities occurring in the southwest. California then became dependent on the workers while Texas continued to hire workers illegally after this was banned by the federal government, however because of the agricultural demand this was overlooked. While both countries were benefitting from this program in different ways, the large influx of immigration caused Eisenhower to end the program with Mexico. July is scorching in Mexicali. The Mexican city just across the border from Calexico, California, averages 108 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer, but temperatures often swell into the 120s.
In 1955, thousands of disoriented people roamed the city’s streets as the sun bore down on them. They had just been dumped there by American immigration officials—snatched from their lives and jobs in the United States and thrown into a city where they didn’t know anyone. These Mexican immigrants had been caught in the snare of Operation Wetback, the biggest mass deportation of undocumented workers in United States history. As many as 1.3 million people may have been swept up in the Eisenhower-era campaign with a racist name, which was designed to root out undocumented Mexicans from American society. The short-lived operation used military-style tactics to remove Mexican immigrants—some of them American citizens—from the United States. Though millions of Mexicans had legally entered the country through joint immigration programs in the first half of the 20th century, Operation Wetback was designed to send them back to Mexico.
With the help of the Mexican government, which sought the return of Mexican nationals to alleviate a labor shortage, Border Patrol agents and local officials used military techniques and engaged in a coordinated, tactical operation to remove the immigrants. Along the way, they used widespread racial stereotypes to justify their sometimes brutal treatment of immigrants. Inside the United States, anti-Mexican sentiment was pervasive, and harsh portrayals of Mexican immigrants as dirty, disease-bearing and irresponsible were the norm.
During Operation Wetback, tens of thousands of immigrants were shoved into buses, boats and planes and sent to often-unfamiliar parts of Mexico, where they struggled to rebuild their lives. In Chicago, three planes a week were filled with immigrants and flown to Mexico. In Texas, 25 percent of all of the immigrants deported were crammed onto boats later compared to slave ships, while others died of sunstroke, disease and other causes while in custody.
Like the Japanese internment of the 1940s, American citizens were swept up in Operation Wetback. Due to immigrants who were caught, deported, and captured again, it is impossible to estimate the total number deported under the program. Mass deportations of Mexican immigrants from the U.S. date to the Great Depression, when the federal government began a wave of deportations rather than include Mexican-born workers in New Deal welfare programs. According to historian Francisco Balderrama, the U.S. deported over 1 million Mexican nationals, 60 percent of whom were U.S. citizens of Mexican descent, during the 1930s. Balderrama said the program was referred to as “repatriation” (using a reductionist term to give it the sense of being voluntary). In reality. it was anything but that. Operation Wetback may not have had troops, but it used military tactics and propaganda to achieve its goals. It was headed in part by General Joseph Swing, head of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and was planned like a war strike.
My most recent example, “ripped from the headlines” as the TV program Law and Order says, involves the death on February 22, 2024 of a transexual student in the wake of Oklahoma’s “bathroom legislation” stating that students much use the bathroom identifying with their birth gender. Whenever Oklahoma teenager Nex Benedict was bullied at school for being transgender, mother Sue Benedict would encourage the 16-year-old to rise above the tormentors. She told Nex, “You’ve got to be strong and look the other way, because these people don’t know who you are’,” Ms Benedict told The Independent in a phone interview. “I didn’t know how bad it had gotten.”
The bullying had started in earnest at the beginning of the 2023 school year, a few months after Oklahoma governor Kevin Stitt signed a bill that required public school students to use bathrooms that matched the sex listed on their birth certificates.
She took Nex to the Bailey Medical Center in Owasso for treatment. After speaking to a police school resource officer at the medical facility, Nex was discharged. That night, Nex went to bed with a sore head and eventually fell asleep while listening to music, Ms Benedict said. On the afternoon of February 8, Nex collapsed in the family living room while getting ready to go to Tulsa for an appointment. Ms Benedict called an ambulance, and Owasso Fire Department medics arrived to find Nex had stopped breathing. Nex was taken to the St. Francis Pediatric Emergency Room and later declared dead. The family said that the facts surrounding Nex’s death, some of which had not been released publicly, were “troubling at best”.
Among the many bills being considered this year in Oklahoma are measures to ban gender-affirming care for adults, prohibit school employees from using a student’s preferred pronouns if they don’t correspond with the sex assigned at birth, and prohibit state laws or executive orders that recognize any gender besides male and female. Teachers who were beloved by their students have been getting run away by hate attacks, and the students are paying the biggest price because they are losing academic and emotional support.
One former teacher provides a touching personal testimony: “The day I resigned was really tough for me. I broke down crying in my car. I went into teaching not looking to be a savior, but I wanted to be a source of support for kids to help them grow into confident learners and even more assured in their identity. I wanted to be the teacher I didn’t have as a kid, the kind of teacher who picked me up and told me that there’s nothing wrong with not wanting sex and not experiencing sexual attraction, as I was dealing with immense peer pressure to have sex I didn’t want. Having a teacher like that would have helped me find myself much earlier, where I wouldn’t have had to search for 26 years to find my sexual orientation. I would have had much less angst and agita in my youth. I could never out a trans kid to their parents, knowing how I grew up with gay friends who got kicked out after their parents found out.
The final part of this post concerns the people to whom it is dedicated. I have long admired the spiritual and cultural values of the Tibetan people. Few modern societies have been besieged by the oppressive power of language more than the longsuffering people of Tibet, including refugees who have fled to other countries. A recent Jeopardy program featured a question asking contestants to identify “an autonomous region” on the map. The correct answer was Tibet. If this is autonomy, civilized people should want none of it. Beginning in 1950, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army took control of northern Tibet. Initially, some of Tibet’s traditional power structures were preserved. Eventually, these gave way to hardline Maoist policy. Soon, the intrusive nature of the Communist Party was greater than anything Tibetans had known before. Moving on to the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, violence against monks called “struggle sessions” and the ransacking of sacred places was widespread. In the following years, it was assumed that Tibetan Buddhism would wither away, but many survivors resumed their practice once the ban on religion was lifted.
March 10, 1959 marked the date when a revolt erupted in Lhasa, the capital. This uprising occurred in an atmosphere of tension and confusion because protesters feared that the Chinese government might arrest the Dalai Lama. At first the protests were peaceful, but clashes quickly erupted, causing the Chinese People’s Liberation Army to used force. Its last stages included heavy fighting, with high civilian and military losses. The Dalai Lama, as we know, and the city was fully retaken on March 23. Thousands of Tibetans were killed, but the exact number is unknown.
The years passed in an atmosphere of uneasiness, then, beginning in August 2020, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for a “patriotic re-education” of Tibet’s younger generation (eerily recalling the “re-education” of postwar Vietnam and Cambodia’s Pol Pot regime). To implement this, a propaganda team visited Tibetan schools in Chinese cities to hold what were called “National Unity Education Activities”. Speakers talked of such things as “the kindness of the party” and instructed students to “love the core, listen to the Party.” The goal was to improve what was perceived as Tibet’s “backward education and lack of talents”. To this end, special schools and classes were established as avenues for indoctrination to turn the minds of students to support the Chinese Communist Party. Between 1959 and 1976 all but a dozen of the approximately 6,000 monasteries, temples and shrines in Tibet were physically destroyed, often by dynamiting the ceilings, a grim attestation to the connection between religion and culture in Tibet. The website Cultural Survival documents the tragedy as follows: “In the months after the 10 March 1959 uprising, the monks and nuns of Tibet were forced to give up their vows. Those who resisted were either killed, imprisoned or put on road gangs. Hence, some of the older monks at Sera and Drepung today have spent two decades in prison, often in solitary confinement. Today they are broken men, working silently as caretakers of the temples of the monasteries….The system of monastic colleges and houses (Drepung had four colleges and 22 houses), which served as the organizational structure of the monastery, had been dismantled by the Chinese. The unfortunate condition of monastic education in Tibet since 1979 can be gauged in part by the fact that in the last three years 1,600 monks have escaped to India in order to pursue their studies at the refugee monasteries.” Although monastic education and the study of Buddhist scriptures by monks who were not conscripted resumed at a modest level in 1987, the damage had been done. The future of Tibetan Buddhism as a living practice and not just a cultural relic remains to be seen. But it provides one more example that reductionism leads the way for repression.
The Apostle James saw it correctly, and now our nation, our world, is engulfed in the flames of hatred and is suffering the consequences. Is there an antidote and, if so, what is it? Here is a clue: The Dalai Lama once said that if every 8 year old in the world is taught meditation, we will eliminate violence in the world within one generation. Now is the time to start. I have no faith that the current occupants of planet earth have the capacity to change their ingrown tendencies. The once bright promise of universally shared knowledge has degenerated into the “stupidverse”. It will take time for the seeds of the new consciousness to grow, and the time to begin is now.
This is a cautionary tale to all of us that we should carefully watch the words we think, write, and speak lest they break out into actions which we will be incapable of calling back. The danger and potential destruction which they can spread is incalculable. The evidence we have seen is sufficient enough for us to humble ourselves and pull back. So may it be for our country and our world.
I have only scratched the surface, for distortions of logic and language are a sad human trait and simply part of the landscape. Even if they do not lead to injury and death, they are distortions nonetheless. Call convicted insurrectionists “hostages”. Call community members who wish to ban books and dominate school boards “parental rights advocates”. Call anti-democratic extremists “patriots”. Call those opposed to any reasonable weapons control “Second Amendment advocates”. Call destroyers of democracy who support totalitarianism “conservatives”. Call news sources which are non-sensationalist and non-conspiratorial “Fake News”, while demonizing traditional news sources in favor of alternative narratives. Call education which includes a history of racism Critical Race Theory and edit the curriculum so that white students do not “feel guilty”. Call Federal agencies “The Deep State”. Their intentions are easy to see. Language is rife with the potential for misuse, so we should not be surprised. As always, truth is the first victim. This being said, we should beware. We should be discriminating. We should think before we speak or write. And, most of all, we should be logical—this is the essential quality that is sorely lacking in our media-charged, inflamed environment. These distortions have many victims, of which truth is the first.
There are few things as powerful as a good example, and I will close with a fitting conclusion by Morris Michel: “My daughter starts middle school in September. We’ve decorated her locker, bought new uniforms, even surprised her with a new backpack. But tonight just before bed, we did another pre-middle school task that is far more important than the others. I gave her a tube of toothpaste and asked her to squirt it out onto a plate. When she finished, I calmly asked her to put all the ‘toothpaste back in the tube. She began exclaiming things like ‘But I can’t!’ and “It won’t be like it was before!’ I quietly waited for her to finish and then said the following: ‘You will remember this plate of toothpaste for the rest of your life. Your words have the power of life or death. As you go into middle school, you are about to see just how much weight your words carry. You are going to have the opportunity to use your words to hurt, demean, slander and wound others. You are also going to have the opportunity to use your words to heal, encourage, inspire and love others. You will occasionally make the wrong choice; I can think of three times this week I have used my own words carelessly and caused harm. Just like this toothpaste, once the words leave your mouth, you can’t take them back. Use your words carefully. When others are misusing their words, guard your words. Make the choice every morning that life-giving words will come out of your mouth. Decide tonight that you are going to be a life-giver in middle school. Be known for your gentleness and compassion. Use your life to give life to a world that so desperately needs it. You will never, ever regret choosing kindness.”
Divinepersonhood 