Who are the Helpers and Where do we find them?
Without a seed of doubt in my mind, America’s religious and political Right will not at this time, just as they have seldom been in our 250 years history, be the people who create paths toward helping the nation’s most vulnerable. America’s religious and political Right are selfish, self-centered, resentful, short-sighted, willfully ignorant fools. They are fools above all else because they are gambling their own futures, as well as their grandchildren’s futures, on the potential goodwill of a few powerful billionaires. They are fools because they are gambling their futures on the shysters who stand behind pulpits and preach a message that is not only dissimilar to Jesus’ message as we know it but also contradictory in its sources and outcomes. They are fools because they allow extremists, megalomaniacs, corrupt men and women, rapists and pedophiles, and wealthy wolves to take wrest their power from them – their power to be a shining light in the storm, to be a voice for forgiveness and human kindness, to be strong in faith instead of what they’ve become, strong in pleasing their powerful masters.
So, I write to myself today and I write to my audience, We must build within our communities, above every difference in our skin and faith and skills, beyond our personal borders, below the angry noise that rises like a firestorm from our streets and legislatures and once consecrated meeting places, an alliance of helpers.
An Alliance of Helpers. This is a far better goal than trying to build political power. First, our nation’s political system and its biggest players are built and sustained on the capitalist system that brought us to this frightful place. Every system we have, including the judicial and education and healthcare systems, relies on a foundation that would crumble if both major parties did not routinely heap systemic support: the Potential goodwill of the wealthy class and white Christian male supremacy.
From local school boards to the White House and the SCOTUS, the winners are in debt to their wealthy donors. Even good people who step into politics for all the right reasons rely on massive campaign chests. You and I play a part in the excessive costs of political campaigns when we donate $100 here or there to promote our favorite candidates and ideas. Every donation is an approval of the corrupt election system. What is more, small donors like us will never see returns or realize our influence on our winners’ decisions without equally massive, too-big-to-be-ignored activism. The wealthy donors have the dollars and channels to bypass all campaign and ethical rules; they own the elections and the winners. They own most of U.S. journalism, from radio to television, social media, and newspaper. They own the messaging and the algorithms, the journalists, and the technicians who run the streams.
The political system, the politicians who thrive within it, and the nation’s billionaires will not come to anyone’s rescue. If you believe they will, I’ve a treasure map to sell you.
Of course, without apology, I will vote and encourage everyone around me to vote. We need votes in numbers that say loudly and clearly This is who and what we want. Our chief folly has been that we’ve left all the best ideas for transforming society, for building a thriving democracy and thriving institutions like a free press and public education to the political winners …We assumed they would do their jobs, look to us for guidance, and work for us. How crazy was that?
We should never have assumed that men and women who thrive in politics because they win expensive, excessively long elections, and make backroom promises to wealthy donors will work for us. Americans are truly stupid. We defend the systems when we have regular paychecks, premiere credit cards, two cars in three-car garages with room for storage, our children in private schools, ocean cruises, and homes in prosperous, safe neighborhoods. We rail at the systems when our children are in struggling public schools that require our participation, when we are unemployed or doing under-paid work for the community’s upper crust, watching out for each other in our lower and middle class neighborhoods, drowning in spiraling debt, personally experiencing the injustices of our justice systems, working a second job to pay for childcare and the care our aging parents need, skipping doctor visits and ignoring illnesses because healthcare bills would add to our debts.
Why did we trust the systems in the first place? Because we believed that liberty and justice for all would prevail over the old slave and rich landowner societal structures. My generation witnessed the big changes that mass demand ignited: voting rights, women’s rights, workers’ rights. We in the 1960s and 1970s…even into the 1980s…had no inkling of the powerful backlash. I heard Baptist preachers denounce the legislations from their pulpits. The elite want to give the negro power over all of us. The long hair hippies and feminazis and ungrateful Negro will replace us. The atheists will find ways to jail us and hide our gospel message. However, I could not have imagined that the irrational, white supremacist fear I heard in churches would become a national political movement onto which the Republican party would hitch its wagon.
I and millions in churches across the U.S.A. trusted the institutions because our religious leaders did…until the institutions and laws threatened the basic premise of white fundamentalist evangelical faith, White Christian Male Supremacy. Hence, the backlash, distrust, anger, then the birth of Christian Nationalism. Christian Nationalism disguises its belief in the old slave and landowner systems as a return to tradition, a return to greatness, and a moral mandate.
We who want to shine the Light of Truth, Liberty, and Justice for All must step nearer to all others who also hold that Light aloft. Alone, we grow weary, disappointed, and sad. Together, we grow stronger, louder, and brighter.
I prefer my own company to the company of others. I’ve always since childhood been a loner, dreamer, and wall-hugger. Even when as a young adult, when I happily developed deep relationships with fellow churchgoers, my anxiety about being called out or seen was real. My shyness was as much a part of me as my aspiration for becoming a leader. Whether the church’s indoctrination of women’s behaviors and roles taught me to be shy and hesitant, I am not certain. I knew some strong and brassy women within the churches…women who to this day I respected. More likely, my mother beat the shyness into me; her constant reprimand was Pretty is as pretty does. Although I was a classroom teacher over three decades and often said that I would pursue leadership, I held myself back from that. I’ve some regrets about holding myself back. But that is how I also held stronger to a dream I had since childhood…I became a writer. Life is about the decisions we make, some which seem to be forced upon us and some which come easily. We survive; we thrive when we keep regrets and losses in their rightful places. Therefore, I will never be the activist that becomes a viral social media podcaster or a community organizer or run for elected office. Those are not my dreams, nor am I able to do those things without great anxiety.
Would I stand behind a pulpit? Yes, but I would need medication. Do I believe what I write? Without hesitation. I can preach it even though I cannot always be who I would like to be.
This is the core of Be the Helper for Whom Others Look. Each of us is flawed, but we are flawed in different ways. We each have weaknesses, and these weaknesses facilitate our strengths. But we waste our energy and resources when we look in the wrong places. Helpers are rarely found among the loud, the powerful, the charismatic, the popular, the trend setters, the rich, the nicest folks, or the famous. The Helpers are out there. If we look for them as allies with whom we want to unite, we must look for the people who are persistent and determined learners like ourselves, grateful for every small opportunity to help others, sharing and generous, often sad because life has often been too difficult to bear, often overwhelmed and exhausted because doing the right thing has many surprising consequences.
#Resistance