Speaking As…

Warrior Queen once had a supervisor at an agency (that will remain nameless) who always prefaced everything she said with the words, “Well, speaking as a Jewish woman…”.  The supervisor would go on about the topic at hand, confidant that she was indeed giving the wisdom of her accumulated cultural experiences.

As if.

 

I have been a white male all of my 58 years, and I’m not about to pretend to know everything about “white maleness” at this point in my life.  I do know that historically the white male has dominated most western cultures.  This is not altogether a comforting heritage with which to live.  For example, it appears that this dominance over cultures thing goes hand-in-hand with other non-desirable (at least to me) traits like intolerance and its inevitable end product, genocide.

Go figure.

Apparently, I’m also supposed to possess some type of privilege or entitlement to coincide with my skin color and gender.  This feeling among white males probably goes a long way toward explaining the intolerance for other cultures idea.  I don’t know if it is another part of my DNA, or my upbringing in a (good) Christian household, but I am glad I missed the boat of intolerance.

Recently, America concluded eight years of progressive cultural steps forward.  It was nice…while it lasted.  Sad to say, and mind you I am speaking as a white male, I find that my fellow pale men recent movements to reverse all of these steps and thereby regress society as a whole, disturbing.  Oh, let’s add appalling and deplorable while I’m at it.

There!  I said it!

That said, allow me to further elaborate on a few current ideas in America, speaking as a slightly-left-of-center politically, 21st century cultural progressive, Christian (although not a jump-down-your-throat-believe-as-I-believe-or-else Christian):

This whole idea of “Make America Great Again” may sell 20th century Mad Men Post-World War II style of dominant attitudes over other cultures, and makes a spiffy logo on made-in-China baseball caps (retailing for a very elite baseball cap price of $40 a pop), but the whole idea is based on a false notion.  Let me make this very clear: AMERICA NEVER STOPPED BEING GREAT.   PERIOD!

Our uniquely American brand of democracy may be under attack, but it is (as of this morning at least) still INTACT.   Our Putter-in-Chief may act like he has more use for the Second Amendment and its accompanying idiosyncrasies of violence then the First Amendment, but fortunately our constitutional priorities are still straight.  The Founding Fathers had the foresight to put freedom of expression before the guarantee to arm local militias (BTW the CORRECT interpretation of Amendment #2).  With any luck and, okay, a fair amount of liberal resistance, we will still have the First Amendment in place for the next Presidential election.

And furthermore…

Speaking as a liberal white male, I must say that the vast community of evangelical Christians have given us reason to distrust them more than ever before the rise of Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority.  Okay, so you latched onto the abortion issue as the only issue worth caring about.  So you got your pro-life Supreme Court justice confirmed and your backing the most despicable candidates for public office (yes, I mean Roy Moore) just because they are also pro-life.  Congratulations, but now for a news flash: you sold your souls to the devil for Supreme Court seat!

I hope you think it was worth it.

You do realize that along with this Justice there also came a movement to deregulate laws which has guaranteed that all Americans can live safely in this country.  It has happened in all facets of American governance, but let’s just look at one example: the environment.

The EPA has seen some of its progress under President Obama reversed by the Executive Orders by the current Hole-In-None-Commander-In-Chief.  Now we should ask ourselves: what’s the point in bringing more children into the world where (theoretically) they are all wanted if we can’t guarantee that they can breathe clean oxygen and drink pure water? 

  

Seriously, what’s the point?

We white males should pause and wonder why so many other cultures in the world have a chip on their shoulder when it comes to our attitudes.   Actually, I can only blame their chips on our historical arrogance.

Then again, what do I know?   I’m just a white male.  No, make that an angry white male.

(Thank you for reading.  And in conclusion: “Grrrrrr!”)