A More Perfect Union

I have been trying really hard to restrain myself from posting political musings here. More than once I've had a post ready to go and have instead chucked it into the "save as draft" folder. My political opinions don't matter a snit in comparison to more important matters of how I love those around me, try to listen to God, and try to work on the planks in my own eye rather than the specks in others.

Today's been an interesting day though. I happily found myself back in the classroom with my amazing students after a few scattered weeks of holidays and my parents visiting and days off. Today's the day that I get to start what is my favorite unit with my Rhetoric class - analyzing persuasive and manipulative messages. We listen to political speeches, watch parts of the Nazi propaganda film "Triumph des Willems," take apart advertisements, admit our infatuation with and write about products that hold iconic status. It is great fun.

Because today was the first day, I got a chance to preach at them a little bit. Having just spent 10 days touring my parents around this country (which I think of as having a history that includes no good guys to root for: first Germans, then Russians, then Germans, then Russians again. Even if you root for the Lithuanians themselves, you have to factor in their pogroms and anti-Semitism that preceded Hitler by decades)... but anyway, having mucked around in this history with mom and dad for the past week, I returned to the classroom with a renewed sense of the radical propositions offered by democratic government. With a renewed sense of the magnanimous freedom that can come with critical thinking. I told the students that learning how to recognize the ways in which the world/leaders/advertisements/etc/etc are trying to mold and manipulate them is an essential part of being a free person. Only if we recognize the ways in which we're influenced can we ever hope to move beyond "sheep" status. (And yes, I know, critical theorists, that recognition of one's constituted self position does not immediately enable one to move beyond it, however...). It's a great soapbox to get up on. And in a region of the world in which political oppression and ethnic division are not distant, hypothetical concepts, I caught a new sense of the ways in which the thinking we're practicing is imperative for its citizens' future survival.

I wish I could communicate to you all the weight of history here. In light of the endless back and forth of hatred and oppression between nationalities and social classes and ethnicities over the centuries, I have to tell you that this speech made me a quivering mess of tears.

Do any of you remember the radicalness of what we are trying to do in America? Do you have any idea of the insane miracle of the unity that America is striving for? I think it would be unthinkable here. Europe is like a segregated graveyard that everyone keeps digging up. This kind of speech, about race and history and oppression and subliminal anger, confronts people at their most basic primal and tribal identities. I sometimes think that Americans have forgotten just how difficult an experiment we're conducting. I'm telling you, it is amazing. Do not forget that. It's an experiment I cannot imagine much of the world I live in is ready for, or even desires to undertake.