Tonight Will Be Fine, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise

January 23, 2010 Martha Thomases 0 Comments

On Wednesday morning, my high school friend, Carolyn, sent me this:

“Okay, I need to rant because I cannot believe what is happening and I am horrified by the voters in this country.  Do we have no collective memory?  Is the population stupid?  Am I just blind to some truth about everything I believe in like compassion, equality, freedom and something larger than the fucking bottom line?  Is Jesus really on the side of the Tea-Baggers and not me?  I just don’t get it and am getting seriously convinced I am living in some nightmarish twilight zone that our country is not going to be able to right.

“Does anyone want to join me on a boat with no radio or in a commune someplace remote?”

Later that morning, The Awl amused me with another rant inspired by the same event: the Senate election in Massachusetts.

Like so many political junkies in this country, I was following the election.  I had another reason as well:  my father had met Martha Coakley several years ago, and I was hoping to someday be able to name-drop a Senator.

As you know, my social ambition was dashed, along with the first year of the Obama presidency.  The pundits who oversee our stupid discourse could not wait to declare him a lame duck, doomed to nothing more than impotent attempts at accomplishing his legislative goals.

It’s not that simple.  Sure, the Senate is a cumbersome branch of government, giving undue influence to states with small, mostly white population.  It’s the kind of thing that makes me want to move to a Dakota, where my vote will count more, but I won’t be able to get decent Chinese food.

Progressives have a problem (and not just that people want to call us “liberals” like it’s something insulting).  We see too many sides to argue in sound-bytes.  It’s much easier to hate an Islamo-fascist than a poor Muslim exploited by political, social and economic forces beyond his control.  One can demonize a welfare queen more easily than one can solve the economic  problems of single-parent families.  Still, I’m going to go out on a limb and try to understand why some people are so angry at Obama.

First of all, may I say that he’s let me down, too?  I would have liked to see a much stronger health care bill. I would have liked to see a larger stimulus package.  I would like to see the wars over.  I would like an end to Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell.  Despite these disagreements, I still think he’s an intelligent man who is trying to do the right thing.

The people who gather for the anti-Obama demonstrations (Tea Parties and others), and who opine against him in the media seem to me to be overwhelmingly middle-aged (or older), white and male.  They frequently talk about taking back the country to the way it used to be. From this, I infer that they mean a time when white men were in charge.

While I am not a white male, I get this.  Really, I do.  They were raised with certain rules, and then the rules changed.  It happened to me, too.  When I was a girl, the cultural contract (visible to you kids today on Mad Men) told me that if I was nice and agreeable and chaste but “fun,”, someday my prince would come and take care of me.  Luckily, third-wave feminism hit while I was in high school.

Today, women know they can’t count on a man to take care of them for life.  Divorce and a roller-coaster economic climate make it necessary for us to get educated, get jobs and get independent.  Men who prefer women should be docile have fewer choices.

It isn’t easy to understand that something you take for granted as the natural order is, in fact, a choice, and one that is oppressive to other people.  I can cite at least two times it has happened to me:

1) When I was about five years old, I loved Tarzan movies.  One day, I got on the bus with my mom and, seeing so many black people, exclaimed, “Look!  Natives!”

2) At an AIDS Awarness fund-raising party, the favors included a package that contained two condoms and two packets of lube.  “Isn’t that sweet,” I thought.  “They think we’re going to have sex twice.”

In both cases, I assumed that my experience was the only one.  In the first case, I only expected white people to travel around town, as opposed to coming to my house to clean it or to a restaurant to wait tables.  In the second place, I expected only one of the people in the couples who might take those party favor would have a penis.

Middle-aged straight white men are going to need to have similar realizations.  I hope they do.  It makes life more interesting when we realize we’re all in the same situation, struggling with the same crises.

I had hoped that, if there was anything good that might come from the earthquake in Haiti, it would be that.  Like the giant squid in WATCHMEN, the tragedy would be something against which we could unite.

Some of that has happened.  Here’s hoping.

—
Martha Thomases, Media Goddess, hopes everyone had a fine Martin Luther King Day. For those who would like to continue to be inspired, she suggests these pamphlets.