Thinking about the remarkable fact that the Pentagon is talking about considering renaming military bases which now have the name of some of the worst Americans in our history, traitors, slavers, racists, who openly rebelled against the country, it's obvious that this is something that would never have come this far without Harry Truman issuing his epic, widely opposed order to integrate the military seventy two years ago this year. Politics is generally the art of what's possible, it is rare that it is done with that anticipation of what was possible, if the military were not under the direct control of a president convinced of the rightness of integrating it, it would not have happened. I doubt it would have happened if the military in 1948 got to vote on it, what is possible to order under that circumstance is certainly not going to be possible in a democracy, for good or evil. The evil of it is apparent because now we have as racist a president as we have ever had, if he didn't have to contend with a military in which People of Color are a very large percentage in most ranks, he would certainly use the military in ways even more depraved than he has, which even his own appointees have balked at, now, too late but sooner than never. And that he can't do that is thanks in large part to the foresight of Harry Truman.
The arc of history is long, in this case taking more than two generations to have reached even this point. And it's hardly finished with just that one, relatively minor issue.
Reading the Old Testament this latest go round, informed by the commentary of Walter Brueggemann, those contained in various Bible translations,* I see the same long arc described over and over again and have come to the conclusion that that time span has not changed in the modern period, despite the perceived speed of life, societies, cultures, the world changes at a far slower speed than an individual conscience can.
We are all of us swimming in and moved by that flow of history. And if that's a hard fact of life for an old, gay white, Irish man, it is so much more true of those who have not been privileged to the extent I have been. Even as a life long member of the American lower middle-class, sometimes falling below that, I have had privileges, even as a gay man even in the period when my identity was illegal, officially, legally illegal. The speed of progress in LGBTQ rights has not been uniform, it has certainly not been even, it has certainly not happened for transgender People of Color, people with the highest lynching rates of any in the country. I think whatever progress there has been has been largely due to the fact that white gay men and Lesbians have been what those with the power to make change think of when they think of LGBTQ. If we were uniformly not, those demands for equality would never have gotten anywhere for any of us. The extent to which white gay men and Lesbians do not demand total equality is the extent to which we are merely replacing a position as people oppressed with that of people oppressing. Neglect and indifference is some of the worst and hardest to overcome oppression.
The idea of progress is good, the unrealistic expectation and demand of it happening on your terms or even as you need it is bound to lead to frustration, anger, disappointment and cynical impotence. I'm not discouraging anyone in pointing this out, I'm telling them what they can expect to happen.
* I especially find the Christian Community Bible often criticized for being too much a reflection of Latin American liberation theology especially interesting from a Christian point of view as I find Everett Fox and other Jewish commentary always informative and, on some points, I would think more authoritative. Though they hardly agree anymore than the Christians do. I love that the Scripture is contested, it is, after all, about God who will never be summed up in the entirety of human thought never mind one tradition or even one mind.
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