Truth and Reconciliation

(Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)

So now we are called to fix a broken country. It was always broken. We white folks - most of us - just didn’t know it. 

But Thomas Jefferson knew it. James Baldwin knew it. And the kids protesting in the streets know it. And so does Trump and the quadrant of the Republican Party that enables him - that part of the Republican Party that seeks to go back to a time that never existed. 

I call it the Mad Men era, after the great TV show, when everything seemed to have its place. Women in the home, men at work after World War II, doing what they wanted. But they knew it too. They knew the country was broken. Pretty soon women started asking questions about their role. And then men - slowly - started questioning why they were on a train for two hours each day to the suburbs, or running a forklift for minimum wage with no health care. 

Their kids watched their parents’ lives, rebelled and created the 60s. 

LBJ and the generals knew it was broken. Even with all that Ivy League education, they were wrong. But they went ahead anyway with a war that set the country back decades. They empowered a national security state and CIA to topple governments and cozy up to bad people. That broke us too. The governments we broke - Iran, Guatamala, Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, Chile, the Congo - are all with us today, the remnants of our arrogance. 

And now we keep at it. We watched the Twin Towers destroyed and 3,000 killed by angry terrorists and we do exactly what they want. Go to war, waste our human and financial resources. We then spend billions to arm local police forces with armor and weapons, which are now used in the streets against our own people. And we send black people to prison because we don’t like them, because we need their cheap labor, because are addicted to the racism embedded in a Constitution that we wrote for ourselves.

We elect a madman. Why? Because we didn’t like the woman. We lost our job. We want our taxes cut. We are angry so we want to burn it down. A CEO I know told me he is a liberal but voted for Trump because he just could not vote for Hilary Clinton. Really?

We allow the Republican Party - nihilist, anti-science, devoutly racist - to strip government bare of environmental protection and encourage dangerous radicals to take over the Michigan statehouse with automatic weapons.

We give up on government because we have been told for decades it has failed. It can’t build a bridge or a road or go back to the moon. Heck, can’t even get clean drinking water to the folks in Flint, MI. 

Then the 2008 crash created by Wall Street greed. Then the virus. Then George Floyd, the latest in a long line of government-sanctioned killings by police of black people in this country.

Then the white backlash. Bill Barr. Law and order. Stop looting. A new fence around the White House. All the while never reading about, learning about or listening to the experience of black people in this country, who every day fear for their lives. They know it’s broken.

You will notice that the finance people on Wall St. and the big brands like Coke and Proctor&Gamble have been quiet during this time. Why? Because what they practice is now so odious, the making of money and producing nothing of value, that it is unseemly to talk about. 

But they are at it in the shadows that you don’t see on CNN or Fox News. They figure out how to keep selling us junk with no value, that poisons us, ruins our spirits, breaks a civic society into segments of customers, so they can get rich. And we allow Mark Zuckerberg to be the arbiter of free speech. It’s broken.

It is tempting to feel useless now. That the nihilist Republicans who want to keep cutting their own taxes will win. That the police with their boot on George Floyd’s neck will win. That the system that jammed black people into the ghetto and then prison will win. 

But if we do that; if we give in to allowing this broken society, all is lost. I choose instead to think about John Lewis and Rosa Parks. Try to live as they did. It is the only thing we can do. For to do nothing means we are doomed. 

To fix a broken society is hard. But it can be done. South Africa under Mandela formed a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. They laid all the evidence on the table, made public the crimes of white people who stole that country.  Then they forgave those crimes and formed a new government.

We should do the same - form a Truth and Reconciliation Commission about the crimes this country has committed against black people and others since our founding. Lay it all on the table. Then the president and the Congress of the United State should issue a formal apology. Then the Congress of the United States should pay reparations to the families affected by slavery and racism. 

Please don’t say we don’t have the money. And please don’t say it is too complicated. What we spent on the Iraq war and are now spending in this pandemic is about what reparations might cost. Let’s cut the Pentagon or the secret national security budget 10 percent for five years to get the money. 

And we have smart people who can design a reparations program. Direct payments to all black people in this country? Sure. Free college tuition for every black person? Yes. Interest free mortgages? Yes. Affirmative action? You bet. Direct transfer of farmland to black farmers? I’m for all of it. I will leave it to the smart people to design a system.

There is nothing we can do to excuse what we have done. Nothing excuses the crimes committed against black people in the cause of creating this much wealth and privilege for ourselves. 

But at least we can say we are sorry and then do what we do best. Write a check.