My daughter is scared.
Scared enough that she thinks we should move to Canada. Let me explain to you why she came to that conclusion to the best of my ability. But first let me tell you a little something about her so you can understand why she is so upset.
My daughter is a bright, happy outgoing generally optimistic person. She makes friends easily, and is one of the first people to befriend someone who is new to her school or people that others consider misfits or outcasts. When she has felt that other kids were being bullied or wrongfully accused she has stood up and defended them with far more courage than I ever did when I was her age.
She also openly defends her liberal political beliefs against the majority of kids who come from conservative families, and she does so with well reasoned factual arguments. She loves animals and is an ethical vegetarian: i.e., she first refused to eat meat beginning when she was six because it involved the slaughter of animals. When she was nine in 2004 she went with me to Cincinnati to canvas for votes for Kerry in some of the worst slums and projects I have ever seen.
Despite suffering from ADHD (diagnosed when she was seven) she has managed to overcome the limitations that condition places on her to become one of the top students in her 10th grade class. The classes she takes include Honors Chemistry, Honors English, Honors Pre-Calculus, Advanced Placement World History, Art and Latin. In addition to maintaining a top grade average she participated in Junior Varsity volleyball (practice or games 6 days a week), and participates in two after school clubs: Chemistry Club (last year she was the only Freshman member of the club) and Japanese Club (her ancestry is half-Japanese through her mother).
Last night after my daughter finished her homework early (a rare event considering her usual workload), she and I watched a movie, just to spend some father – daughter time together. After the movie ended, we switched back to the television which just happened to be set to Lawrence O’Donnell’s new show “The Last Word.” I was about to change the channel to something else when she stopped me because the video of Moveon.org activist, Lauren Valle, getting manhandled, thrown to the ground and having her head stomped on by Rand Paul supporters was being shown.
She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. “That’s wrong! Why are they doing that to that poor girl? Why are they beating her? She wan’t doing anything to them!” (Pardon me for paraphrasing her words here; she was quite upset and in shock at witnessing the video and I can only approximate what she said from my poor memory, but that is the basic gist of her comments).
I explained as best I could that the supporters for Rand Paul were treating her this way because she was a liberal activist for Moveon.org who opposed his candidacy. I told her that Ms. Valle was beaten up because the Rand Paul supporters didn’t agree with her political views.
I explained that Rand Paul was a Tea Party candidate running as a Republican and that they consider liberals and Democrats and especially President Obama to be the cause of all the country’s problems. She knows about the Tea Party because some of her relatives on my side of the family attend Tea Party rallies. I also explained that many right wing media outlets, bloggers and commentators were downplaying the incident and that quite a few of them even went so far as to claim that Ms. Valle was at fault and deserved to be beaten up.
“That still doesn’t justify what they did,” she said. “That was horrible. Those are evil people.” She couldn’t understand why these Tea Party supporters of Rand Paul hated this poor woman so much that they considered her a threat and their enemy. “Don’t they know she’s an American, too? That she had a right to be there just like them?”
Then she started asking about [name deleted], her favorite [relationship deleted] who is an avowed Tea Party supporter. “Do you think {name deleted] has seen this video?”
I told her I didn’t know. “We should call [name deleted] because I know [name deleted] is a good person. I just didn’t understand how good people like her [favorite relative on my side of the family] could support this.” So I tried to provide some context, much of which she already knew.
I talked about how Fox News and other conservfative media outlets has been demonizing liberals with hate speech for years. We talked about Glenn Beck (now being shown on the O’Donnell show pretending in a televised skit to give Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi a glass of poisoned wine) and others had gone out of their way to make outrageous claims about Democrats and President Obama.
How they claimed that Obama was a Muslim and a Socialist and a fascist and was out to destroy the white middle class (all lies, many of them contradictory and irrational). I told her of how many right wing pundits used language to incite people to violence like Bill O’Reilly who constantly referred to the recently assassinated abortion provider, George Tiller, as “Tiller the Baby Killer” on his TV show. And I told her of James Adkisson and Byron William,s right wing extremists whe were inspired by these right wing hatemongers on Fox News, to plan violent attacks on liberal groups, and in Adkisson’s case actually murder a member of a Unitarian-Universalist church in Knoxville, Tennessee because they were a liberal church.
I also talked about the massive outpouring of hundreds of millions of dollars of cash donations from wealthy and anonynmous corporations to run attack ads against Democrats, because of the recently decided Citizen’s United decision by the Supreme Court. I told her how these organizations were supporting the most radical Republicans, the ones with the most extreme views about government, civil rights, etc. I also told her of the ads Sharron Angle and others were running, using menacing images of Latinos to suggest that white families were in danger. ” They’re really dong that? But that’s racist!” she cried. All I could do was nod my head in agreement.
I guess I went too far in providing her all this information because when I was finished she told me she thought we should move to Canada. “They have health care up there for people, right?” Yes, they did I told her, better health care than we do. “Well, then we should just go.”
I said that would be giving up. That we needed to stay and fight for what was best in America, and fight for our values. That if everyone did what she suggested the people left behind would suffer more. I told her that, believe it or not, things have been worse before.
But she was in despair about the state of our country. “I just don’t see how things are going to get better,” she said. “I don’t see how one person can make a difference, not when so many people are so full of hate. Hate for people like me.”
I pointed out that Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement had changed our country for the better at a time when no one thought that would ever happen, and that it was still possible for good people to stand up for what is right and make a difference. But I’m not sure I convinced her. She went to sleep but not before asking me if Vancouver would be a good place to live.
“They have Japanese people there, don’t they?”
But that was last night, and she was in shock after having seen that video. I’m hoping today that she’s calmed down after a night’s sleep and isn’t so afraid of what’s happening in her own country, because though she has reason to be afraid, I don’t want the best person I know to ever give up on her homeland.
Not yet anyway. Because we are going to need all the smart, brave and compassionate liberals we can get in the years to come if we are ever going to change the direction this nation is headed.
