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I am constantly reminded how the US has no mommy. It’s all about daddy here who would rather take the kid to go hunting or shoot off rockets than scold him for not doing his homework or ‘clean your plate, wash your hands, don’t lie’.
Think about it. We’ve never had a mommy to do this. The church and the press has acted like that for
much of our history, but when there’s a chance to make lots of money or go fight a war, we always ignored her anyway.
Oprah’s not our mommy, nor is Hillary. Martha Stewart? Nope.
Britain may be the example that proves the rule. Victoria and Elizabeth so overshadowed the British for the 18-1900′s. In her case, she IS the state and once was esteemed everything maternal values would stand for.
Russia has them in her history, Germany too. Italy, Spain, France all still have some form of a Mary figure, still an amazing figure and they all at least have sense enough to have state healthcare.
I’m not saying this as a lark or a joke. It’s rather serious and getting worse all the time.
Glenn Beck seriously needs his mommy.
But in at least three big ways have I seen this maternal role being played out in our American history:
One) In Churchly community-oriented models and methods, the way many hospitals used to be
Two) the culture of the university — one that used to teach distinctions like between self-interest and enlightened self-interest as some might point out or even scientific rigor and which now measures most things in a strict cost-benefit analysis — which no longer has a collective understanding of what is meant when it’s graduates are asked ‘Where did you matriculate?’ Of course, Matriculation has been replaced with a superior sleaker, business friendly model that works students like the products and strict resource producing assets they are. So long as they pay.
Three )the media in her watchdog capacity, with a history of popularizing things like abolition, even actions against Tamany Hall, or those efforts for Abstinence, for Prohibition, Suffrage, later the growth of Labor Unions and so on.
In short, the Nanny Culture, though folks will hate the term. We don’t have it. Absent.
Oprah may have seen this best and maybe did her best. Made a lot of money by … comforting people.
But the country hasn’t had even a surrogate, besides television since … I don’t know when.
Not Elanor Roosevelt though she was probably the last nation-wide descendant of that set of cultural waves borne out of Suffrage, out of Prohibition rallies and so on. And sorry, not Ayn Rand.
Nobody to tell us to wash our hands, wash our mouth out, or even ‘don’t take your guns to town’
[ahem]
Amen, pass the ammunition!
This is no indictment either of half the population. Not at all. In fact, it is the cue I see taken by many amazing women all over the country and all over the world standing up and saying what’s on their minds, pointing out what’s so often very wrong that I see so much real hope of what there is in what we can be as well as in what’s out there. I know Europeans who love Rachel Maddow for example or think Elizabeth Warren could act as a popular and thereby even necesary corrective to what ails so much of American CW about just the economy. And just for the record I think Nancy Pelosi has done a wonderful job, despite what many may say. As the first Madame Speaker she deserves a lot of credit for keeping her steel in the toxic political environment after 2006. So, despite what I may disagree with and often in policy, Yay Nancy!
And y’know, Jon Stewart has a mommy and it shows.
The Right is building one too or is she self-grooming already? Gosh how fast they grow up.
Even Silvio Berlusconi is instructive here. Back in November, I pointed out — Thursday’s scoop as it turned out — reported by NPR has him saying he likes beautiful women. But I didn’t think that he respected them so much as had shown a pattern of acting like he would simply own them or perhaps, even more important to him, to then own ‘the story’. This one story seems to have snagged the towering Berlusconi in a way that won’t let go. Hence so much trouble. Ahh, he’s a politician so he means the opposite of what he says. Bet he didn’t learn that from his momma.
The examples come up every day. Might this not be a handy way to point out the excesses we are daily being subject to? In every field it seems where economics, politics and power reveals their tendencies?
Does the US need someone to come on and remind us every day not to lie, cheat or steal and the last few words of the Pledge of Allegiance “… with liberty and justice for all” ? Like right before Fox-n-Frenz? Really?
12 Comments
recommended, ks — thanks
We certainly need someone to remind us about the liberty and justice for all part, especially the President who has showed little respect for liberty and none for Justice (being afraid to look backward) since he took office.
Recommended.
An Artemis/Athena/Hera type… Maybe like Eowyn in LOTR?
The Statue of Liberty? Wait, it’s just a statue. Justice is often a woman in front of the Court Houses? But they blindfolded her.
Still looking…..wait. Annie Oakley? She had a gun.
Thanks…
Absolutely! Galadriel was just that figure for Lothlorien. Don’t piss her off!!! hahaha
I live in Kansas and people here still have manners. ‘Please’ and ‘Thank You’, people open doors for each other, send thank you letters, give each other gifts, make attempts to be respectful of especially strangers. But the way I see this latest turn, it started with the war on ‘political correctness’ and as the US devolved into the ‘war on terror’, a war mentality took wing and spread. Of course FOX was at the forefront (from what I could tell) of this attitude but it was picked up initially from people like Rush and Imus, Mark Levin etc. People who have shown they will say anything to get attention.
In the last ten or fifteen years they have taken this discourteous attitude and devolved in turn into spreading outright fabrications.
In my view, so much of the ‘lack of response’ from the left to counter the spew is because the left can’t believe the right are being so … discourteous. We spout and spit ‘That’s just wrong!’ but are taken aback by the effrontery of hearing things so vile. In response, culturally, we take a step back and try to understand them, to see ‘where they’re coming from’. Meanwhile the right reloads knowing or thinking they’ve won another battle. And they advance.
The difference is in tactics and in certainty in the narrative they support. They know what they want even if what they want is not realizable on planet earth. They have a narrative that they have merged to include different groups (neo-cons, religious evangelists, fiscal conservatives etc).
On the other hand, we have ‘issues’ and different theories on how to resolve them. We are a ton of activists and allies — who know in their heart what is right — but because we let them continually attack us, in turn I fear we’ve become demoralized by such constant cultural attacks.
We can see someone like Kucinich or Al Franken, Alan Grayson championing our issues, in an exemplary fashion and cheer them on, but the right just laughs at them and punches them in the face.
So my belief, rather than merely engaging the right in their preferred arena, on their terms, in their regular playing field is to instead point out their frailties and weaknesses in ways they cannot ignore and have to address.
Hopefully I can fill this idea out and move it forward.
I always think of the message on the statue of liberty ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…’ and compare that with the reality we hear about in AZ and TX. Even the downtown newyork mosque. I would like to think Lady Liberty would find that behavior shameful for a nation of immigrants.
thanx mzchief!
very good points. And I am heartened to hear that civility and courtesy still exists. I practice it myself, most of the time.
I believe in a well-boundaried theory of attraction, as to how the Left will be able to embody our values and keep on gaining new members. And to a certain degree, I only am responsible for my own behavior. I may not like how others behave, but I certainly do not have to join them in their despicable behavior. Example-setting with powerful values will probably succeed in the long-run.
Oh, and I think having heroes and heroines/role models can be very helpful, but I don’t want to give over my sense of personal power to them.
After admiring candidate Obama, I have become much less willing to trust most politicians. I think we need to find our role models elsewhere, in different spheres.
Maybe something like a Kuan Yin/Durga/Shakti person? Not to be embodied in any *one* living person? Better held in the spirit realm?? Dunno…
I agree with your points, well presented.
But, as I’m sure you can see, even in the discussion of who is the mommy and who is the daddy, there are still SIDES, you dig. This constant polarization is so pervasive, I could already hear the liberal/conservative spiels about the issue… which democrat is a total mommy and who out of the republicans is trying too hard to be like daddy.
I think there needs to be a general acceptance by Americans of their MORTALITY, for lack of a better word. There needs to be a re-connection to the core of things that makes us the same humans as can be found anywhere on the globe. We need to reconnect and realign with who we are and who we need to be. And that’s a journey ALL mommies AND daddies have to make eventually.
I totally agree with what you say here and people do need to start with those core belief/understandings, and work it out and move things forward.
Yeah. Lot of that goin on around here. Crazy but, seems true.
And all over the world.
Sure there’s misery, there’s brutality and willful misunderstanding and endless power games. But there’s also people starting to look and see and think outside the have-and-have-not, us/them, judeo-christian-muslim/unbelieving, female/male, salt-pepper, divisiveness that can also unite. The internet helps.
And I should be careful because I don’t speak FOR FDL or FOR any religion or political philosophy or anything like that. Just observation and a bit of optimism.