Team Whitey
I often find myself thinking in terms of teams. Maybe it is because I grew up playing sports, but when I look at how things break down I watch for the groupings and affiliations and wonder how much that comes into play.
Most people on here are American, and as Americans we have a tendency to root for other Americans to succeed. We don’t know them, but we still root for Lance Armstrong and Michael Phelps to beat that other guy we don’t know with a different flag on his outfit, because we affiliate as Americans.
Beyond the broad American brand, we root for people who are from where we are from locally. We want the home team to do well, and we want the guy from our home town to succeed. We want the local high school team to be champion, and we want a local kid to make it to the pros.
But, generally speaking, we don’t know these people. Generally speaking the local team is no more honorable or virtuous than any other team or person. Our only reason for a loyalty is a shared affiliation, less researched, exclusive, or earned than something like Elks club membership. Still we root, we show allegiance, and we show preference in our decision making. Sometimes consciously, sometimes subconsciously.
I bring up the Elks club to move on to considering the Masons. My grandfather was able to become a Mason, and he did so because as a Mason you have an instant allegiance to other Masons, who are often people in power and authority. He said all of the stuff was silly, with the secret handshakes and such, but being on a team with powerful people gave you an advantage.
So let me take this thought to another level and look at other groupings and teams. I for example was born into the Manchester United of biological outcomes. I am a white, American, man. We have a lot of powerful players on our team, with a long history of winning. Winning by questionable means of course, lots of performance enhancing ethical decisions came into play.
In order to achieve and maintain our status, my team has taken the equivalent of a collapsible metal baton to a number of other racial, cultural and gender competitors. Sure, I’m not a Skull and Bones level member, from a wealthy family who summers in the Hamptons, but it’s still pretty sweet to be drafted onto the team with biggest budget and nicest stadiums.
So from my position one can’t begrudge other teams trying to rally to level the playing field. Other groups trying to organize and assist each other as groups, in opposition to the status quo of rules and traditions that helped keep team Whitey on top. They would be foolish not to do this. But I’m a pretty open minded White dude, without a lot of race or gender loyalty. Much like my feelings for the Washington Redskins has fallen in light of new ownership over they years, I understand my team can be all kind of shady.
I look at the Tea Party movement as a subgroup of team Whitey. They look at America with a possessive bent, as a thing their team made. America, to them, is a Christian nation founded on Christian beliefs and the Chrisian-Judeo ethical standards. To them, America was founded on revolutions against excessive taxes and on individual rights, including the right to bear arms against government if need be as the founders themselves did to create this country. America is about planting a flag on a piece of property and in being yours, and that protecting your family and property is paramount, and those who should try to take what is yours get shot. It is about personal accountability and independence, with charity through the church and not the government so that it comes with a dose of morality and good Christian values. Government handing out without the Christian morality of the church has led to depravity and moral decay, they believe.
They are about a man working and a woman raising the kids. And those kids should be raised Christian, including teaching Christian values in school, with government staying the hell out it if parents believe if you spare the rod you spoil the child. It is about homosexuality being a sin, not to be condoned by the government. It is about the Bible (as they interpret it) being taught as textbook and standing as the law of the land.
It’s about bringing back a combination of the myths of times that never existed, when everyone was happier and life was better. You know, kind of like the Islamic fundamentalist movements pushing for a return to the good old days of Sharia law.
This is their America, and their team. And if you aren’t on the team you are against the team. And therefore you are against America, and an enemy of the American way of life which they believe has brought us so much prosperity. Which they believe has made Team Whitey a winner.
That is until some guy named Barack won, and the streak was broken.
If you point out that the country was also founded on killing Injuns and Slavery it is the same as pointing out that instant replay shows their team should have actually lost if they played by the rules, if the playing field was actually level. So what if women couldn’t even vote until 1920 (finally ratified by the last state, Mississippi in 1984…) they can now so you are only making excuses.
But the winning team believe they have won because their culture is better, and you have lost because your culture is worse. They may not say it, but it’s implied. They see Team Whitey being on top as being self evident and approved by God because of his approval of their Christian values. And that they need to rally after the first presidential loss in over two hundred years for a comeback and a return to team whitey’s Yankeesque dominance.
But this clarity of goal seems to be why it is hard for us, um…I’ll call us Team Amorphous, to seem to stand up to them. Our philosophy isn’t so doctrinal and firm. It’s harder to get people to rally behind an open multicultural society incorporating a mix of ideas and philosophies seeking a communal good while respecting individual cultural differences and ideas, and other stuff!
Team Amorphous is about a lot of stuff depending on why you joined the team, and even some stuff in opposition to other ideas of other team members. And we fight each other on these margins with great intellectual vigor to the point where we lose sight of common values over conceptual disagreements. There is a saying about Democrats, how we set up firing squads not in a line, but in a circle, so we end up shooting ourselves. I feel like we aren’t so much a team as an organization set up like the League of Nations, and that didn’t work out so well in the run up to WWII.
I’m watching the Facebook posts from my Tea Party family members as they rally for their shared values against the infidels, namely me and people like me. And it scares me, because they know exactly where they stand and what they believe. They are on the same page, against a clear and perceived threat. They have put any side squabbles they may have to the side, and they vote.
Now the Tea Party is not the Republican Party, and that schism grows by the day and could make the whole thing moot if they can’t field someone that can win a general election. Except team Whitey is stinging from it’s first major loss to a guy named Barack, and so I think they will vote.
And I don’t know if Team Amorphous will.
As a rule, I hate that we all divide into arbitrary teams. It is why there is war, why the divide between rich and poor is so great, why it still really isn’t who you are but where you were born and to whom. But at this moment, some really extreme people are on the verge of gaining real political power.
So we should probably do something about that.