Come On, People…..

In the past week, just in case I had forgotten that campaign season is upon us, I have received communications from Bernie Sanders (sign up to support the 32 hour work week, stop aid to Israel until they capitulate to the Squad’s demands), the Republican National Committee (support Trump by electing his supporters), every single Democrat running for a seat in the House of Representatives (send me money, any amount), the Trump campaign (send me even more money, I need it), at least 3 pro-choice groups, a few voters’ rights groups, both the Republican and Democrat Congressional and Senate Committees, responses to my emails sent to various Senators and Representatives, and other crap I cannot remember.

Suffice it to say that every one of these communications stressed urgency, incipient danger to our community, and an unbounded dislike, abundant demonization, and most of them, pure hatred of the opposition.

I am reminded of a very old comedy parody song by Tom Lehrer (which I may have quoted in a past rant??)  Tom was a Professor of Mathematics and other subjects at MIT, Harvard, Wellesley, and the University of California, Santa Cruz as well as a researcher at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory.  Tom was also a musician, singer-songwriter, and political satirist of some repute.  Lehrer got laughs by singing catchy tunes with lyrics that could simultaneously make you laugh and bite you in the ass. 

Here then, are the lyrics from Tom Lehrer’s “National Brotherhood Week” (which ceased being celebrated sometime in the 1980s) from the 1965 album That Was The Year That Was.*

Oh, the white folks hate the black folks
And the black folks hate the white folks
To hate all but the right folks
Is an old established rule

But during
National Brotherhood Week, National Brotherhood Week
Lena Horne and Sheriff Clark are dancing cheek to cheek
It’s fun to eulogize the people you despise
As long you don’t let them in your school

Oh, the poor folks, hate the rich folks
And the rich folks hate the poor folks
All of my folks hate all of your folks
It’s American as apple pie

But during
National Brotherhood Week, National Brotherhood Week
New Yorkers love the Puerto Ricans cause it’s very chic
Step up and shake the hand of someone you can’t stand
You can tolerate him if you try

Oh the Protestants hate the Catholics
And the Catholics hate the Protestants
And the Hindus hate the Muslims
And everybody hates the Jews

But during
National Brotherhood Week, National Brotherhood Week
It’s National Everyone-Smile-At-One-Another-hood Week
Be nice to people who are inferior to you
It’s only for a week so have no fear
Be grateful that it doesn’t last all year.

There is no doubt that our tolerance for what is politically correct has dropped precipitously in the almost 60 years since this song was recorded.  But what is even more surprising is how true this “parody” rings 60 years later.

Listening to the political rhetoric today makes me think that not that much has changed since 1965, including the ability, willingness, and opportunity to spew your hate into the public domain.  Tom’s lyrics, which broke up the audience in 1965, are remarkable because of how true they remain.  What was funny as we were all coming to grips with our prejudice and hate in 1965 is somewhat less funny now, while, unfortunately, remaining no less true.  In 1965, Tom Lehrer used humor to make us look at ourselves.  And back then, it helped.

Today, what is being said leaves no doubt about who we are and how we look.  And it is doing anything but helping.

Hate has become mainstream and public.  Academics package it all up in semantics and academic psychobabble but for the most part share a view of the world that most non-academics would not agree with.   Progressive Democrats conflate support for Palestinians with support for Hamas and in that support are becoming comfortable with the worldwide jihadi rhetoric and violence against Jews everywhere.  Right wingers march, shout, lie, and occasionally kill protesters while the left wingers talk about intersectionality and slop around words and expressions like genocide, privilege, settler/colonialist, and agency without understanding what those words actually mean in the current context.

But all in, it is about hate.  Hate because of what you are, or how you look, or how you present or identify, or what pronouns you choose to use, or your pigmentation, or your income level, or your accent, or your political orientation.  In fact, the list of stuff that generates hatred has seemingly no end.

Now to some extent, this has been true for much of human history.  It is fair to say that eradicating this kind of hate is not possible.  But currently, we are not helping ourselves.  The strident and divisive politics, the sense of more limited opportunities for growth and advancement, more separation between orthodoxy and those who are “reformed” in these modern times has been accelerated and magnified by the growth in social media where few actual restrictions or consequences exist to temper what we say.  And often, what we say leads to what we do.  In all of my past work experiences the reality has always been that it is behavior that changes culture.  Our culture is changing and, overall, not for the better.

Some of the extremes of our “free and open” society are becoming our own worst enemy.  The time for thinking about how to restrict hate speech, how to ensure content moderation, how to prevent misinformation, required disclosure of deepfake creations and more has arrived at our doorstep.  Our founders had no ability to imagine the world we now live in.  Their assumptions were based on a culture and society far different from our current state.  We should and need to start to craft behaviors that support the culture we desire, because we cannot continue on the track we have been on.

We need to start thinking about this like we think about addiction.  If we don’t, sooner or later, we will consume too much and it will destroy us.  We need to fix this.  And we have to, unlike Tom’s satiric expression of gratitude, make that fix last a whole lot longer than a week.

*Note:  you can hear all the songs and see all the lyrics on That Was The Year That Was.