cancelled

 

These days, if ever, we are not at our best, we are at our truest self and becoming more so. In life, one finds humans irrationally hateful, selfish, cruel. Entitled, obsessed with rights. Certain, mean, bullies. Obtuse, below average. Invariably racist. I remember my theology professor once asking, "How does God stand us?" 

You don't remember, but I do. After Pearl Harbor our hatred of anything Japanese, reactionary national policy of mass hysteria, racism, prejudice, suspicion and hatred, Americans of Japanese ancestry rounded up and interned in camps. 

And propaganda does a good and lasting job on us: more than seventy-five years on, I still struggle with my feelings about Germans and Germany. 

And you don't have to go to the theater for newsreels anymore, or wait for the newspaper or the six o'clock evening news on radio: social media fires instantaneous global outrage. After 9/11 there were stories of people bullying people who looked Middle Eastern, even Sikhs. I recall reading that in a McDonalds, some white subhuman picked on a little girl whose mother was wearing a hijab. 

NYT and "Conversation" are reporting that nowadays it's fast becoming cancel culture on everything Russian or that looks Russian or sounds Russian; even in NYC, reportedly, for the ultimate ridiculous, Ukrainian restaurants. Reactive politicians, populist governors in KYA for a thumbs-up order Russian vodka removed from store shelves. Doesn't matter to me, my vodka is Polish and Latvian, but I'm not a storekeeper or distributor with cancelled stock I can't return to Russia for refund. 

We'll become suspicious and hostile toward anyone with an Eastern European sounding name. 

Why is it: for humanity, we are not at our best, we are at our most average, which is not C+ but D-minus. How does God stand us?

Until this, I was shaky on understanding some current trendy terms: cancel, cancel culture. But I get it: ostracize, shun, boycott. Demote, disinherit, disclaim. We do it to people and groups judged socially or politically incorrect in our Time even if they were normal in theirs: recently I read that Thomas Jefferson is cancelled at UVA, which he is credited with having founded. Leonidas Polk at the University of the South, Sewanee. Robert E Lee sat here signs on pews in Episcopal churches. 

Next? I've said this before: George Washington is next and indeed why should the slave-owning Father of our Country, currently being indicted for having a slave who was his son, have his picture in school classrooms, hold the (posthumous) six-star rank of General of the Armies, and have one of the States and the nation's Capital City named for him (no question mark, it's a rhetorical question): demotion to recruit and a nationwide contest for new names for Washington State and Washington, DC. Wait: D-Who? Columbia, Columbus, AYKM? Columbus, GA? Columbus, OH? Washington County? W&L University? Robert E Lee High School? 

More, as it worsens: Ephesians 6:5 and Colossians 3:22, slaves obey your masters, two books to be expunged from the canon of scripture; and serious scholarly investigation as to Paul's authorship of Colossians, with the possibility of half our New Testament being cancel cultured. 

The scramble for correctness becomes increasingly frantic. Who watched on TV or heard on radio and laughed at Amos and Andy? Loved Al Jolson? Opposes reparations for Black Americans? Was entertained by Carroll O'Connor as Archie Bunker in All In The Family even though it was satire, parody of the worst that we can be. I remember an epiphany back in the 1980s when a beloved elderly parishioner developed Parkinson's, that suddenly Tim Conway's old man shuffling gait was not so funny. 

Where am I wandering off to in this? Into the brambles, we are most all of us guilty, if not directly personally, then through our fathers, our culture, our eponymous ancestors, our ignorance, innocence, obliviousness. Romans 3:10. The litany in our Ash Wednesday service has it right. Sometimes as we cancel others and scramble to cancel their culture but not ours, or even mea culpa ourselves to death, I wonder if the best thing might be Don't Look Up after all. 

On earth the Time may come when it no longer matters who was right and who was wrong.