Essays by Susan Baumgartner. Copyright 2016-2024.
It’s Sunday, August 18, 2024 (Edit: my cat wouldn’t let me finish on Sunday so this is being finished and posted Monday.) and I just read the daily themes set for the convention that starts tomorrow. I’m going to write my thoughts simply based on each of those 4 basic main ideas and see how I may or may not mesh with what unfolds in the upcoming days.
Monday: For The People
I have to look at today and into the years ahead when I read that line. We must redefine what that phrase means to us because it really is about us. Who the hell is this “us” and what exactly do we want? What is that “For”?
There are about 345 million of us people in the US. Sometimes, I wish we’d all take a few minutes and just think about who they all are- who WE all are. 345 million children, parents, siblings, grandparents, cousins, babies, elderly, teenagers, and neighbors. 345 million roles being played every single day. 345 million laughing, crying, eating, breathing, pooping, and peeing people. Our physical details may differ, but I believe we all want to be loved, valued, and have a sense of purpose. We are all here, together.
Tuesday: A Bold Vision for America’s Future
I saw an article in the news today that people died in a landslide in a garbage dump in Uganda. The US has environmental and humanitarian crises of our own, but we don’t face anything like that. I bring it up because Ugandan people are just as valuable as any one of us. People are people and there are over 8 billion of us around the globe (yes, the world is a 3D sphere).
Americans, Palestinians, Indonesians, Ugandans, Russians, Israelis, Ukrainians, Potawatomi…
Today, there are 195 countries recognized by the United Nations. We Americans must work within all those people and the countries they all find themselves in. We must invest continuously in global connections and diplomacy and seek mutually beneficial arrangements- for the people first, then the countries because we (like many other countries) do have peoples in the US who aren’t equal parties. Perhaps we’ll be able to help negotiate an agreement that will finally get everyone to a 2-country solution between Israel and Palestine. Hopefully, we can find ways to get leaders of countries like Russia to respect borders and negotiate issues rather than grab what they want. The world lived through European and American colonization and we should understand that and fight against allowing those types of injustices to expand once again.
To me, a bold vision for America is one where we use our brains and our hearts above all else and only consider fists as an absolute last and worst option. A bold vision would have us see EVERYONE, including the poorest of the poor anywhere and everywhere (here and around the world) as valuable human beings. And as valuable beings, if someone needs help and they aren’t seeking to control and manipulate others, we work to get them that help.
Wednesday: A Fight for Our Freedom
So, if I take the 2 previous ideas, that this country should be for ALL, and we should connect positively to all people around the world, how can we achieve those things? By institutionalizing modern interpretations of our rights and responsibilities and a modern understanding of key concepts like “liberty and justice for all”, “all men are created equal”, and “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”.
National corporate laws and international agreements to properly tax and regulate corporations with an emphasis on transparency? Yes. (See Christina Park’s Corporate Personhood: A Limit to Corporate Empowerment) Guarantee a certain level of health CARE for all US citizens, including medically-based reproductive care that encompasses all current medically-approved practices (yes, even abortion)? Yes. Implement the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to help everyone with the right can vote? Yes. Support and modernize the rules and regulations of public schools to ensure all children have a safe place to learn about this wonderful world we inhabit? Yes. Why not add 2 years of free post-secondary education as well? Establish a national weapon safety system and include mental health and social-emotional learning funding in that universal health CARE system? Yes. Maybe even a tax on weapon-related goods & services to help fund that. Revamp our law system to put significantly deeper penalties on crimes with weapons? Yes. Revamp the law system to slash the inequality of punishments and eliminate for-profit prisons? Yes. Yes. Yes. Incentivize clean water, air, and soil practices in general and move our agricultural support away from monoculture monoliths and factory farms? Yes.
Thursday: For Our Future
The first 3 days all support the final day’s goal:
For = today’s actions.
Our = everyone and everything.
Future = together.
That's where I'm at today. Not the most detailed and clearly not the most educated of essays, but it's me.
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| Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site |
I truly hate the descriptive “white” as it is used to define some people. I’m using it today because I’m being forced to. Perhaps being forced will end up working as an effective tool for me. Coercion has always left doors open to big things, hasn’t it.
I’d like you to close your eyes and picture the people in your life who could be described by the term “white guy”. In today's understanding of it, try to get a good feel for who exactly that term could apply to in your circle. If it includes yourself, put yourself in there and just go with it. There’s no judging here- you’re just applying a label. You’re not actually making yourself or them into something different or changing who they innately are. Please remember that.
OK, so all of us have some folks in our minds who could get this label? You probably based your decisions on their looks or maybe you even went so far as to consider DNA. You might have used “balls and penis” to define “guy” and maybe you decided anyone whose family hails from Europe is what you call “white”. Maybe. Because over time, different parts of Europe weren’t considered “white” here in the US. Even today, folks whose ancestors were from Spain are labeled “Hispanic” and not “white” on a lot of forms, correct? And folks who came from some areas of Asia look “white”. Did you lump anyone you know whose relatives immigrated from Russia as “white”? Let’s not forget Jewish men or anyone who has historically “passed”? White? Does your vision of “white” include an assumed layer of Protestant Christianity? Hmm…
Let’s just leave that alone for now and move on. Much has been said in recent decades and into 2024 that the United States needs to go “back” to something. Some say we need to follow the “original” Constitution.
The Constitution was written incredibly vaguely to neither support or attack specific people. The definition of people was left to each state mainly because some of the dudes who wrote the Constitution and people they knew owned people. One thing we do know is that every single person who wrote the Constitution was defined in their time as 2 things: white and male. How did they get to these positions of power? Land and material goods manufacture. How did they get these things? Through generational wealth and the systems they and their families (headed by men) brought from Europe.
What about women? No term in the original Constitution applies directly to women. The document does not define state or federal citizenship. When it was written, women had little to no guaranteed rights or independence. We must remember that the colonials came from Europe and that was a predominantly patriarchal, land wealth-based system. It was possible for a white woman to be independent, but rare.
Wisconsinite Matthew Trewhella preached to his Waukesha County congregation in 2020 that, “When you see sodomy running rampant, when you see women in government, when you see men behaving like effeminate little squirrels, judgment is in the land,”. Mr. Trewhella has become a prominent part of the Republican Party of Waukesha County according to a Propublica article posted by Wisconsin Public Radio on July 10, 2024. A quote from this article:
What is Mr. Trewhella’s vision when he uses the term “men”? I am assuming that Mr. Trewhella is including himself in this group that must “correct” things with swords. Is he open to anyone with balls and a penis? Or is his definition of “male” and “men” affected by other things like skin color, ethnicity, religion, sexual preferences, favorite foods, preferred music, sports appreciations… The filters can go off into the weeds. Regardless, thoughts of Mr. Trewhella are being supported by a local political party.
Be a Christian of good standing
Marry a woman
Have children
Never get divorced
Financially support said woman and children for the rest of your life
Ensure your children marry, have children, and your male children financially support their women and children
Defend with arms or otherwise your means of supporting your woman, children, and income and that of other men locally and nationally
Ensure everyone in your family maintains their statuses as Christians in good standing
As I recall seeing and holding my sons for the first time, I cannot imagine thinking to myself in that moment that the above list of things would be their goals. If they freely chose one, some, or all of these things would be one thing. But to have that brief list define their potential value and role? And in conjunction with that, have my own life and everyone else's (who in your world would fall outside that group of white guys you had in your mind?) structured by the ramifications of all that?
Absolutely not.
I’m reminded of Zen priest angel Kyodo williams and my thoughts on her On Being talk that I listened to and wrote about in 2018. That essay is called Spring and the Death of Denial.
If we work in a state of grace, we can face and transform beyond the past to the point where these artificial labels and denials of universal truths will fall away.
