Tolerance Was Always Too Low A Standard

We the People, in the hopes of forming a More Perfect Union, have settled for a society of tolerance.

Wasn't it tolerance that created segregation?

What's the problem with tolerance?

Let me provide an example or two.

Did you know that the United Nations believes that we can eliminate AIDS by 2030
(AIDS epidemic can be eradicated by 2030)

AIDS that is, not HIV as a virus can never be truly eradicated.  If the difference between those two confuses you still, it is because we've moved from laughing at the word during my 1987 graduation benediction speech, to now probably knowing someone who lives with or died from AIDS, yet that's about the extent of our progress.

People rarely die from AIDS anymore but millions of US still have no clue about the advances in medicine, or the continuing risks that still exists relative to the disease.  If we understood AIDS and didn't try to tolerate it as only a homosexual or drug addict problem, I would not be still shaking my head 30 years later at the stupidity of such a smart nation.

Several of our presidential candidates are partially victims of this disease of tolerance that has infected us into apathy, while some are using moments of real humanitarian crisis to tap into the unfounded fears of people.  How do I know these are unfounded fears?

Because every migrant who already risked their lives in leaving home would hardly feel slighted by ANY help that America's congress could agree to. Forget Syria for a moment. Any idea of fixing our Mexican immigration issue would be 100% better than nothing at all or dying in the desert.  Yet, a basic agreement driven by human understanding is exactly what got Eric Cantor fired from politics forever.

What exactly did we hope to achieve in becoming a more tolerant nation?  A marriage that looks something like the separate bedroom marriages that used to exist prior to this push to be tolerant?

I wish I didn't have this happy sadness every time thousands of people crowd around Donald Trump to listen to him lie about thousands of New Jersey Muslims having a tailgate style party over the fall of our Twin Towers.

To Trumps credit (and his thousands of followers), a Washington Post article helped to generate the confusion that Trump is capitalizing on now.  The article was wrong, but it wasn't unseemly to capitalize on our misdirected anger back then, and it's obviously not so hard to do now either.

My sadness with all of this comes from all of the living that we've done since the Civil Rights Act of 1964, with so little change to show for it.  My happiness comes from the reality that most change begins when the bottom becomes clear.  In my mind, this is exactly what you get when you allow tolerance to be the height of your social pursuit.

Plenty of US have lived with this misconceived notion that WE actually used the tears from watching Martin and Malcolm and those Kennedy brothers die for a more perfect union, to actually become a more perfect union.

Mostly WE pursued tolerance.

Tolerance like they had in seemingly Happy Days or the world of Leave It To Beaver. When folks stayed together forever, but not always in the same bedroom and not with the magnetic passion that created the union, but with the tolerance and acceptance that you  probably won't be too bothered by someone who sleeps in another room.

Tolerance has value- but it doesn't insure understanding.  Respect is cool too, but it wasn't the reason for the orgasmic bliss that built this great family of people United by a common belief and emboldened by an acceptance of the intense necessity of understanding family to perfect the Union and insure the hope for tomorrow.

If WE the People are agreeable to tolerance, WE are essentially retreating to our separate rooms.
If nothing else, Trump is helping us see how very little WE have learned about each other while retreating to our own rooms in this pursuit of tolerance.

Even back in the day, Dad always needed Mom to help adorn the space while Mom probably needed Dad to redecorate from time to time without back pain to follow.  Trump is uncovering our segregated dusty rooms and the damage to our carpets from not redecorating and moving things around a bit.  He's also showing how separate is rarely equal and how ignorance is rarely bliss.

Plenty of Americans can totally relate to every sentiment that is driving the GOP presidential election leader, while plenty of the rest of US who mistakenly believed WE were better than this are witnessing the sad truth.

The Truth Is Never Bad 

Leave It To Beaver didn't prepare us for neighbors like Archie Bunker or George Jefferson, although Archie and George tried like hell to prepare us for today by saying
"Hey!...Like it or  not, this is America too"

Meanwhile, most of us who could, ran to recreate that Leave It To Beaver dream that never was as valuable as it appeared in the first place.  It was fairly tolerant, but segregation will always be tolerant.

Today, WE the People still need integration and understanding to form a more perfect union.  Tolerance has never allowed for too much integration, or the red states and suburbs of America wouldn't be crafted as they are. The word suburb should basically mean "that community where diversity doesn't exist".

Show me a truly integrated community with lots of race mixing and racial understanding and I'll show you an expanding urban trap in which tolerance is still the agenda even if understanding is messing things up a bit and driving the red to be purple or blueish. Everywhere else, tolerance doesn't have to matter as much, and to hell with understanding.

Even WE who claim to be understanding are fooling ourselves a bit and need to recognize what Trump is revealing to us each and every day. WE are all just as confused about each other as ever, and more shocked by our lack of progress than WE should be.

Plenty of nations practice tolerance to some degree or other.  This more perfect union dream demands a new and different understanding.

Is Christian Hypocrisy Destroying The World & U.S.?

Before Pope Francis addresses America, I thought I
would offer this great nation a religious address of my own.

Gay marriage, or the war to stop it, is a religious one.

The war against aborted babies that may or may not be kicking on a table while clinging to life that is ironically, only being sustained for the proper harvesting of the brain from this particularly described- unwilling research donor- is a religious war as well, even if Carly Fiorina tells you its about the decency of all Americans.

Marijuana? Religious, even among  Catholics (Mexican, Irish, Italian...etc.) who drink for sport but abhor dope heads and question marijuana's medicinal value over that prescribed medicine waiting to potentially be recalled or over prescribed to a depressed PTSD soldier who is likely to die from the depression or the pill addiction but not the weed.

God knows that those hooded folks used religious justification to terrorize long before Dylann Roof thought it could kick off that religious race riot that way too many so-called religious folks promised was sitting on the edge of inevitability 20 years ago or more.

Religiously conservative Jews are now promising us all that Iran is the worlds great Satan while religious Iranians say similar things about Israel and America.  Regardless of who might be right, the mere references are a tug at the heart strings of religious folks who understand man's historical journey towards a manifest anti-Christ destiny, and the unwitting preemptive strikes from all sides that only help to prepare the necessary smokescreen for his comfortable arrival.

I could have titled this post, "Religious Hypocrisy" but that's not an accurate depiction of America's reality or my particular grievance.

Jews are already on record as describing JESUS AS A HOAX while anxiously waiting for the REAL Christ to please stand up and prove that previous Jewish rabble rouser a liar.

Love 'em or hate 'em, the Muslims are too deeply engaged in their own religious disagreement as a tenant of religion itself.  Sharia law could never come to exist without a faction of Muslims insistent on this caliphate mission. How gracious can Islamic Sharia Law pursuant's possibly be towards other religions while struggling to be tolerant towards the very people that they pray with every day and in the same way.

Although Muslims don't quibble with one another over the day, the necessity and quantity of prayer, worship and fellowship, they are at war over the importance of their religions founding prophet, Muhammad, whose family lineage and rebellious life journey pointed one direction for some Muslims, a different direction of thought and behavior from other Muslims, and that inevitable "third" group who can empathize with both sides of this war.

Islam and Judaism are Exempt from Grace

These two confused and thus confusing religions are actually free from the unequivocal call of Grace that asks but one thing from each and every Christian;

Exercise your faith in the gift of Grace by exercising your giving of Grace.

It puts Christians in the cat bird seat of religious pecking order relative to who and whom God expects to be the most gracious.

Might that be religious piety for a Christian (Me) to place a higher expectation upon the behavior of Christianity over every other religion?

I dare any Muslim or Jew (or atheist and agnostic for that matter) to battle EVERY Christian in a war to be gracious. I'll bring my crew and you bring yours, and we'll battle it out near the performance stage at Denver City Park next weekend.

As it stands, American Christian lawmakers, and the people they think they represent, aren't necessarily kicking butt in the battle to be gracious, especially towards desperate middle eastern refugees and migrants praying to God for a little American Christian Grace.

Long before Ben Carson's recent stupidity towards Muslims, Muslims questioned the full divinity of the prophet who inspires Christians to be gracious. Yet, this historically tolerant capacity of people inspired by Grace must have influenced a few of these refugees and migrants into death tempting sea voyages towards western/Christian refuge instead of more Islamic disagreement and violence.

For times like these.

At times like these, I often find myself confident that God needed black slaves in America.  Not so much for the reason that whites found valuable, but for value that would manifest itself in years and days after the scars solidified their shape on our backs.

The necessity of blacks in America and the necessity for America in the world is similarly linked, ordered and scarred to achieve tenacity and temperance when a balance is needed from both powerful forces. Insensitivity and intolerance on a macro or micro level is an entirely understandable human policy for the selfish, the weary or the scarred.

It's just not gracious.

For the Grace of God, trees made to nourish a nation have to grow up and take their place in the forest. Not only to realize the value of their purpose, but to stave off the proliferation of the selfish trees that evil uses to overtake the landscape and swallow up the rain and the sun from the rest of US.

If that analogy doesn't quite make sense to you, its likely because I'm talking to a different kind of Christian.