The Way of the Brontosaurus

When I was in elementary school, my father took me to the Met, as in NYC Metropolitan Museum of Art from the front entrance on 5th Avenue.. The architecture of the building was a bold statement that even people that have never been to New York recognize.  It's an icon often used on TV.  My favorite exhibit was the dinosaurs and my favorite dinosaur was the Brontosaurus.  We knew they traveled in herds, are plants and were bigger than a T-Rex.  The sight of the skeleton was humbling.  Then in 2012, a discovery made the Brontosaurus go away.  Just like that one of my favorite "animals" was gone, much like Pluto was no longer a planet.  Did I scream denying conspiracy theories all over YouTube?  No.  Rush to fight over school books and lesson plans?  No.  Scream that scientists were wrong?  No.  Frankly, because I'm not an idiot and it's not my field of expertise. A couple years later, the Brontosaurus was back, because science had found another piece of evidence that proved there were three, not two, similar animals. I was quite pleased. So I understand some people have a hard time wrapping their minds around "new" science, and how things like the disappearing, reappearing Brontosaurus might be confusing 

Sometimes things exist or are accepted to exist until something proves it was incorrect. Certain things have been proven.  Gravity for example.  Sir Issac Newton "discovered" gravity, that it had a fixed rate of acceleration on Earth and a formula that has been proven consistently over and over.  There's no doubting gravity. Yet suddenly we have people believing in "flat earth" nonsense.  (I'm just going to call it what it is.)  These people want it taught in schools to your kids.  Forget that gravity wouldn't actually exist without the rotation of the sphere we call Earth.  Forget that Magellan sailed around the world literally in 1519, 500 years ago, proving the Earth was round. US Navy carrier groups often do *world cruises". Thousands of Marines and sailors each time would have to lie and/or be fooled on every single one for more than 2 centuries.  Yes, that's how absurd the flat earth conspiracy "theory" is.

So one huge problem?  We need to stop calling these "theories".  Theory in science means it's been hypothesized, then verified by multiple other sources. A hypothesis hasn't been proven and independently verified. Scientific theory has been verified by multiple scientists and data.  We have done a great disservice by using the term "theory" colloquially for any lame brain idea that pops into some idiot's head and gives their conspiracy nonsense some semblance of reality, even with every known fact flying in the face of the nonsense. Flat earth conspiracy is just one of the dumb ideas nutjobs around this country want to teach your kids. 

Who cares?  Why do I need to know?  Because these snake oil salesmen are pushing schools to teach this garbage and the current GOP is making it happen. How dumb do you want future generations of Americans to be?  We are talking 3rd world level hocus pocus, fear based, nonsense that would weaken our nation.  How can we compete if the next generations are basically educated like this is 1620 instead of 2020?

Maybe the most horrifying is the story of Adam and Eve  Creationism is on the rise again.  Most educated people are familiar with the monkey trials in 1950's Tennessee. This was already decided. Creationism is a religious thing. It in fact is an Abrahamic thing; only Christianity, Judaism and Islam believe the world was created this way.  Buddhists do not believe God created the world. The world just is. It has no end and no beginning. It is ever changing much like the shoreline does as tides roll in and out. The universe as a whole just ebbs and flows.  Wicca believe Mother Earth created the world as we see it but nature only. It's unclear who created the rock nature is built upon.  Neither of those religions agree with the Abrahamics. In fact, no other religion agrees.  These 3 can't even agree. Christianity, the youngest of the 3 claims the Sabbath is on Sunday. Muslims claim Friday. And Judaism is Saturday. All 3 have the exact same book of Genesis as their reference.  Even if their views were exactly the same, why as a Taoist would I want my kids taught what I find completely unacceptable both from my religious beliefs and scientific knowledge?  More importantly, why would any Americans want our kids to be taught something that has no basis in actual science in a science class?

Back to flat earthers. What is this?  Complete nonsense. Yet, 650+ attendees at the last "Flat Earth" convention.  It's like Scientology minus Tom Cruise.  It's one man's ramblings on YouTube rather than in a book. Nevermind if  lthe flat earth conspiracy were true, you couldn't fly from Hawaii to Hong Kong in 12 hours and to San Francisco in 5 hours. They cut the Pacific in half.  So you could do one or the other but not both. The whole premise of a flat earth is idiotic. Yet people who are "home schooling" their kids are teaching this crap because they don't have the educations to be teachers in the first place.  This YouTube clown is convincing them even though we have over 500 years of proof he's an idiot.  Worse?  Now, he wants your kids to be taught this garbage in real schools.  As if it couldn't get worse, some GOP elected officials believe this nonsense and agree with him.

Now, if flat earth and creationism don't scare the bejeebies out of you?  There's also a group that teaches the moon is a hologram. Nevermind we don't have the technology to create a hologram that large.  Seriously, these people don't believe we can build rockets capable of going to space but they believe we can create a hologram hoax of the moon for thousands of years.  Nevermind the proven fact the moon's mass controls the ebbs and flows of the tides--because that's all faked too on flat earth.  Nevermind its gravitational pull is what keeps our atmosphere just right.  The moon is a hologram. The moon landing was a hoax.  The pictures astronauts and cosmonauts alike have taken from the space station of the beautiful sphere we call Earth are all faked. You've got to be thinking this is ridiculous.  However, think back to the dumbest kid in your 3rd grade class, not paying attention, and only listening to the dumbest people in his family, now 40 something with his own YouTube channel.  Voila. Suddenly that guy has got all kinds of people believing this nonsense and wanting to teach it to your kids, in public schools you fund with your taxes.  Never happen?  Yet 7% of Americans believe this and are home schooling their kids and... and vote almost exclusively GOP. 

Sure 7% is pretty low and most people don't believe that garbage.  Yet, 20 years ago only about 30% of Americans believed in Creationism.  Today?  Around 40%.  *eye roll* How is that even possible?  Does it even matter?  Yes, it does  In the SE USA we allowed the states to teach that African Americans liked being slaves all the way up into 2010's in one state.  As a result, I know people in their 40's and up that still believe that because that's what they were taught IN school.  Nevermind the idea of being a slave goes completely against our own American Doctrine that happiness is tied to liberty and freedom.  Only a complete idiot would believe anyone liked being a slave, right?  But kids are basically idiots with a sponge for information. If the information you put in there is garbage, they will think the garbage is true for what may be the rest of their lives. 

Hell, scarier? Yes these conspiracies get even more ridiculous.  How old is the Earth?  Geologists say 4.5 BILLION, yes billion, years. Yet, 40% of Americans now believe it's only 6000 years old. That we lived and rode dinosaurs.  Obviously people who have never actually seen an actual Brontosaurus skeleton. 

These people aren't screaming to reopen libraries and schools. They are screaming for us to reopen churches and bars. That tells you everything you need to know about them. Make no mistake; some college educated are this undereducated too. They majored in business, basket weaving, even some in engineering and sciences (although so minute in comparison).  They just didn't pay attention in elementary to high school, or worse, this is the crap they were taught not just at home but in schools. So they want to take a giant leap backwards as every other westernized nation moves ahead of us in the sciences because we are letting these conspiracies run rampant thinking facts will win out.

When you vote for a Republican, and especially Trump which is crazy since he doesn't even go to church at all (unless we count Twitter), this is what you are voting for.  Not just the dumbing down of America. Complete and utter stupidity where we will have multiple generations of people so undereducated they will be slave labor for everyone else on the planet. Science may be taking a beating and starting to look like the loser here.  But it's time for a big comeback like the Brontosauruses, for the sake of our kids, multiple generations of Americans to come, and for God's sake, for truth. God didn't make fools. They choose to be and then they want to spread it like a cancer.  I've used a quote from the Dalai Lama before in similar blogs. "If science proves (a fundamental religious belief) is wrong, then we simply quit believing in it.". 

How to Live With a Guilty Conscience

Many years ago if my boys want to tell you they will tell you that two amazing women helped me raise them.  The first one because as a mechanic/electronics/maintenance tech in a plant, third shift was my only option, and this amazing woman, who was really like a sister to me, negotiated with her supervisor to leave her second shift job just couple minutes early to take my boys home with her, provide them a good night's sleep and be like we expect family to be.  A few years later, another friend, an empty nester whose children were grown, college bound, and who had so many indirect familia ties, also helped.  She was so like we expect family to be that my boys referred to her and her husband as Aunt and Uncle.  It's really debatable if her husband was really ever more than an unwanted brother in law, but that's family, yeah?  Both of these amazing women helped take care of my boys for the better part of a year and a half to two years. Both were absolutely like family to me. These two women are my sisters.  I would never forsake them like I have my blood family at times.  Yet, a couple years back, I had to realize that I didn't treat them the same.  What?  Was one more unfair?  Was one less giving?  Was one or the other a better friend?  Was one more consistent?  No, no, no...no to all of.  Both fantastic to my boys, like they would be to their own children.  These women, in spite of husbands or real family or even ugly so called friends, were amazing to me and to my sons.  Both of them unquestionably my sisters, unquestionably family.  So why did I raise my sons to call only one of them "Aunt"?

If you've read this blog, you know a couple years back I was attacked by some "white" asshole in a very nice brand hotel for not being "white" enough.  He assumed, wrongly, that I was Hispanic in descent.  It wasn't that it was the first time.  I went to Clemson after getting out of the military.  Clemson was an oasis, but 15 minutes back then in any direction and I learned, very unpleasantly, that as "white" as I had always been treated all over the USA, I wasn't "white" enough for some people.  It was a rude awakening, and yet none of those experiences came close to this "white", supposed-self identified CEO of a company, self identified graduate of the University of Wisconsin, screaming at me in a drunken stupor that I had no Rights in the country I was raised in, that I served in a war, that I was a various number of Hispanic slurs AND NOT A LICK Hispanic.  Yes, it bothers me still.  I can't imagine what it would be like to fear some random asshole acting like that to me daily.  While I was at Clemson, late 90s and early 2000s after serving my country, yeah, I never imagined.  But over the years, I've met men like him. Way more than anyone should ever have to, but I would stand there stunned as the on-lookers at the hotel did.
A racist schmuck screaming bloody epithets.  Inciting.  Hurtful.  Cruel.  Just based on the color of someone's skin tone.  I'm a light olive. I look Italian, Slavic, Polish, Hungarian.  No joke.  I should I'm descendant of at least two of those. Yes, that is me being smart-ass-ish, but I grew up "white", or so I thought.  And no one was changing that in the Deep South, but he wasn't Southern and we weren't in the Deep South.  We were in Michigan, at a higher end hotel, both I presume for work.  It was a really rude awakening.

I had to process.  It was devastating. At the same time, one of my former friends, beautiful, blonde, blue eyed, 1970's stereotype of "All American" ran a DNA test.  She decided she wanted to know about her ancestors.  There were blanks in her family tree and she was hoping that a DNA test would fill those gaps.  Imagine how she reacted when the blanks traced back to a black slave who was so "high yella" (yeah I didn't know what it meant till I came South but it's just a rude way of saying "white" enough black to pass for "white")....Are you picturing a Cheryl Ladd look-alike?  Maybe more like Farrah?  Somewhere between.  That'd be about right.  Her DNA came back 1/8+ African American.  So what, right?  Two grandparents had "black" blood.  It was 2018, yet she went ballistic.  That might even be an understatement.  She was ill, pissed, angry to the point of accusing the DNA companies of lying.  Like yeah, they would lie. They don't even know her.  Our friendship was destroyed by this revelation.  She was "white".  Well, by visual, absolutely.  But one thing most people don't know about the falling out, was it was shortly after I had been attacked and she said to me that I couldn't possibly understand how "important", HOW IMPORTANT, it is to be "WHITE".  How fucking important is it?  Like that statement in itself screamed "white privilege", superiority, how she viewed herself in reality better than anyone that she perceived as less white and suddenly I saw her for what she was.  A bigot, a racist, and the worst kind.  Nice to your face while sub-consciously believing down to her core she was better just based on the color and heredity of her skin.

The silence in that conversation could have choked both angels and demons alike.  I grew up  "white".  Slavic, Polish, Italian, Eastern European, Hungarian,...I grew up with people that looked just like me.  In the Deep South, she had grown up that if you looked like me you were either "black passing for white" (her words in another forthcoming spew of shit) or Native.  "My people", the Natives she presumed, were mistreated-ish, but now they have casinos and money so it all "evens out".  Tell that to the Navajo Nation...."eye roll".  But I'm not any of those, so it all just made me more angry and more ridden with guilt.  I'm not "white" but I lived where I could assume I'm "white" so I'm "white" until I meet someone, worse a friend, who just threw it in my face that I'm not "white" and therefore "obviously" I would take the non-white position???  Wow.  Not "white enough" and i "already knew that".  That experience in Grand Rapids Michigan had happened before.  But not really.  Only in South Carolina.  Never anywhere else in the USA until the racist f*s crawled out from their rocks.  Everywhere else in this country, no.  She thought that was the norm, ALL MY LIFE, EVERYWHERE in the USA, because it was normal in her minute little world of 25 miles radius around where she was born and raised.  Just another day in paradise in her mind.  I had no reason to be upset with her, afterall, she had treated me "white" and not allowed anyone like this asshole in Michigan to treat me as less than "white".  But I was "less than white" in her opinion.  We had never discussed it.  I assumed it didn't matter.  I assumed that it wasn't even an issue to be discussed.  She assumed I wasn't "white" and knew I wasn't "white" and therefore there was no discussion necessary.  

What a rude awakening.  I wasn't "white" enough.  I really never had given it any thought until then.  My sons are blond, blue, hazel and green/blue/grey'hazel (changing colors based on mood).  White.  Dimples.  Surfer looks.  Farm boys.  They look like my grandfather or my ex or Parker Stevenson.  I wasn't "white" enough.  She didn't say it direct.  She didn't need to.  She made it clear.  Only a "white" woman could possibly be upset by finding out they aren't "white" and she was "white" no matter what some "bullshit" DNA said.  Three DNA tests...She's still "black", whether we're friends or not.  The end of our friendship didn't change that.  According to Blue Book laws here, she's less than 95% "white" and therefore she's a mulatto.  Her path of acceptance has been a long one as we have a mutual friend still.  I'm not sure she's there yet.  But this isn't about her, but the opening to me to do some real self evaluation.  

What started to change?  My own views. The one experience was the catalyst and the other the push forward.  Did I have my own sub-conscious issues?  My grandparents were racist, but by 1960's standards quite progressive.  Times do dictate appropriate.  As we grow, what was appropriate is considered inappropriate as we consider others' feelings and equality.  I know most people don't self analyze like I do.  But I look at everything that happens to me as a learning experience.  I take the Buddhist, Taoist view, that each experience is an opportunity to see something in myself.  I wanted to understand, maybe release myself, from my own racism.  Most "white" people see racism as they are blatant racists or they are not.  They either use racial epithets or they don't.  They refuse other races or they don't.  They hate or they don't.  But life isn't really black or white, is it?  Puns intended.  Life is a hue of everything, and each of us harbor what we grew up with whether we want to acknowledge it.  Whether we recognize it or not.  Suddenly I had to think about my view of the world.  I'm not racist.  I would've stood up and defended a woman in my position with some jerk screaming racist insults at her, whether I knew her or not.  I call people on that behavior, both in my past and to this day.  I don't allow that behavior in my presence.  I'm not racist.  Yet, neither was my blond bimbo friend either in her own eyes.  Deep breath.  

So I asked my friend, the one who had arranged to get off work early to help me with my young boys, who treated them like her own, who's son is like my own.  My fair skinned "black" friend.  She let me off the hook.  I could've taken it.  She told me that because I was "ambiguous' looking it was just how some people were.  I'm still "white" enough was the basic message, but I didn't want what I wanted to hear.  I wanted her view.  Her view?  She prays everyday for her son.  That he won't be in the wrong place at the wrong time.  That he won't move too fast or too slow and spook at cop at what should be a normal traffic stop.  How everyday she knows her son is an amazing educated young man, but how she worries he might be driving the wrong car, look at the wrong person, lean over the wrong direction.  What.  The.  Fuck.  Suddenly, I was a bit guilt ridden.  I hadn't gone through this.  I worried about wrong decisions my sons might make.  That I might not have been the best parent.  She worried about those things too, but she had this other worry that I didn't even imagine, let alone think about daily.  

Over the last two years, I've cut off a lot of my "white" friends.  I was so shocked as I discussed these things with some how they would tell me that "of course" I would be "sympathetic" because i wasn't "white" enough.  Or how, "those" people ask for it.  Or how I was obviously stepping out of my "zone".  Sigh..And I'm not racist, but somehow I seemed to have a LOT of racist friends...

But that wasn't the worst of it.  Suddenly, I realized that I had two women that were like family.  Helped me with my boys.  One was Aunt and one was not.  The two both gave so much I could never repay either.  Yet, the Aunt was the "white" one and the one that was not?  Was not.  I'm not saying one was more or less than the other.  In fact, quite the opposite.  They were both so good to me and my boys.  They were both my sisters and my sons' aunts.  They both earned that.  So it hit me like a ton of bricks.  Why was one "Aunt" and the other was not?  It was my own, bit of sub-conscious racism. Both are family.  I just didn't openly acknowledge my non-white friend was an aunt to my sons and a sister to me.  They, both of these women, deserved the same level of respect.  I had just been inconsistent in applying that respect.  

What's the take away?  If you are "white" America and you think you aren't "racist" because you aren't blatant, you aren't screaming at other races, you smile, you are polite, you do your "best" to be a "good" person?  That doesn't mean you aren't racist.  What means you aren't racist is you self analyze.  You recognize you have no non-white friends and you make the effort to change that.  We all work with multiple races, so you can.  You don't roll your eyes when you see a couple kids of another race.  You don't assume too brown, isn't it nice they are Native, brag how Native you are when you look "whiter" than bread.  You simply start to acknowledge we fail no matter how "non-racist" we are.  I'm not saying go out there and kiss ass.  I'm saying the Indian couple whose wife wears the full garb and with the Hindi dot on her forehead aren't weird and why did they move into your neighborhood isn't a problem for you.  I'm saying the asshole neighbor who you drink beer with twice a week who's bitching they moved in?  You tell him to shut the hell up nicely once and then if he keeps saying shitty things?  You quit drinking beer with him until he realizes he's being an asshole.  If he never realizes he's an asshole?  You go over to the Hindi neighbors with a fruit basket because you looked up that food baskets are considered respectful and you are making the effort, no matter what that asshole you thought was a good guy says.  And when he asks you?  You tell him flat out.  Nice neighbors.  Different?  Yeah, you suppose, but you like diversity and how amazing the wife's stuffed grape leaves are.  It's not enough you are not blatantly racist.  You have to try to overcome the underlying racism that we all have, the underlying racism so many of us allow by inaction.

Here's my way.  I am so sorry to one of my best friends, a sister, that my sons didn't call her Aunt.  She earned that.  I just had underlying racist beliefs, ones that should never have endured.  I'm not using them as an excuse for my guilty conscience.  I know it was wrong.  I'm sorry it took me this long to know it, and that it took even longer to grow a pair and admit it.  I cannot correct it.  My sons are grown.  I'm just glad that I did everything to teach them that I wasn't perfect and that skin hue was never a reason to judge anyone, whether capabilities, intelligence or friendship.  I just wasn't completely consistent with my message.  Fortunately for me, they knew I was wrong before I did.