The Romney Sandwich

    I got a letter from Uncle Barlow the other day.  Life is getting lively way out there in Barlow County.  And he's been watching the national news again, which often stirs him up.  Here's what he had to say.

"Dear Nephew,
    " I guess it's been a while since I wrote you. I've been mighty busy. You might remember that the Ladies' Genealogical Society  is working on a biographical history of Barlow County.  Well, they discovered that my Daddy bootlegged a little whiskey from time to time, and that I drove deliveries for him when I was a young buck.  And the trouble is, the Genealogical Society is pretty much the same bunch as the Ladies Auxiliary of the First Barlow Church.  When they found out about the whiskey, they took a fit.
      "Out of the blue I had a flock of them on my porch singing 'Come Ye Sinners,' and 'There Is A Fountain Filled With Blood.'  The Widow Cumbee was standing over to one side shouting at me to repent, and I want to tell you, when the Widow Cumbee gets wound up she can howl the chrome off a truck bumper.  All the commotion scared the tar out of my coon dog Buster, and he got stuck trying to hide under the sofa, and I guess  I said some things to the old biddies that I shouldn't have said.  So, then I had to go around to each of them and apologize, but every visit had to include another sermon about the evils of whiskey, and that wound up taking quite a while, and that's why I have been mighty busy.
    "Now, all that hellfire and brimstone put me in mind of catching up on the presidential election, since both the fellows running say the country will go straight to hell if the other one wins. And darned if that thing hasn't started to look like one of those mud-wrestling contests you can see on TV. Matter of fact, someone might want to caution those two fellows about winding up like those wrestlers.  I mean, after a while, if they've heaped enough mud on each other, it gets kind of hard to tell which one is which.
    "Anyhow, I am particularly interested in this fellow Romney, since he is the new one into this presidential business. And I've tried, nephew, honest I've tried.  But I just can't figure out what kind of man is walking around inside that fellow's clothes.
    "I see that while I was busy getting rescued from the jaws of hell, he went overseas to visit a bit. And I guess it took him a little while to get his bearings, seeing as how he started out by saying that the British couldn't organize a fire drill and those Palestinian folks were dumber than a box of hammers.  I mean, he probably really does understand that guests shouldn't talk that way.
    "But the thing that puzzled me was that when he finally did get to what he said was the point of things, which was foreign policy, he just said he had some ideas but he would get around to exaplaining  most of them some other time.  I said to Millie over at the library, if that was all he had to say he could have saved air fare and sent them a post card. Millie said he was never really interested in saying much of anything at all, that he just wanted to have some pictures taken with foreign leaders so he could look presidential.
    "I should warn you that Millie would just as soon kiss a snake as speak well of a Republican. She says they are just too darned nosy about what women do in their personal lives. She says they would favor chastity belts if they could get away with it. Millie has a mighty sharp tongue about some things, but I do have to say that on matters of sex and birth control and such, this Ryan fellow who is Romney's new sidekick does sound like one of those people who want the government make all of us join their church.
    "Anyhow, it seems like every other time Romney speaks up, all he wants to say is that President Obama is lower than a suck-egg dog.   Now, I guess most of us have already figured out that Romney doesn't think Obama is the man for the job, or else he wouln't be going to so much trouble to try to get him thrown out. And I guess it's understandable that Romney might get a little hot under the collar about it now and then.
    "But Millie says (I had to write this down, as Millie has a lot more words than I do) 'Personal derision of Barack Obama does not amount to a philosophy of government.'  For my own self, I would just say that if Romney is elected, he's going to have to do a lot more than cuss Obama to get us through the next four years.
    "I'd like to know some more about how me might go about that.  And here's where I start scratching my head.  Darned if he doesn't act like he wants to avoid the whole subject.  He says he's got a plan to cut taxes and balance the budget, but he doesn't explain how it would work. He says he's got a plan to lower unemployment, but he doesn't explain how that would work, either. He says he wants to eliminate some federal government office and agencies, but he won't say which ones.
    "And at the top of the list of things he's mum about, I guess you would have to put his income tax returns.  Now, I don't suppose they would show he's done anything illegal.  Those tax boys over at the IRS would have been after him long ago for something like that. I just think the returns would show he put a high life priority on getting rich, since you don't get to be as rich as he is by falling off a log. No, sir.  (Millie grumbles about him being a rich guy, but I told her that if we didn't allow rich guys to be president we would have eliminated quite a few good ones.)
   "No, the thing that interests me about this tax return business is that he gets so sniffy when the subject comes up.  He acts kind of like you're burping at the dinner table if you even ask.  It's almost like he's looking down his nose at the public, which is a strange kind of behavior for someone who wants a lot of folks to vote for him. Matter of fact, this whole business of asking us to choose his plans without really knowing what they are is strange behavior.
    "Millie says Scooter over at the cafe is missing a good bet with that mystery meat he serves. She says he should put it on bread and call it a Romney Sandwich.
    "That Millie. She has a mighty sharp tongue about some things.
    "I hope you are well.  I will try not to let it be so long before I write you again.
                                                                                     "Sincerely,
                                                                                     "Your Uncle Barlow"

Us Against Them

    Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita,
    Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;
    You won't have your names when you ride the big airplane, 
    All they will call you will be, "deportee"
                                           From "Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)"
                                           By Woody Guthrie and Martin Hoffman

    During World War II, Congress authorized a program to bring Mexican farm workers into the United States to fill labor shortages caused by the war. Private contractors were to provide transportation to and from the Mexican border. If contractors defaulted, the U.S. Immigration Service filled in.
    In 1948, a plane carrying Mexican laborers crashed in Los Gatos Canyon, California. All aboard were killed. Newspaper and radio accounts of the crash named the flight crew but not the 28 Mexican passengers. They were called only  "deportees."   They were buried in a mass grave.  Only 12 were ever identified.
    Folk singer Woody Guthrie wrote a poem containing the words above.  Later a schoolteacher named Martin Hoffman set it to music. The song became a staple of the American folk music  movement in the 1960s.
    Guthrie was assailing the cultural bias manifest in the episode: The dead passengers were only hired help.  And they were not even from our country.  They were not like "us." In death as in life, they mattered less.
    Biases are part of being human. Everyone harbors them.  We carry around in our heads a kind of personal caste system.  We label people:  This one is diligent; that one is lazy; the other is greedy. Some lifestyles are wholesome; of others we disapprove.   Some vocations are lofty, some menial. On the ladder in our minds, not everyone stands on the same rung.
    Our varying views have a common denominator:  Some people and their attitudes are essentially like me and mine.  But others are essentially different. Those differences mark the border of unfamiliar territory. There, my norms may not be observed;  my interests may not be wholly valued. People who are different put me on alert.
    Add the catalyst of ethnicity, and our attitudes can reach punitive extremes. The American story is full of examples. When they reached our shores, Italians, Irish, Poles, Dutch, Chinese and more had to endure disdain, ridicule, abuse and worse. To this day, African Americans pay a heavy price simply for being who they are.    
    Newcomers. Outsiders. People who don't look or speak or dress or worship or celebrate or grieve the way we do.  They all put us on alert.
    The death of  those wartime workers marks an example that has exploded anew in the debate of illegal immigration.  The debate can be especially heated, even venomous, because it takes place in a powerful new context. Demographic trends are literally changing the nation's face.  In about 40 years, people  who've traditionally thought of themselves the typical American -- that is, whites -- will be a minority.  The surge from south of the border is not just a legal, political or economic problem. It's a reminder that the way we live together in our own country is headed for fundamental and inescapable change. 
    Ethnicity also is playing a new role in presidential politics. An election that pits a moderately conservative Republican against a moderately liberal Democrat is complicated by the fact that the Republican challenger, Mitt Romney,  is a moneyed patrician, and the Democratic president is African American.   Us-versus-them imagery is especially tempting, and some have succumbed. A vivid example comes from former New Hampshire Governor and White House Chief of Staff John Sununu. He declared not long ago that President Barack Obama needs to "learn how to be an American."  This would be an exceedingly odd thing to say of a fifth generation WASP.  It resonates -- in some ears -- because the president is a black man with an unusual name.
    (For the sake of a smile, let us note that Sununu was born in Cuba, and that his immediate heritage is Palestinian and Greek.)
    Unless we find a way to transcend human nature, ethnic tensions are inevitable in a country as diverse as ours. But nowadays they've been heightened by the sheer size of the illegal migration from the south.   And other pressures -- economic, and cultural -- have joined to put ugly edges on our national conversation. 
    Failures of leadership complete the mix.  A bankruptcy of ideas has opened politics on the right to proprietorship by second-stringers, ideologues, snake oil salesmen and quacks.  Republicans themselves acknowledge that their presidential nominee is merely the strongest of a weak bunch.  
    On all sides we find a contagious portrayal of political notions as moral precepts. In the sadly ironic result, we lose the moral discipline to respect others' point of view. Policy debate becomes a kind of holy war.  Candidates are not merely opposed; they are reviled.  Public discourse becomes genuinely hostile to differences of opinion.  
    American democracy should aspire to more than an ethic of intolerance.