The (Not Archie) Bunker Mentality

One of these things is not like the other

Growing up on the tough (and by tough I mean 'Mom, why can't I ride my bike to Smitty's to get a slice of pizza?') streets of Scottsdale, Arizona, it wasn't like we were in the thick of the cultural tumult that was America in the 1970's. Trust me when I tell you we weren't. Diversity came through the magic of one of the five measly TV channels we got at the time in the form of 'The Jeffersons' and 'Soul Train.' Controversy wasn't very welcome in our home which is why 'All in the Family' was pretty much verboten. Although I was not yet five years old when the show debuted, it ran until 1979 and I can remember furtively watching it from time to time, not appreciating the satire at play, but sensing this Archie Bunker guy really was some kind of a tool.

'All in the Family' served as vehicle to bring the uncomfortable truths (e.g. racism, war, xenophobia) America was facing at the time into the national discussion. Served up in the form of comedy, it made  talking about those issues easier. Somehow, laughing at the bigoted "U.S.-born, heterosexual White Anglo-Saxon Protestant male") rantings of Archie made his rants seem ludicrous. Seeing Archie bloviate about the black family that had just moved in next door gave viewers the chance to see how inane that attitude was in reality. Ironically, Mr. Bunker's vain attempts to understand the world helped viewers to break free from their own states of bunker mentality.

A bunker mentality is defined as an attitude of extreme defensiveness and self-justification based on an often exaggerated sense of being under persistent attack from others. Archie Bunker certainly displayed that mentality and it was probably no accident that the creators of the show gave him that last name. While Archie Bunker served as a comedic foil for the angst that the United States faced more than 40 years ago, there is a far less funny (and by far less funny, I mean not funny at all - if you are looking for proof, see his recent train wreck appearance on "Saturday Night Live") and truly bigoted "U.S.-born, heterosexual White Anglo-Saxon Protestant male" making what Archie did look like child's play.

I speak, of course, of Donald J. Trump. It appeared for awhile, at least, that his position behind the steering wheel of the Klown Kar that is the Republican Presidential Campaign was more of an exercise in self-promotion the likes of which our nation has never seen than anything else. From overstating his ratings performance while at NBC, to calling the voters of Iowa stupid, to bullying other candidates as if he were Nelson Muntz come to life, to suggesting he'd date his daughter, he could not outcrass himself, and somehow the people answering pollsters questions could not get enough of him.

Then came his xenophobic and Hitler-esque assertion that he would register all Muslims living in the United States. But he reminded us all that he's not a bigot. In the wake of the mass shootings in San Bernadino perpetrated by an American citizen, a Muslim, and his wife in San Bernadino, Trump let his bunker mentality freak flag fly higher than ever when he proposed a ban on Muslims entering the United States and peppering that with the idea of internment camps for Muslims as well. But he reminded us all that he's not a bigot. Methinks he doth protest too much.

Ask any Japanese-American who lived in the internment camps the United States established during WWII about how that went for them. Spoiler alert - it didn't go well. Read "Infamy" by Richard Reeves for more about the camps. I'd suggest that Trump read it but since his name is nowhere to be found in its pages, he won't be picking it up anytime soon. Despite that dark chapter in our history, the U.S. is not a nation prone to rounding groups of people up and imprisoning them based solely on suspicion and ethnicity. In Trump's bunker mentality version of U.S. democracy, it appears round ups would be all too real. It was all too real for the Jews and anyone else who didn't fit the Aryan ideal under the madness of Hitler. Look how that turned out. Spoiler alert - it went well for no one.

Winston Churchill once said, "Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." I'm afraid that since the lessons of WWII to be learned from Japanese internment camps in the United States or the xenophobia that a bigoted megalomaniac created in Germany are lost on Trump since his name is not mentioned in the history books, it will be up to the American people to make this madness stop. Norman Lear helped us see the inanity of racism through the bluster of his character, Archie Bunker, and our nation changed bit by bit. Maybe this time, it'll be Twitter that gets the job done.

@JebBush Donald Trump is unhinged. His "policy" proposals are not serious."
@JennyJohnsonHi5 It's like Donald Trump is running for the office of America's Angry Racist Grandma

Even Satan himself isn't having it:
@s8n Comparing Donald Trump to me is really insulting

You know it's bad when Satan has been offended.

C'mon, America. Seriously. We are better than the paranoid state an unhinged megalomaniac would have us believe. We are better than this.

In brief.

It would be foolish of us to expect that TMFKATB writes a version of "War and Peace" each week. In what is now 75 weekly letters, he has kept us up-to-date on what's going on his life and has rarely left us  wanting for more. Maybe since it was his 75th, today's letter was brief, as in MTV News brief (gotta keep it snappy when your audience is the very definition of short attention span).

Most importantly, he's happy. He has a new companion and is now working with a young man from Florida (the Panhandle area, which is a whole new level of Florida crazy that he gets to learn about) but he's enjoying working with him. Per him, it was a week with some excellent training and spiritual growth.

That said, it was awfully short on detail. When he's brief like this, I tend to do a little reading between the lines, just to reassure myself that all is well. In doing that today, I get the sense that he's doing fine. He's making sure that things are never boring as he serves. Life was never boring when he was home. He excels at making sure things aren't dull.

Even though he kept things brief today, even though it's been a few hours since we had our exchange, here I am mulling things over, smiling at some of the things he said and I'm grateful for that. So there is beauty in brevity after all.

It must end.

When will we grow weary of reading yet another
list of names of those killed in a shooting? 

For the first time in 95 years, the venerated New York Times has today published an editorial on the front page of the paper. In 1920, the reason for the front page editorial was the nomination of  Warren G. Harding as the Republican presidential candidate. Looking back through the lens of hindsight now, that editorial seems superfluous at best. In the future, the same will not be said of today's editorial. The reason for today's editorial is far more compelling. In the wake of yet another mass shooting, in which 14 people were slaughtered, the editorial is a much needed call for greater regulation on gun control.

For me to try and improve upon the call issued by the Times would be ludicrous. I will only implore you to read it. For those who refuse to read the Times because the oracles of all things 'fair and balanced' at Fox News or the Blaze tell you not to, please read the editorial. It is not a left-wing grab to take away your right to own a gun. It is a call for our nation to be better. It is a call for our nation to at least try and stop the madness of uncontrolled gun violence.

When will we tire of reading the names of those who have died in a mass shooting? How many more times will we have to hear the neighbor or co-worker of a perpetrator say, "I never it saw it coming." Have we grown so callous that the anguish of a victim's family means nothing to us? I'm afraid the answer to that one is yes. Given that the massacre of twenty elementary school children spurned zero change in our gun control laws, our sense of decency took a long walk off a short pier.

Somehow this madness must stop. It must end.

"It is a moral outrage and national disgrace that civilians can 

legally purchase weapons designed to kill people with

brutal speed and efficiency."

End the Gun Epidemic in America - New York Times Editorial Board, Dec. 5, 2015

The Power of Song?

The high note killed the auto-focus
on the camera

When TMFKATB got a second trainee companion, turning his companionship into a trio, about six weeks ago, I posted  some thoughts on them NOT being the Three Tenors. I may have been wrong in that assertion, based on the photos included in this week's letter. Although out of focus, no doubt due to the power of song they were generating, you can see these three going for the high notes in whatever song they had chosen to belt out at the moment. Turns out, as seen in another photo, they were going to town on a Christmas carol.

The Three Not Tenors

He didn't give us the backstory in his letter, other than to tell us that the lady at the keys loves these three boys like they were her grandsons. We do know that was taken at Thanksgiving so we were grateful to know he spent the day feeling loved. He talked a bit in his letter about serving, checking in on people throughout the week, and seeing good things happened. He was feeling loved and as a parent, you don't ask for much more than that.

While TMFKATB felt loved throughout the week, he also spent Thanksgiving Day feeling stuffed. They had an enormous traditional Thanksgiving meal and then a Mexican one. That one consisted of copious amounts of tamales and pozole. I would have given my right arm to have been at that meal since our Thanksgiving meal was courteous of the snack basket at JetBlue Airways. Thanks to the Terra Chips, I got my sweet potatoes that day and 82 degree temperates when we landed in the straight-up crazy that is Florida. So who's complaining? Not me.

I'm still chuckling as I think about my son singing with his companions. Neither his mother or I are musically talented. We are decidedly and horrifically not musical. I don't think the apple fell that far from the tree for my son either. That said, there had to be something sweet to hear these three singing. That's the power of song and music, I guess. It's good stuff.