November 23, 2008
Ed Tubbs
Reno, NV_
_How long should one hold a grudge?_
“You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me?” — You’re damned right I am.
I’m sitting here wondering a number of things. How long should one hold a grudge? And what is a “grudge,” anyway? Is it ever positive? Or, is it always negative?
Here’s where I’m coming from. Every organization that backed it with funds or oral or written endorsements, every individual who agreed with it, and all who voted for it have painted themselves, as if by way of the hugest skywriting trail, as the most unforgivably, noxiously hateful, slithering lizard-brained, bottom-dwelling, disease-ridden life forms ever imagined. Absolutely, you becha, I’m ranting on those who for whatever misplaced knee-jerk prompting felt that California’s Prop 8 was anything above repellent.
It’s one thing to dress retro, or to fashion one’s home in retro. Maybe that’s cool, for those who are in search of something useful from their formative years, that they felt they lost four or five decades ago. It’s something else again, to slam the moral gearshift into ‘R’ and hit the gas pedal full blast. That is by no means a welcome or endearing “blast from that past.”
Yeah, “moral.” Because, as most the rest of the country was climbing down from the trees and taking a giant step forward, puerile California voters were denying to folks who had never done them a note of harm, who posed to not a one of them the least peril, privileges and rights in pursuit of just a chance to grasp some aspect of happiness that the majority wholeheartedly claim for themselves.
If anyone can explain to me, or to others, or to themselves how the merest modicum of support for Prop 8 is not the most egregious expression of hatred . . . I’d cherish being so enlightened. If anyone can explain to me why I shouldn’t hold such ilk in the lowest esteem (Say, the same disparaging regard I have for child molesters and skinheads and Sarah Palin fans), why I should not hold a grudge, or why that grudge should have an expiration date . . . I’d cherish being so enlightened. You see, right now my soul is saturated with the most extreme loathing for them, and for the organizations — most particularly the Mormon Church of Latter Day Saints, the Roman Catholic Church — and each all, every parishioner, who hasn’t located in themselves that speck of moral courage, and disowned the wrath-wielding institutions that worked such incredible evil. Their ignorance and despicable hatred took one of the most joyfully tear-filled moments I have ever known, and quite intentionally sullied it. And I just can’t get past how much I despise them for that.
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So, to the question, “how long?” I’ll have to answer rather along the same lines as I would if it pertained to dealing with those that statically had a better than 50-50 chance of having a deadly, highly communicable disease: Until assured by that just-met person that he or she does NOT have the communicable disease, I’ve got to proceed as if he or she did have it. In other words, for those from California, or those I might meet in California, I’ve got to presume that person DID vote for Prop 8. For that person, my grudge will hold until one of the two of us no longer breathes.
A concluding note for my African-American brothers and sisters. First, whether any of you care to acknowledge the fact, we ARE ALL BROTHERS and SISTERS. But I’ve got to tell you, I am ashamed of you. Much more important, however, you should be thoroughly ashamed of yourselves. Of all Americans, you who have been 400 years so long in agony, kept on the outskirts of American society and justice . . . for no reason other than that you seemed “different” to the white Americans who, in ignorance and ignominy, feared that infinitesimal difference and used it to enslave you and to hold you down, in a far greater percentage (70% according to exit polls), you wielded that very same form of hate that you yourselves suffered, to withhold from a population demographic the very same entitlement to dignity and respect that had been denied to you.
_
I will continue to my last breath to rail against all forms of racial hatred, against every bigoted act that might befall you. But damn brother . . . sister, how could you?
