Name-Calling

By the time I was six years old and in the first grade, I’d learned to not call people names. If I did it, I got in trouble. I learned to do unto others as I’d have them do unto me. I learned it was important and right to love other people and to treat them kindly.

In elementary school, I learned the name put to bad behavior toward others—bullying. I learned that bullies put others down to lift themselves up. I learned that bullies have problems within.

I learned rules from the Bible—at home, at Sunday School, and at school. I learned not to bear false witness against people. That means lying, speaking falsely and unjustly, or deceiving.

I read the commandment: “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” What does that even mean? I used to think it meant saying God’s name with a cuss word.

But looking more deeply, does it mean to use God’s name in a wrong and empty way, to assign authority to beliefs and behavior in his name, when said beliefs and behavior are not of him and are contradictory to the Bible? Does it include our claiming to be of him, when we believe things or do things or support things that are obviously not of him, thus bringing shame to his name and damage to his character?

In our new world 2017 AC, name-calling is apparently accepted. Putting people down, saying false things, saying any adjective that will stick with that person for all time . . . it’s the new thing to do. I don’t like it. I’ve done it, and I don’t feel good about myself when I do. But even in the world of good people, of Christian Evangelicals and conservative Christians, it is given a go-ahead. Somehow, some way, Christians are willing to close their Bibles, put them on dusty shelves, and open their hearts in support of the one leader in our country who is so adept at name-calling. And not only that, they assign the name “Christian” to that one.

I just don’t understand. I really, really don’t.

But to help everybody out, The Failing New York Times has provided a list of examples. We can consult this list to learn how to effectively name-call—how to break the bones of our enemies, or even the ones who’ve legitimately called out something wrong we’ve done or said. After all, in our new world, we must get them back!

Here are a few examples of slams and slurs to draw from as we go about our days:

Low-energy Jeb Bush. Lyin’ Ted. Little Marco. Liddle Bob Corker—incompetent, couldn’t get elected dog catcher in Tennessee. Leakin’ James Comey—a leaker! Sloppy Steve Bannon. Cryin’ Chuck Schumer. Dummy John McCain—has done nothing! Total Dud John Kasich. Sleazy Adam Schiff. Al Frankenstein. Failed Presidential Candidate Lindsey Graham—I ran him out of the race like a little boy. Kooky Roberts. Pocahontas. So Totally Biased Shep Smith. Dope Brit Hume. FoxNews Flunky Charles Krauthammer. Unelectable Jeff Flake—toxic, weak, sad. Little Rocket Man. Hillary-flunky Meryl Streep—one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood. Ruth Bader Ginsburg—her mind is shot. Really Sad Mitt Romney—a total joke. Low-Life Lisa Belkin. Dumb as a Rock Mika Brzezinski. Very Weak Paul Ryan.

Here’s a link to 421 people, places, and things our president has insulted on Twitter—a complete and ongoing list. Thousands of slams and slurs! This is our brave new world and our newly molded Christian mindset.

Nobody’s perfect. We’re all guilty of something. We’ve all sinned. We’ve all done this maybe a little. I did in my teen days and lived to regret it. But this list . . . this seems like an awful lot of name-calling.

Nashville Women’s March: Peace, Unity, Love

I held one end of an American flag banner against the rail of a viewing porch on the Pedestrian Bridge high above the Cumberland River. That’s how I met Alma Sanford. She and her daughter brought the banner with them and displayed it throughout the Women’s March at Cumberland Park, the walk downtown on Second Avenue, and in Public Square Park. I passed the flag corner to my friend Susie to hold as we both shared in this historic event. Twenty thousand people gathered in Nashville to stand for “right” in America.

Alma Sanford is a retired attorney and political consultant. After she stopped practicing Law, she has worked in the areas of government service, political campaign management, event planning, and member of many boards, such as the Nashville State Community College Foundation to raise funds for student scholarships. I got this information from LinkedIn; she told us to look her up. She worked on current Nashville Mayor Megan Barry’s campaign. She told me this.

Alma is also a founding board member of the Tennessee Woman Suffrage Monument, Inc. According to LinkedIn, she:

“Prepared all initial legal documents for incorporation, application for non-profit status and planned first fundraiser. Participated in the selection of the sculptor Alan LeQuire, who was commissioned to create the monument to the Tennessee women suffragists who successfully gained the state of Tennessee’s ratification of the 19th Amendment. The monument includes 5 women that are 9 feet tall that will stand on a base of 3 feet…in Centennial Park in Nashville…”

The 19^th Amendment gave women the right to vote in 1920, the year before my mother was born. In other words, my grandmothers in their early years did not have the right to vote in the United States of America. Thank God for strong, bold women who stood up and spoke out! After 1920 white women could vote. In the late 1940s when my mother, a white woman, moved to Mississippi, she had to take a civics test and pay a poll tax to vote.

That was to keep black people from voting. Thank God for bold and strong African-Americans who stood up and spoke out for their rights in the 1960s! I lived it and watched it in the Mississippi Delta in my young years. My public school was segregated until 1965. In the 1970s I watched – yes, saw with my own eyes – black people getting off the sidewalk of an old Mississippi town when white people approached, lower their heads, and shuffle. It was a way of life there. My God! In the 1980s I sat in the public library of a small Mississippi Delta town looking at books with my children and watched the librarian refuse a book to a little girl of color and tell her, “You know you can’t check out a book here. Go’on now.” My God! My first act of activism was calling the main library director and reporting that incident. It was handled appropriately. Silence would have done nothing. We’ve always needed protestors in this country.

Sometimes it takes a strong, loud, collective voice to make the government more responsible and responsive to its citizens.

As reported, the “Women’s March Is The Biggest Protest In US History As An Estimated 2.9 Million March.”

In Nashville, twenty thousand marched. There were almost as many men as women. There were babies and children and dogs, and I heard there was one goat. I came to tears when I saw walking in front of me a woman who had to be in her 80s. Another touching moment was seeing a little girl all dressed in pink, sitting and resting on a pink poster. Another touching moment was seeing three Mexican workers, maybe facing deportation, in a downtown building stop their construction activity and stand in windows videoing the marchers. There was one woman in a wheelchair, worried about pre-existing conditions removed from health care.

We didn’t all agree on the same issues. We marched for our own reasons. Why did I march?

1. For my granddaughter. I have twin grandchildren—a girl and a boy. I want her to grow up with the same rights and standing and pay as he will have. We’ve come a long way there, but we’ve still got a way to go. I know. My husband died. I am single. I try to live in this world, where many men still look down on women, and where many women still believe their place is in the home cooking for their men and look down on other women who work and who are dealt a different hand in life.
2. Against bullying. I don’t want my granddaughter bullied by little boys on the playground, who may think they have a right to now, because our new president does this on a daily basis. I refuse to ever be bullied by a man again. Yes, it happened, and apparently they figured I was a strong woman because seven of them came to take me down. I was right, and they knew it, but they also knew they could bully me into shutting up.
3. Against sexual assault. Our current president has a history of sexual assault, which he has bragged about. He believes he has the right to do what he wants to women because he has power and wealth.
4. For facts over fiction. Because this is my writing life: seeing truth, dealing with the facts, not making anything up, speaking in my voice. I know Fake News when I see it.
5. For education and the arts and humanities. Because this is my life. I’m a teacher by degree and experience. I’m a writer and editor and exist in the literary community. We stand to lose a lot here with the incoming administration.
6. For health care and a women’s choice for her own body. I am against abortion. But I am for birth control, for a hysterectomy if a woman needs one, and for abortion in the case of rape, incest, and the life of the mother, which I might add that my Baptist denomination was always for, too. We have some nutcases in the incoming administration, and I don’t trust giving them the rights to make these decisions, as we in Tennessee did with our lawmakers.
7. For the environment. We have scientific documentation, and we know the chemicals that harm us. We need to be careful here. We stand to go back fifty years.

I stood up yesterday for and against these things. It was a wonderful, inspirational, peaceful, happy, accepting, unified, respectful gathering. As Susie said, we stood for peace, fairness, and respect for every human.

And today, hate came. Someone told me, “You are very sadly misrepresented by the celebrities you allow to speak for you…There are unspeakable injustices in this world and millions and millions of women would take our injustices in a heartbeat. The celebrities who were speaking to this movement were hate-filled and vulgar. You are lumped under that umbrella in the media…” This came out of the clear blue. It was fabricated, made up, a misrepresentation of me and my mission. I heard no celebrities talking about this. I think for myself.

And so what is that. Bullying. It’s a form of bullying. It’s what I marched against.

We need more Almas in our America. We need people in cities all over the world standing up for our now backward-and-downward-sliding America. We need yesterday’s good, strong, peaceful, determined, bold, collective voice continuing to speak out against the wrongs America is sliding into.

We don’t need the hate and division caused by fear of something outside the box or fake and negative-slanted news or radical misguided religion. I am so saddened and hurt to see it come to this.

But I will rise up, shake it off, and continue to stand for what I marched for.