Unworthy Schemers, Demographics, and Nothing New Under The Sun

Modified image from photo by Bart Everson from New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

There is nothing new under the sun, sayeth the preacher. Surely he must have been talking of politics and unworthy schemers, for it is doubly true then. Understanding such folks to be “apostles of greed and racial arrogancies” and the truth becomes even more self-evident.

Excuse me, should have said demographics; that’s the more socially lubricated word for sliding racial issues into the discourse at present.

A certain host on a certain show has once again got folks talking about demographics, specifically immigration demographics. The point by point is out there if you so wish to know it. Trying to discuss those comments point by point is, well, pointless, because the game he runs is to not say the very bad thing while intentionally saying it closely enough everyone knows what he means. The unworthy schemer does this so that he can react with righteous indignation the following evening how “they” blew up over him not sayings the thing he didn’t say that way on purpose, which is proved because he didn’t say the exact wording of the very bad thing. This has the multiple purposes of not only filling another segment but also perpetuating his own brand and ethos while generating those hate watches and social media coverage.

And once that dies down, the unworthy schemer can just run the old “I’m just asking questions” hurdy-dur about vaccines to boost yourself back to the top of the Facebook video list. Later, rinse, repeat is the catechism of the unworthy schemers, a ritual designed to keep your outrage moving in a never ending circle.

Thing is, not only should folks know better than to take the bait into the oozing fire swamp of carefully coded and planned teleprompter reading, they should know none of this is original. Media figures using their platforms to insist that demographic changes through immigration are going to ruin the country has been a theme for over 150 years. Fear of demographic change always sold good copy — that’s the thing that mattered in the printed word business before the interwebs for you youngins — to the point that the terminology has remained largely unchanged since. “The great fear of the period that Uncle Sam may be swallowed by foreigners,” proclaims a cartoon from the 1860s. The “right” kind of immigrant brings ‘art’, ‘industry’, ‘capital’, and ‘politics’ to the United States, while the “wrong” kind, here depicted as Asian immigration in the form of a serpent, threatens the West coast with maladies such as ‘small pox’, ‘immorality’ and ‘ruin to white labor’, declares another from the 1880s.

All that fuel burned off in the fires of those proclaiming to be the “real Americans,” the nationalists, the Know-Nothings, the true patriots. Sound familiar? There is nothing new under the sun, especially when it comes to media figures stoking fearmongering about rac-oops, sorry, demographics.

That spiral down to the bottom where the self-proclaimed “real Americans” hold their invitation-only meetings always leads to the same ugly rhetorical places eventually. So, instead of chasing that spiral down the rabbit hole of ignorance and ruin, what is helpful is to pull back to a wider view to maintain perspective, to use a different metric, a different standard of who is and isn’t acting in good faith for the betterment of our country. And it comes from a place some might find off-putting, but I have found comfort in over and over again. One that would be impossible today. The demanders of historical revision have yet to fully cancel FDR, despite the longest serving president giving such folks plenty of ammunition and reason to do so. So before he is, let us ponder one of his better moments of rhetoric.

Ponder, if you will, the social media and press reaction if the President of the United States were to lead the nation in prayer, and publicly call for the defeat of “greed and racial arrogancies.” Imagine the President not only publicly leading the nation in prayer, but having copies of the prayer distributed so the citizenry could pray along. Such a thing really would break the internet.

Yet FDR did that very thing, offering a D-Day prayer in a national radio address since known as “A Mighty Endeavor” to most. It is a singularly excellent piece of American eloquence, prepared by FDR, his daughter Anna, and her husband, John Boettiger, with a quickly modified opening added on at the last moment. The thread of the American serviceman jerked from peace and flung into the horrors of war is contrasted with the need to free humanity. The historical hindsight of freeing humanity while Americans of the wrong descent were hearing the speech in camps. The shame that a still-segregated military carried it out with two classes of soldiers and sailors despite troops of color proving their worth time and time again. Still, the closing is something I reflect on often, and did again recoiling from the Real Americaness Chest Thumping of late:

…we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogancies. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister Nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace a peace invulnerable to the scheming of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil.

FDR’s pre-printed version of “A Mighty Endeavor” with handwritten change to include the D-Day invasion. From FDR Presidential Library and Museum

The apostles of greed and racial arrogances and hundreds of other bad intentions still threaten our country, but instead of Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan those calls are now coming from within our own American house. The threat has, is, and always will be the scheming of the unworthy. These are the standards Americans — not the caustic “real Americans” of the unworthy schemers — should hold folks to when it comes to the greater good of our country, beyond party, or ideology, or politics. Unworthy scheming can co-op any of those things, wearing them as a disguise for whatever ill intentions of self-gain they have.

Unworthy schemers tell us who they are through their actions, their methods, and the people they choose to target. We should believe them when they tell us. We should not be distracted by them waving the flag, or families, or religion, or anything else at us declaring that the real Americans will be on their side. The bravado, and chest thumping, and belittling of anyone who dares not conform to their rehashed and retreaded “revolution” of the already tried should be ignored if not mocked. We should take care to see through the buzzwords of the moment and avatars of the convenient to take note of the same old schemes, same old hatreds, same old fears that lay just beneath the surface of their rhetoric. Folks not willing to let all live in equitable freedom cannot be trusted with any say over anyone’s freedoms. We who truly love our country enough to not use that love as a cudgel to beat everyone in it into conformity must do our best to keep the relative peace invulnerable to such unworthy schemers.

And while many scan the horizons for the next Nazi Germany threatening all mankind, too many miss the unworthy schemers that are right here amongst us. Not guarding beaches that must be stormed to save the world, but hunkered down in buzzword bunkers and waving things like patriotism, and “the way things used to be”, and how “the right people” need to succeed as their weapons. Unworthy schemers who want you to think you should have common cause with them, that they are the righteous ones, that they and they alone are fighting the good fight. And if you won’t join them, join the Real Americans, you are the real true enemy.

What petty little wannabe tyrants they are.

All it takes for those unworthy schemes and schemers to succeed is not recognizing them for what they are, or getting sucked into the pedantry of their minor grievances instead of the totality of their willful disregard for anyone who is not them. Because if you listen to them closely enough, the unworthy schemers always will tell you it is all about them. We should believe them when they do. We should see thorough their buzzwords and phrase of the day and take the totality in their meaning and actions to judge their schemes by. It’s not like they are hiding it.

There is nothing new under the sun. Much less anything original about the unworthy schemers. We should not let them affect our honest toil toward peace, even if it’s just a more peaceful and tolerant discourse.