Emmett Till, Justine Wadsack and climate change

And the truth about fear

Today I want to write about Emmet Till, Justine Wadsack, truth, fear and climate change.

Young Emmet Till, visiting the South, was beaten and lynched for whistling at a white woman and his white killers were acquitted by a white jury, all of whom believed the facts of the case could be hidden. In that Southern courtroom the truth just didn’t matter.

It mattered to Emmett Till’s mom. Back home in Chicago Mamie Till-Mobley insisted on an open-casket funeral. “Let the world see what I have seen.”

America saw what she had seen. And in time the world changed. Our better angels do not fear the truth. Our better angels eventually embrace the truth. And armed with the truth our better angels consistently rise to the difficult challenges of perfecting our union.

President Biden said we can’t just choose to learn what we want to know about our history. “We have to learn what we should know.  We should know about our country.  We should know everything: the good, the bad, the truth of who we are as a nation.”

Even if it makes some children feel bad.

If Emmet Till were laid to rest in Florida, where the teaching of civil rights is censored because it makes children feel bad, one has to wonder if Governor Ron DeSantis would have slammed the lid shut on Emmet Till’s casket.

DeSantis recently asserted Black Americans benefited from slavery. That shocking, irrational, grotesque, bizarre, absurd, demonstrably false assertion by a thuggish idiot Governor sums up the rot at the withered heart of the Republican Party. The mass cognitive dissonance is stunning. And terrifying.

Florida’s muzzled middle school educators cannot teach any Black history beyond Reconstruction. They can’t teach their students that their state of Florida passed a resolution condemning the Supreme Court’s Brown v Board of Education ruling back in 1957 because the desegregation of public schools was too horrifying for white Floridians to imagine. I get it. Racist parents wouldn’t want their racist children to feel bad and question their racism.

What governments fear an informed population? What political forces fear the free flow of facts?

In Vancouver I met a survivor of the Tiananmen Square massacre who was commanded to help bury his fellow murdered students and then sent to a reeducation camp. He returned to school and became a teacher of history. Andrew told me he fled China because he could no longer teach his students the lies his government demanded he teach as fact. He couldn’t do it anymore.

Arizona’s Republicans, a potpourri of neo-Nazi sympathizers, antisemites, bigots, Christian Fascists and insurrectionists are happy to peddle lies. Unlike my friend who survived the Tiananmen Square massacre they will keep lying until they control your lives and control what you know and what you dare to speak.

In Arizona where book banners are under every rock and school boards are harangued by theocrats who welcome no debate State Senator Justine Wadsack is the poster child for the modern MAGA Taliban.

She fears books. She fears drag queens. She fears trans kids. She fears persecution. She fears the marginalized. She fears minorities. She fears granting women control over their own reproductive health. She fears debate. She fears her authority being challenged. She fears the fabled groomers. She fears a non-existent plague of pedophiles. She thrives on fear and traffics in fear. Fundamentally, she fears facts. And so does her entire state party from its fanatical school board members to its sheriffs to its radical fascist legislators. Trump won. Covid was a hoax. Walls work. The Deep State is behind everything. Global warming is a hoax.And let us not forget that slavery benefited Black Americans.

Every Republican officeholder in our state is a climate change denier. Fact: It’s the hottest summer in human history. What is the collective response from Arizona’s fossil fuel industry whores? Summers are hot. So what?

Americans are not a fearful people. We fear no idea whether it is attractive or repellent. Let The People decide. Unlike authoritarians, fascists and religious fanatics we fear no idea. We can handle the truth. The very first right our revolutionaries listed in the Bill of Rights protects your right to express any idea free from fear.

How revolutionary! How radical! How enlightened! And how courageous, risky and utterly remarkable in the age of despots and monarchs to entrust The People with such liberty. Two centuries later we share an unspoken faith that our resilient social order can survive and thrive in a turbulent world of constant change and philosophical churn. We are fearless.

Here’s an example of the truth and fear dynamic I’m talking about.

Concealing the truth is key to the perpetuation of America’s gun violence epidemic which is driven by fear mongering profiteers. Republican gun lobby whores have done everything in their power to stop the objective collection of gun violence data by the Centers for Disease Control because it’s clear that states with lax gun safety laws suffer far more gun violence than blue states with moderate gun safety laws. Facts used to affect legislative change can be troubling if they stand in the way of blood money profits and political donations and can only answered by selling more and more fear.

In addition, we are protected by our fearful media from seeing the true suffering and horror of gun violence. The lid is always closed on the casket of our daily carnage. We do not see the shooter’s gruesome handiwork. Show us the horror of the slaughtered children. The small faces blown away as in Uvalde. Show us the grisly ghastly images of the mangled riven corpses that litter America’s churches, synagogues, clubs, malls and schools seemingly every day. Shock and horrify us into action. What parent of a child killed in a mass shooting does not share Mamie Till-Mobley’s desire to “Let the world see what I have seen.” Let us see the dead of Sandy Hook and Columbine.

Seeing the truth will always change the world for the better. Hearing the truth will always change the world for the better. Teaching the truth will always change the world for the better. Be fearless. You have no choice. You are an American.

Rest in peace, Emmett Till. Your truth lives.

And Justine, climate change is real. As real as your coming rejection by the people of Arizona.