My little town!

There has been much talk over the last few years about the values that are associated with the declining, once majority white class in this nation. The gist of what is said is that these people were thrifty, church going, and very industrious individuals as opposed to the now ascending majority of black and Hispanic souls who are takers from the government as opposed to contributors to the society that it represents. To buy into this thesis one has to overlook the fact that so many black and Hispanic individuals work for a living. As we might remember, blacks were forced here to work for nothing for their masters as slaves while the Hispanic population has arrived here in search of work to better themselves from what they were enduring in third world Mexico and other Latin areas. The proponents of this values thesis are people like Mitt Romney and his belief in the forty seven percent who are takers and the fifty three percent who are apparently not.

We have often written about my parents and what happened to my father back in the summer of 1954 in rural Vienna, Illinois. To refresh your memories, that year my father took a black parolee from the state penitentiary and gave him a job in his poultry processing plant. That summer this man and a friend of his, also black, assaulted and raped a young, attractive white lady and killed her mother in the process of doing so. They had both been drinking at the time. There was a manhunt and the parolee eventually gave himself up and was tried and sent back to prison for life. During this period of time some of the local veterans of the recent world war got together down at the local VFW and, after doing some drinking, took torches and gas cans and burned out the local black community that lived on a hill off to themselves south of the city limits. It was obviously not right for the blacks to do what they did under the influence of alcohol but it was just fine for the rest to do what they did under the influence of the same thing! It is things like this incident that bring some confusion between reality and myth! Thrifty church goers would never burn a community out!

The only thing left when it was over was the small white clapboard black church that the blacks had once attended before they had been burned out. The church was within the city limits and it was perhaps a salute to their supposed morals that this group did not burn it down as well. God help them if they would touch or torch a church!

The people who lived in Vienna in 1954 were generally good people little more than a decade removed from the distresses of the great depression which had come to a close at the start of the war. They had seen hardships and were not all that far removed in space and time from the plight of the blacks who saw their lives shattered by what some in the community had chosen to do that summer night in 1954. Not everyone had agreed to what happened but there were elements in the town who were excessively racist and had used the excuse of the rape and murder to do what they did without consulting the rest of the community. This is not to say that Vienna was not segregated because in many respects it was even thought its school system was not that way. And even after this incident, the local justice of the peace and the state highway patrol continued for years to pull black travelers off of the area highways and charge them exorbitant fines for trumped up speeding charges that often resulted in the confiscation of their automobiles if they could not pay up. This was done in an age before the interstate highway system was conceived when those traveling north to a better life had to pass through southern Illinois on their way.

The reason that we discuss all of this is to illustrate the values that this white male dominated ruling class manifest in their heyday back in the fifties and the sixties. These people were hard workers and church attendees and there was little evidence of so much of what we see in this current day among them. Vienna had a town drunk and there was a section of town where the less fortunate lived but this was before the arrival of federal housing so they lived in shacks little better than the blacks who had been burned out. There was also an area literally across the proverbial railroad tracks in Vienna where some less than desirable souls had taken up residence. So, there was segregation not only with the blacks, but, also, by socioeconomics among the whites as well.

One of the leaders of the group who did the burnout was later elected to country office and served a few years in those positions until he was caught stealing money and left office in disgrace. His son is now a prosperous accountant who lives in the St. Louis metro area and espouses all of his fathers racial ideas along with his hatred of what he had called “bleeding heart liberals.� The son is an active member of both the local Tea Party and also an anti racial group that has been active in that area for years. He spouts his beliefs on the internet to all who will listen, and, to many who would rather not. We do not keep up with him directly but we have friends who keep us informed about his activities. We were once the best of friends!

The reasoning behind all of this is to point out that there are those who are talking out of both sides of their mouths when they speak of the great belief systems that this declining white race supposedly hold. My parents, of whom I am very proud, followed the true Christian dictum that believes in faith, love, and charity when it is needed. Many in this current group of aging white people follows some sort of a myth that they would willingly give their lives to restore to a nation whose majority has moved on beyond it many years ago. Church attendance in the United States has declined greatly since 1954 and we suspicion that it has done so because of the activities of those who espouse the beliefs that they are trying to foist off on the current population that so many of their forbearers never followed to begin with. My parents and those around them lived in simpler times that hid so much of what has come to the forefront in the past few decades that include sexual rights, woman’s rights, the plight of children, and all of the other issues that have so complicated modern life. These things were hidden away by the great issues of the thirties, forties and fifties and did not begin to come to the forefront until the civil rights struggles of the fifties and the sixties made so many others realize that they had unrealized rights just as well.

There was a unification that took place during the great depression years that fostered a belief in the common good and that all people should be sympathetic and help those who were in trouble. And there were many in trouble during the depression years. It was the time when the New Deal came into being and the government began to help those that society simply could not take care of any longer on its own. But, even then, there were elements around who were opposed to the whole idea of common help and wanted to continue the system of great deprivation and suffering that had reached its zenith under Herbert Hoover and the last of the lazes faire Republican administrations before FDR. After the unleashing of the neoconservative movement that began with Ronald Reagan and his small government/deregulation ideas we almost had the Hoover experience again in 2008 and 2009 except for the old safety nets that had been put in place in prior years.

Those like the son of the man who led the burnout in 1954 have never had to suffer any of the tragedies that struck the great depression generation and brought so many of them together to do good. They have benefited from all that was done to create the prosperity that ruled this land until the administration of George W. Bush brought so much of it to an end with his destructive policies that almost led us into another depression that might have been far worse than the one after 1929 had it not been for those afore mentioned safety nets such as social security and unemployment benefits. But, still, they want to take us back to times that, if they knew the truth, they would never want to revisit themselves. In effect, they are trying to destroy the prosperity that they themselves have benefited from perhaps more than anybody else. And they do not realize that their ancestors were given a leg up by those who would be sickened by what they are trying to do today. So, this idea of a heritage of family values is just what we have long suspected that it was, nothing more than a myth that never existed in reality at all!

IOVHO,

Regards,

Joe

To say that "God exists" is the greatest understatement ever made across space and time.