RE: The thing about America ... (a digression)

Paul,
I have to subscribe some blame to both the
media and more importantly the Republican
Right Wing.  In Oregon we had to deal with
the OCA< the Oregon Citizens Alliance. We dealt
with two hate-backed anti-gay measures, that shook
the culture of the state, and was more divisive than
the Vietnam War, though both measures were defeated
it sent a horrific message to the world and to many
young people that homosexuality is intolerable.
Paul Bonine


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-medit-plants@ucdavis.edu
[o*@ucdavis.edu]On Behalf Of Paul Harrar
Sent: Monday, July 12, 1999 11:50 AM
To: medit-plants@ucdavis.edu
Subject: The thing about America ... (a digression)


Alain Siboni wrote: "How can the country who liberated us Europeans have
turned into
such a nightmare?

Having just viewed again the excellent Ken Burns PBS documentary on the
quintessential Euro-American, Thomas Jefferson (an early Medit-Plant
gardener), I'm reminded that America has always had a very contradictory
character which puzzles our friends around the world. Restraint is not
in our character — yet. The same people (mainly, the white men
perennially in power here) who have shown heroic compassion for the
suffering are quite capable of inflicting hatred, cruelty and barbaric
actions upon the defenseless and innocent. We easily forget that we
stole land from the indigenous people of North America (after the
Spanish did the same further south), stole various kingdoms (Hawaii,
Guam, etc.) and other foreign land for political reasons, deported
Mexican-American citizens who were farm laborers when jobs for whites
got scarce in the Great Depression, and locked up (and killed a few)
Japanese-American citizens on the West Coast when things got a little
tense during World War II. That's just the short list of bad deeds in
America's "self-interest," and I didn't mention slavery, which also was
there at the start.

America was founded with a very competitive, rather than cooperative,
culture. In my mind it boils down to a masculine thing versus a feminine
thing, and we all know who's been on the short end of the stick with
that since Day One. In America, even though the feminine, cooperative
culture has won major gains in the last half-century, we've got a long
way to go to balance things out, which is the natural order of things.
We gardeners know this. This competitive nature often clouds our
judgment, when it comes to managing our deepest-rooted fears. There is
absolutely no justification for hate crimes, but in my mind, it's just a
case of "history repeating."

"Men argue; Nature acts." — Voltaire

Paul Harrar
Nevada City, CA
Sunset Zone 7
2,700 ft.
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