“Profound losers”
Readers may enjoy an older video making the rounds again from the show “Letters Live.” Contrary to JoJoFromJerz’s description (social media sometimes strips context), the words are not actress Edie Falco’s. She came to read them in 2018.
Via YouTube:
In the wake of violence in Charlottesville in 2017, a Salt Lake City resident named Jonna Ramey wrote an open letter to white nationalists that was titled, “What Is Wrong With You?” Her letter was published in The Salt Lake Tribune and was soon read by millions. At Letters Live at New York City’s The Town Hall back in 2018, acting legend Edie Falco joined us to read it.
The Salt Lake Tribune, Aug. 19, 2017:
Letter of the week: What is wrong with you, white supremacists?
I am a 67-year-old American white woman. My parents enlisted in World War II to fight fascism. They both served; my mother was a nurse, my father navigated bombers. They lost friends in that bloody war so that all the world could be free of fascism. They did not fight so that some white people could claim supremacy or that Nazis could openly walk the streets of America.
White person to white supremacist person: What is wrong with you?
People of European heritage are doing just fine in the world. They run most of the world’s institutions, hold much of the world’s wealth, replicate as frequently as other humans. You’re not in any danger here. The world is changing, that’s true. Others want a piece of the pie. They work for it, strive for it and earn it. Technology (robotics) is having a greater effect on your job prospects than immigrants. Going forward, tackling corporate control and climate change will need all of our attention, ideas and energy. Put down your Tiki torches and trite flags and get involved in some real work.
By the way, the world won the war against Nazi fascism in the 1940s, just as America won the war against the Confederacy in the 1860s. Aligning with two lost causes just labels you as profound losers.
And finally, white person to white person: Like my parents before me, I will not stand idly by nor give up my rights or the rights of other Americans because you think you are better than some of us. It doesn’t work that way. All Americans stand shoulder to shoulder against your hatred and bigotry.
Jonna Ramey
Salt Lake City
So much of the discontent in this country is an expression of inchoate feelings. People lack words to express their profound unease. Or the words they might use open them to ridicule or condemnation, like Charlottesville’s “very fine” Nazis. Donald Trump’s MAGA cult wants America to be “Great Again.” What that means they will not or cannot say. What they don’t say speaks volumes.
People who view society as a zero-sum game find it more socially acceptable to accuse immigrants, for example, of “taking our jobs” or bringing in disease and drugs than to admit out loud what’s really eating at them. Newcomers sharing in America’s freedoms, they believe, means less for them.
It is the prospect of white people sharing political and cultural space in this teetering democracy with people they consider inferiors. Since white people first invaded this continent, they have dominated it and the Black people they imported. That’s the way it was. That’s the way it’s always been. That’s as America’s founders and the bearded white man in the sky intended.
It is Christians seeing their First Amendment religious protections extended to people who believe in a deity other than Jesus or none at all. Religious freedom is all well and good so long as other faiths are not too numerous and noisy about their beliefs. So long as “lesser” faiths agree whose god is The Big G.
It is the icky feeling they experience at seeing LGBTQ+ people emerge from the closets where they belong. Freedom was never meant for them.
It is the gnawing discomfort of Americans who love them some Declaration and Constitution but know deep down they never believed any of that “created equal” stuff; it was always just marketing. As the expression goes, “When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.”
It is knowing despite all the time spent in Sunday school that they never learned to share.