“Time to heal”?

Comments (0) Media, Politics

King D Seals FB

Facebook post of Ferguson activist Darren King D. Seals, who was found shot to death in a burning car. From The Root.

A cop shoots an unarmed black youth. Demonstrations, met with police violence. Rioting.  Community leaders are brought out to disperse the crowds. Then a day or two of “closure” when  the politicians, ministers, editorialists say, “It’s a time for healing.”

Do people still listen to pleas for “healing”? John Hagedorn listened too well in his latest reflections on racism and violence, in his blog “Gangs and the Media”, occasioned by the rebellion in Milwaukee’s Sherman Park after the police killed another black youth, Sylville Smith.

Hagedorn:

“Healing is what you do after surgery or after major interventions to change oppressive conditions. Healing means the patient is on the road to recovery. That is not the situation today in MIlwaukee. Now is time for action. Healing comes later. …

“And now these same leaders and their media call for “healing” with no accompanying agenda to bring us the sweeping changes we so desperately need.  Weeks after the police shooting of Sylville Smith, the body cam video has still not been released.  We don’t need healing when each day the wounds of oppression are inflicted anew in the nation’s fourth poorest city.  To call for healing as oppression continues is to provide a cover for our city’s inexcusable inaction on jobs, unwillingness to control police, and persisting policies of mass incarceration. This is what is meant by the slogan,  ‘no justice, no peace.'”

“Time to heal” is the kind of “exhausted idiom” Orwell said politicians use to keep us from thinking about the realities — postures of compassion and wisdom taking the place of real solutions.

The apex preachers of healing are the political class.  Until the elections are over, healing is inescapable. Presidents are, like kings before them, the magical healers. Nixon, as he was driven in shame out of the presidency, ennobled his humiliation by offering to heal us all .  “By taking this action, I hope that I will have hastened the start of that process of healing which is so desperately needed in America.”

And then the scoundrel who gave Nixon a presidential pardon, Gerald Ford. Fearing he would be remembered only for pardoning the most despised president (up to that point), he titled his autobiography “A Time to Heal.” And when he died, that was indeed how the political class memorialized him.

Now Trump: “What I really want to do in the White House is help the nation. We’re going to heal the nation.” And Hillary in her acceptance speech, heals, hears, walks in the other’s shoes:

“We have to heal the divides in our country. Not just on guns. But on race. Immigration. And more. That starts with listening to each other. Hearing each other. Trying, as best we can, to walk in each other’s shoes. So let’s put ourselves in the shoes of young black and Latino men and women who face the effects of systemic racism, and are made to feel like their lives are disposable.”

In case her recognition of young black and Latino men facing “systemic racism,” and “made to feel like their lives are disposable” reminds anyone of police murders, she adds balance:  “Let’s put ourselves in the shoes of police officers, kissing their kids and spouses goodbye every day and heading off to do a dangerous and necessary job.” The language of “healing” sees no evil, calls out no crimes, points to no criminals.

Powerful rhetoric, yet she was outperformed by Jesse Jackson. In an ecstacy of self-parody, he said:  “It’s healing time. It’s hope time. It’s Hillary time. It’s time for healing, hope, and Hillary. Healing, hope, and Hillary!”

This is the Plague boasting, “What a fine cure I am giving you!” It’s enough to drive you for the thousandth time to read Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language.”

Add “healing” to your list, George.

Read Prof. John M. Hagedorn’s website, Gangs and the Media. A fascinating blog and resource library on racism, violence, gangs and protest, and his latest book, The Insane Chicago Way: The Daring Plan by Chicago Gangs to Create a Spanish Mafia.

 

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