Does The Left Sabotage Democrats Chances? Yes!

The left is constantly coming up with ideas that seem great to themselves but look ridiculous to the rest of us.  What is worse is how these sillinesses are then used by the right to their advantage, thus sabotaging Democrats’ election chances.

And this by the way is what happened in New York State this year.  Probably also in California.  So while overall the Democrats did well, they underperformed in NY and CA - thus losing control of the House.  

Let’s take a closer look at one fund raising campaign by a left wing group.  The campaign tried to ramp up outrage over a trivial matter for the sake of fundraising.  No doubt the campaign worked, but in the end it adds to the list of things that to average folks make Democrats look ridiculous. 

The group is Faithful America.  They are a  a left wing activist Christian group that wants to counter the influence of conservative Christian groups.  They raise money with on-line petitions - circulated by email and accompanied by a request for money.  Their donor base looks to be liberal main stream protestants who support liberal causes.   They are currently led by Rev. Nathan Empsall an Episcopal priest.  PS:  I get their emails and sometimes sign their petitions.  

In the case the campaign is against Fisher Price’s“Little People Nativity Set.”  Their call to actions is: “No White Jesus Nativity.”

Hmmm, so was Jesus white?  

Though this is a reasonable question and deserves a nuanced answer (which is that it depends on your definition of white) the question is being used to raise money and they do so by creating outrage.   

So was Jesus white?  This is a weird one because one tenet of many who support civil rights is that race is not a useful human characteristic.  Of course race is real in the way other characterizations are, characterizations like tall and smart.  Race certainly means something if designing cosmetics or hair care products.  Race also is a surrogate for other similarities - so white folks are Christian and Jewish, east Asian folk include Buddhists, Hindus and so on. For Africa, we have those who live close to the Mediterranean and those who live below the Sahara and these represent folks with very different histories.  The first group were were part of the Roman Empire, the second were isolated from Europe and Eurasia and so colonized much later by European powers.   

So how do middle eastern Christians picture the Holy Family (and also themselves)?  For an answer, I found a Christmas image from the Syriac Orthodox Church.  FYI, the Syriac Church is a Christian Church descended from the Church of Antioch - a Turkish city on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean.   Its members would be at least generally similar to those who who lived near Bethlehem when Jesus was born.  I looked at the Christmas scene on their webpage and the characters look “white” within the simplistic limits of the style used for the images. 

Are Syrians, Lebanese, middle eastern Jews and others who lived on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean white?  If we say no, then Jesus was not white.  But then neither was Danny Thomas, nor his daughter Marlo, nor recent senate candidate Mehmet Oz (a Turk).   

I would give a qualified yes - that Jesus was white.  (Again in these simplistic terms).  

By the way, Fisher Price has long made excellent toys meant for hard use by real babies, toddlers and pre-school children.  My son grew up with their toys.  One year we gave him a set of “walkie talkies” and he soon lost one outside our house.  We found the receiver many months later and despite mud and months of exposure to bad weather, the toy still worked.    He particularly loved their little people (originally called play people)  - in the 1980s these were simple almost peg like figures.  They have become more realistic in recent years but they are still not realistic in any meaningful way.  

So on to Fisher Price’s Little People Nativity Set.  Faithful America wants us to be enraged at the white baby Jesus.  Note the picture of the set - yes the figures look “white” and in the set there is also a dark skinned female figure so she is….   “black.”   But these are really simplistic toys, so subtleties of face, skin color and even age simply don’t exist.  The figures all look childlike - if we consider the brown skinned figure, is she sub saharan African?  Egyptian?  Middle Eastern?   Actually you can’t tell.  

But for the sake of outrage, the Faithful America gambit works.  

So how does this harm Democrats?  

To ordinary folks this is just one more idea that makes the rest of us ask, why now?  How important is this.  Others are ideas about personal pronouns, and in much of corporate America, we see younger employees listing “their pronouns.”   And in the catechism we suddenly have  “cis gender” (meaning normal non gay male or female) - also "normative" - a fancy word for normal.  It even pervades stories about the environment - so attached to a news story about pollution will be the consideration of “environmental racism.”   

I don’t want to go into the details of all of these, but I will say this about environmental racism.  I have lived in working class towns like Jersey City and Dover NJ.  I was born in Paterson.  The neighborhoods that are blighted now - so exposed to more lead or pollution were similarly blighted when the residents were light skinned blue eyed Irish (like my grandfather).  So yes these areas are now mostly full of darker skinned folks but the blighted quality was there when folks were all white.  So is the blight racism, or merely the simple truth that the better off folks get the nicer properties?  

It is sometimes amazing how the new left wing jargon finds its way into media from the Atlantic and New Yorker to MSNBC and even NPR.   For the rest of us, it is as if we did not get the memo.  

And these new terms may be useful in an academic paper.  But changes in language need to be organic and they take time.  And in this case not only is new language being proposed but also new ideas that may never become accepted by the majority.   Gender theory is particularly fraught.  And while racism is real, not every neighborhood that is afflicted with air pollution is so afflicted because of race.   We have to assume that the left wants Democrats to win so that significant legislation can be passed.  So maybe the left needs to take a time out over the promulgation of language and ideas that can be easily mocked by Republicans.  

Many progressives sincerely believe that they can win by encouraging even more progressive voters to come out.  But this writer thinks this is a bad ideas and that instead we need the moderates, so folks who are willing to switch parties. Right now they are not winning moderates .  

FYI - so making a stink about the Fisher Price nativity set is not the way.  

Let’s stipulate the following:  yes non white folks sometimes bristle at the assumptions of white folks; and the images of a blue eyed Jesus with dark blond hair do not represent and real Jesus.  Also when Jackson MS or Flint MI has to rely on bottled water, it is inescapable that the residents are mostly not white.  So here, yes environmental racism.  But when someone insists that Caitlyn Jenner is a glamorous woman and not an attention seeking freak, sorry I disagree.

PPS: images are fair use.