Drove down to the old neighborhood the other day, just to remind myself how many years have flown past. And how the world keeps turning no matter how much we wish it would stop in its tracks, or -- better yet -- reverse course.
What I discovered was the world is never going to do either. And that's OK, because it's how the cosmos operates and always has.
And so I almost drove past the street I grew up on -- Castle Drive -- because the trees have grown large and encompassing around the entrance, as trees will do after 60 or so years. The house I grew up in looks pretty much the same, except, again, the saplings of my childhood are mighty pillars now. Which makes the yard look like a postage stamp compared to the yard I remember.
And the neighborhood?
Different, too. When we moved there early in the 1960s, it was almost exclusively white, de facto racial and economic segregation being what they were then. Now an eyeball count suggests it is largely black, Hispanic, Asian and Middle Eastern -- in other words, the sort of American palette a certain species of American fears and loathes these days.
And yet ...
And yet, the kids who live there now still ride their bikes up Castle and across the little cut-through to Stinson (named Sitko Drive for Emil "Red" Sitko, a 1940s Notre Dame football star who lived in the neighborhood). They cruise the same streets, and follow the same paths, we cruised six decades ago on our Schwinns and Huffys.
In other words: The world changes. But only cosmetically.
I wish more people would understand that. I wish they wouldn't be so easily exploited by the demagogues and fear-mongering politicians who love to manipulate them.
Which brings us to our esteemed Lieutenant Governor, Micah Beckwith, who has raised fear-mongering demagoguery to high art.
As both Loot Guv and a minister of the fire-and-brimstone sort, he has both a bully pulpit and a literal pulpit, and he's used both to advance a theology a lot of Christian folk find alien. But we're just plain old Methodists or Episcopalians or Presbyterians, and perhaps are not as privy to the Lord's revealed wisdom as the Loot Guv.
Whose latest pronouncement -- that he hates Islam because it's a "demonic death cult" -- has not only united Muslims, Jews and Christians in public condemnation, but summoned echoes of another demagogue in a collar: Father Charles Coughlin, the Detroit radio priest from the 1930s. Increasingly virulent the longer he had a microphone and an audience, by the end of his 15 minutes of fame he was all but Sieg Heil-ing the madman of Germany, Adolph Hitler. That's how unhinged Father Chuck had become.
Now, it might be a reach at this point to say Micah Beckwith is traveling the same trajectory. But, like his 1930s doppelganger, he does seem to get more irrational every time he opens his mouth. In so doing, of course, he ignores the obvious irony: That he's every bit the religious extremist he accuses the followers of Islam of being.
Muslim extremists call America is the Great Satan; Beckwith, in so many words, says the same about Islam. Two sides of the same fanatical coin.
In any event, Beckwith seems to stand not far from the crowd that wants to throw all the Muslims out of the country, on account of we're a Christian nation and the Muslims want to take over America and institute Sharia Law in Mayberry and Mount Pilot and every other wholesome All-American town. So they'd best either convert to Christianity, or get to packing.
All of this is of course preposterous, at least to any rational person. No Mayberry in the U.S., even those with large Muslim communities, operates under Sharia Law or anything remotely like it. Nor is it ever likely to.
But never the twain shall meet between hysteria and reality, and so go Beckwith and his fellow travelers out there on the fringes of American thought. So, too, goes the supreme irony of the pot calling the kettle black, because it's the pot that wants either to convert every kettle, or effectively outlaw them in violation of one of America's most cherished founding principles.
Hmm. What was that about "Sharia Law" again?
Which brings me back to the old neighborhood.
To be sure, we've taken the long way around the barn to get there, and maybe I've gone on long enough in the interim. But stay with me, because there's one more thing I want you to see.
No, it's not the faint outline of the old cinder track behind the now-boarded-up Village Woods Junior High, grassed over now but still carrying a faint whiff of oxygen debt. And it's not the overgrown field where we used to play baseball, with someone's sweatshirt serving as first base, someone's mitt serving as second and (invariably) someone's brand-new jacket serving as third.
It's this building over here, a few yards away.
When I was growing up, it was the Southeast YMCA. Now, though, it's a mosque; Masjid Akhoon, to be precise. It serves the Muslim community on the southeast side of town just as St. Henry's over on Hessen Cassel serves the Catholic community, or Bethlehem up on Anthony serves the Lutherans. All of them worshipping as they see fit.
Because that's America, you see. And no matter what Micah Beckwith and his ilk say, that's exactly what America should always be.
