The Little Dream that Came True

Our culture is awash in the language of dreams and passions.  The unfulfilled pursuit is an especially popular hook, preying on the dissatisfaction of all ages.  At 20, the potential for greatness is served up on a platter like a fat juicy Thanksgiving turkey not yet marred by your dad's shitty carve job.  That perfect body full of fluffy stuffing, and that untainted mind must not be wasted for it is only during this short window of time, to 25 if you are under 23 and to 28 if you are over, that you have a chance to shine your way into Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers II. If you are confused, unsure, adrift, the pressure to figure out a passion, and fuck it to death is unmerciful.  If you can't figure it - then you bow your head in bland shame and wallow in quarter-life crisis for the remainder of your 20s.

Luckily, at 30, the media gives you a second wind.  There is no reason to worry, they tell you, because 30 is the new 20 and there's still time for you.  Your ass is still taught, your skin tone even, and barring having birthed a couple children and succumbing to a big mac habit your stomach still flat.  Moreover, you are longer in the tooth - and with that comes actual skills.  You now realize your 20s offered nothing but raw, uninformed, arrogance. Don't get me wrong.  It served you well.  It helped you maintain the belief that your deep abject poverty was only a temporary bump in the road along the way to private jet wealth or fame or admirable genius success and gave you the balls to schmooze an older man or woman into giving you a job you weren't really qualified to do. And then you faked it and faked it and faked it until you figured that shit out and now you have some real skills.   Skills needed to make that promise of greatness a reality.  You know how to manage a social media campaign or record a song or manage a budget or some other shit like that.  You've worked hard and now is when it's going to happen for you.  You watch it happen for someone you know.  They sell a novel, or get elected to office, or retire to Thailand.  You can taste your own notoriety in the breeze piercing the palm trees. It's almost here...about to whisk you away on your soon to be newly purchased yacht that you'll name after your you first girlfriend or boyfriend - just so you can talk about it in interviews with Forbes or People or The New Yorker - interviews which you will send to said girlfriend or boyfriend, who will of course be abject failures living in your shitty hometown with 3 dirty faced kids and a spouse who manages a bank or teaches high school.  They will love you now and they will wish they loved you then.

32 goes by. Then 33 and you don't even notice 34. But 35?  You damn well notice that one.  Where is the yacht, the article in Forbes, the feeling of greatness? By 36, you start to talk yourself down.  You were young, foolish for wanting or even thinking you might get all of that.  And goddamnit, you've done pretty well. You don't worry when the car needs new tires or the house needs a gutter repair.  And maybe you have a decent looking spouse or a fun slightly younger or older significant other.  Once in awhile you still smoke pot or do a line of blow, just for old times sake. You are still fun, full of edge. You might still do something great. But it's starting to seem ok if you don't.  37. 38.  If you aren't married or paired off in a serious relationship, you start to get a little nervous...maybe even depressed. Publicly, you claim your cool - you never want to get married or have kids.  But, privately, you start to worry, shit - am I doomed to be old and lonely?  To bolster your ego, you go to the club the kids are going to and you take home somebody at least 10 years younger.  She or he is impressed by you...tells you how much they like older men or women - how they like experience not little girls or boys.  You go out with them a couple times before their unfamiliarity with your favorite band of all-time or their exuberance for a business idea you have already tried and you know will fail leads you to break it off. You go home and eat an entire bag of Kettle chips while watching a Dateline rerun.

For a couple of years you decide you are cool.  But then fucking 40. FORTY. WTF is that. You thought you'd probably be dead.  Well, maybe not dead, but you sure as hell never thought you would get there.  Media assaults you with images of 40 somethings who don't look like shit to remind you that you still have to try to look 25.  You begin to consider how to best maintain what ever remnants of attractive you have left. You hire a trainer.  You try Retin-A. Botox.  Never considered either before but now...well maybe...if they keep you from looking tired. If people think your tired it could impact your career and you sure as hell don't want that. You are still a vital person with lots to offer. In fact, with 40 a third wind comes.  After the relative comfort you slipped into career-wise during the last couple years, you start to think about greatness again.  "I really have the skills and the know how now to go for something I want." And you're right. But you also know the amount of work energy required to do anything and you just aren't sure you want to do it. But then you read on Facebook about your high school friend who after have two kids with her boring ass husband decides to become a writer and publishes a shitty book about nothing. You wonder how she has  the gumption to call herself a writer after producing such a piece of shit (and you're right it really is a piece of shit) because she's 40 and she should know better at 40. But then you wonder if she's better than you because she produced something - and even a giant turd is better than no turd.

So you sit down and you write this blog post and after exactly seven interruptions you finish and think "take that shitty writer Facebook Friend!" It's not the great American novel or insightful comment on the latest Atlantic article or groundbreaking research. Hell, it's not even headed for the Huffington post...but it's grand in its mediocrity! You celebrate with a smoothie and a cat cuddle and by moving the wet laundry into the dryer. And when you pass the mirror you stop to examine and think "that Retin-A really is keeping my uneven skin tone at bay." And you worry only momentarily about the day when it won't. And then you realize that the shortness of that moment of worry - so much shorter than all those past moments spent worrying about being bigger and better than you've become - the shortness of that moment is a little dream you didn't know you had coming true. 

To the man in this picture...

To the man in this picture, 

When your children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren see this picture, and read of the events in Charlottesville, VA, in which you actively participated, what do you think they will think of you? Will they smile with pride over your convictions?  Or, will they think, “that can’t be my dad…he was nothing but good and kind.” Will this image of you, and your tense, shouting face, align with their memories of baseball games and fairs and the fun they had with you? Or will they be forced to search for ways to rectify these happier images with this screaming, angry you? Will they tell their friends about this version of you?  Or, will they quietly push this part into the back of their memories? Will they be proud of you?

My great grandfather was once one of you. He joined the Klan in the early 1920s during a period of recruitment helmed by the famed D.C. Stephenson. You probably already know that Stephenson managed to recruit 30% of the white male population of Indiana into the Klan. He’s pretty famous for that. You also may know that his recruitment plan focused not on race but on ending political corruption and standing up for Protestant morality – the good ole fashioned American values of the day. They were a brotherhood defending America – the real America – at all costs. Doesn’t that sound kind of familiar? You are just standing up for your rights as real Americans, right? You’re sick of outsiders and the lazy coastal elite forcing their liberal values on you and getting an unequal share of American success while you and your friends struggle to find good jobs. Right? 

Only time separates you from my great grandfather, a father of five and a struggling farmer, who was right there with you! He was disgusted by the articles he read detailing the licentious behavior in the big cities and by reports of corrupt government officials profiting off of bootlegging. Like you, he believed in the steadfastness of his moral conviction. And he wanted his kids to grow up in an America that was safe from the influence of all that ugliness.

Likewise, only time separates me from your future great-granddaughter(s).

I was in my early 20s when my dad first confessed my great grandfather’s Klan membership. “He was a simple man, a worker, a farmer. He was a good man who used to take me for root beer sodas at the drug store. Back then the Klan misrepresented their intentions to simple men like him. He didn’t really understand what he was joining; and when he did understand, he got out.” Will your grandsons describe you like my dad describes his grandfather – as dismissively “simple” and easy to manipulate? Will your grandsons feel the need to protect you from judgment – years after you are gone?

This is my official family story – my grandfather as a victim of recruitment misinformation – a man who did better when he knew better. His independence - his moral compass was ultimately intact. But history suggests a different story. My great-grandfather joined the Klan at a time when many other men just like him were joining.  As mentioned above 30% of the white male population in Indiana, or 250,000 joined around the time that my great grandfather joined. Was my great grandfather simply seduced by a trend? Was he nothing more than a man whose convictions swayed with the wind of his times? Will your great granddaughter one day wonder these same things about you? Were you nothing more than an easily manipulated pawn of Make America Great Again fervor?

The Indiana Klan was known for intimidation rather than physical violence; as such I assume my great grandfather may have marched with a torch in hand as you are doing in this picture.  He may have shouted angrily as you are in this picture. But history suggests he probably never hurt anyone physically. Sadly, the videos from Charlottesville don't suggest the same of you.  Were you one of the men shown violently engaging your perceived enemies? If so, are you proud of this? Will you be proud to leave this as a legacy for your grandchildren? Do you think they will brag about you to their friends?  Will this be a story you tell at show and tell?

My great-grandfather ultimately left the Klan, probably sometime after 1925, when DC Stephenson was convicted of kidnapping and holding captive a young woman who he’d become enamored with.  While holding her captive, he raped her repeatedly – apparently in hopes that she would feel inclined to marry him. But she stood strong in her refusal and he ultimately returned her secretly to her parents house. She was in battered and sickly condition and she died a month later as a result of the attack. But in that final month, her description of Stephenson’s behavior, which came out when he was put on trial, was so vile that many of those 250,000 men had to confront the truth that they had been deceived about the moral uprightness of this group Stephenson oversaw. Disgusted, they left in droves.  I suspect my great-grandfather was one of these men – a follower who left only when the organization could find no defense. Will your descendants be able to say that you were disgusted enough to leave?  Now that one of your members intentionally drove a car into a crowd of people and killed and injured the daughters and sons of others? Or perhaps this excites you. Perhaps it seals your loyalty? But how will your descendants regard that loyalty?

 
I ask because, you see, I can forgive my great grandfather for being easily manipulated. I can forgive him for being a follower; I can even see him as redeemed to some degree because of his final decision to leave. But ultimately, my grandfather was a man on the wrong side of history. He wasn’t a leader or a man of great moral conviction.  He wasn’t fighting for a safer and better future for me. He was just a man, like you, who followed other men of his times into a dangerous and shameful movement. He was part of the ugliness - not its antidote. Through you, I know him a little better. And I am not proud to be his great-granddaughter.  I suspect your great-granddaughter may one day feel the same about you. But perhaps that's what you want?