Milk Memorial, San Francisco City Hall, 11-28-08

The problem with predicting how bad things will get is that you could end up being right.  And lately there seems to be a lot of fear out there.  My friend RJ and I were talking about the different kinds. 

"There's your Macbeth variety," he observed.  This was, he explained, the sort of fear driven by guilt over something you've done, as in how whites in South Africa felt after Apartheid and being afraid it was payback time from the blacks.  Or in certain Republican communities across the US now that Obama's been elected. 

"And people say they don't believe in Karma," I replied, although the truth is probably that when you believe in a punishing vengeful god you are bound to worry about those thunderbolts going astray or not being fast enough to dodge that earthquake, flood or lava flow. Who's next on the To Smite List?  Even if you're an innocent bystander or just a rubbernecking Looky Lou, God has been known to be guilty Himself of collateral damage.  Take Lot's wife, for instance.

"That's your vengeful jealous god," RJ pointed out.  Which got us onto the subject of the 3 Js of Fear: jealousy, judgment, and justification.  You know, like when you're jealous of that attention-grabbing co-worker of yours who always gets what he wants which is so unfair because he so does not deserve it like you do because you are a responsible law-abiding church-going guy with a wife and kid to support, and so you are totally justified in shooting him.  

"It's anyone who bucks the system,"  RJ explained.  "Like, when you don't play sports even if you're big and tall."

"Tell me about it," I replied.  "They should make throwing like a girl one of the early warning signs for alcoholism."

"Any time you're different you threaten the balance of power," RJ said calmly.  

"What balance?" I asked.  "They're the ones with that ultimate Authority Figure.  The old white guy in the sky with the beard calling all the shots?  They're on His team.  What are they afraid of?"

"Losing power.  Satan.  The Devil is everywhere."

"The Devil lives in the desert.  Trust me.  I've been to Palm Springs."

"For instance," RJ continued, ignoring me, "During the Cold War they decided to contain the threat of Communism.  The 'Father of Containment' was the American diplomat and political strategist George F. Kennan (1904-2005).  He thought the best approach was to treat the Soviet Union like you would an outbreak of disease; quarantine it, and hope it would wither and die."

I was not sure I understood this strategy of containment because I thought what we'd done was just outspend the Soviets until their nuclear reactor broke. But I didn't want to argue the matter.

"Here's what I don't understand," I said instead.  "They're afraid of letting women show their real hair or faces in public or letting women make decisions about their own bodies or letting women vote or make as much money as they do or do much of anything in fact except have their babies and stay at home, and they're afraid of boys who can't throw baseballs like little champs, and they're afraid of other people having civil rights and they're afraid of affluent gay people who want to adopt unwanted children and give them nice homes and send them to good schools, and although more than half of their own marriages end in divorce, they're afraid of letting anyone else try."

I'm not afraid of any of those things, and I'm the one who's scary?