Lose Yourself

So the soap opera is told and unfolds, I suppose it's old partna'

But the beat goes on, da da dum de da da.

Eminem, Lose Yourself

One of the interesting things about social media is that you learn how diverse your field of acquaintances actually is.  Quite frankly, this can be a bit annoying and sometimes even disturbing, and in those moments you are tempted to use that "block" or maybe even (gasp) "unfriend" someone.  As a general rule, I do not block or unfriend people for disagreeing with my particular ideological bent, which would be hypocrisy of unfortunate scale.  I reserve my ultimate social media sanction for people who become abusive, thankfully I have never experienced anything beyond a nasty email.

Of late, among my diverse political and religious acquaintances I have read the following dichotomous opinions, some of which I characterize for simplicity's sake:

1. The Media versus The Republican Candidates.  I admit, that "debate" on CNBC last week was pretty badly done.  And I admit that I am regularly disappointed with how our news media handles things, but pointing out fabrications and other misleading statements or even unmasking outright misrepresentation of the facts, does not constitute a media bias.  That stuff is actually the media functioning the way it is supposed to.  If you doubt that the squawking from Trump, Carson et al is misplaced, you need to notice that they are now doing it to Fox News.  Let me just say that when Fox News calls BS on a Republican that must be some particularly vile prevarication.
2. The University of Missouri versus itself.  So Mizzou is close to Ferguson, and Mizzou has had some problems of late with the old racism thing.  The administration of the University did not do much about the problems with the racism thing, a student went on hunger strike at the beginning of November, the Football team joined in the growing protest, the faculty were about to, and the President of the University resigned in the midst of the turmoil, and will be followed by the Chancellor.  The longer story of Mizzou sheds some light on how "The System" responds to valid protest: not very well.  It also makes a point about how athletes, coaches and other players can shine a spotlight on an issue because of the money and visibility surrounding the games we play.  More on how a hunger strike by a college student doesn't draw the amount of attention that missing a football game does some other time.  The thing that really set me off with regard to this was an article that I knew I shouldn't have read in the first place, from a VERY conservative person, from a VERY conservative publication which was trying to make the point that the black (and whites who are supporting them) students at Mizzou were essentially wrong for protesting and costing the poor President and Chancellor their jobs.  It actually referred to the students as "fascist," which, I'm guessing is an attempt to portray them as spoiled or entitled little dictators who want to run off their "opposition."  Except for the fact that fascism implies, in any reasonable sense, the rule of a totalitarian state or dictator (Mussolini in Italy, Franco in Spain, Castro in Cuba).  Calling a kid on a hunger strike, the faculty walking out, or the football team not playing a fascist activity is getting the power dynamic of fascism exactly backwards, in other words that's just not how it works, but someone wanted to feel justified in their bias so very strongly that just spit out something they considered to be a vile insult.

All of this brought to mind Mr. Marshall Mathers, aka Eminem, and the story he told in the movie 8 Mile about his beginnings as a white rapper in the impoverished edges of Detroit.  The movie centers around his attempts to break into the world of Hip Hop/Rap music.  The movie demonstrates that, indeed, white people do experience prejudice in some circumstances, but let's be clear, his whiteness has made Eminem actually more relevant as an artist than not.  Because he crosses the boundary and actually uses his "weakness" as a strength.  Which is actually the central premise of the song Lose Yourself, which was the theme and center of the movie narrative.

A poor white kid is trying to work his way to a record contract through participating in "Rap Battles," which, I know sounds a little contrived, but just imagine slam poetry set to music, or just imagine a political campaign set to music and compressed into 90 seconds.  The goal of a battle is to slam your opponent, to make him look bad, to generate more applause for you than for him. Eminem, as a skinny, poor white kid from a trailer park at 8 mile is at a decided disadvantage, because everything in his life is an absolute mess.  He freezes up when he gets on stage to play the insult game, because he knows he's got so many holes in his own life.

So what he does is admit that he's got all of these flaws, he does not focus on tearing down his opponent, he simply writes a song that builds up everyone who hears it.  And the radio friendly edit was, for quite a while, a rallying song for sports teams and car companies alike.

The moral of the story, I suppose you might call it a moral, is that the way to transcend toxic, insult obsessed, negativity, is to focus on building out of the wreckage, rather than on constructing an ivory tower.

Right now our country is full of people jousting at windmills and ignoring the real giants.  Some of us (probably fewer than you actually think) get our panties in a bunch about some plain red coffee cups and a "war on Christmas," and then a whole bunch of other people (probably more than you realize) get our panties in a reflexive bunch about how silly it is to get your panties in a bunch about a freaking coffee cup.  We are so worried about our right to claim victimhood that people will buy into the notion that a university president was victimized by the student body because he didn't respond well to the fact that the students were being victimized by racist incidents on his watch.

We are trying to out victim each other.  Sure I might have lied, but it's very rude of you to point that out.  Sure my policies and ideas have big enough holes to fly a 747 through and more contradictions than the Bible, but that doesn't give you the right to call me a wingnut.

The problem with this approach is that we have real problems: racism, injustice, inequality, violence, just flat out brokenness, and we're never going to be able to hit those targets until we stop focusing simply on kneecapping our opponents, and clinging to our status as a victim.  You have to move past that, lose yourself, gain something greater. I actually think Jesus and Eminem agree on that one, go figure.