"They"

Who are “They”

They are the real problem. They do this. They won’t let us do that. They don’t want us to know the truth. They have another agenda.

In listening to social commentary, radio commentators, dinner parties, church lessons, and talk on the corner, I find that “they” are always up to something and seem to be the cause of most things. I have had my scientists and pollsters research the issue and they have found that “they” is the most used word by anyone in any conversation about news, society with all its ills, explanation of any event involving conflict, and especially in any explanation of conspiracy or events behind any proverbial curtain. This is my new second favorite statistic (second to the fact that 80% of people believe they are above average).

Who are “they”?

In our current climate of economic, racial, political, and cultural division there are lots of “they” being referred too. People are very comfortable talking about “they” and very less comfortable explaining who “they” are (is would be the appropriate word for this usage but I can’t bring myself to write it). “They” is a crutch used to describe the faceless other without having to name them.

If I say “they” in any conversation or diatribe, my listener has the liberty of filling in the blank of whom the “they” are to fit their liking. I exercise the right to assume the listener understands whom I am referring to while still allowing them to misunderstand of their own free will. “They” allows me the comfort of either deniability if my statements cause trouble, or the comfort of not having to name names and officially become a finger pointer on uncomfortable issues.

How would communication change if the word “they” were no longer available?
At risk of offending the Hemmingway sensibilities of some, and the joy of brevity, we should begin filling in the blank of the “they”.

Any time one is heard referring to they, inquire who “they” are. Any time one is engaged in conversation and about to use the word, stop and explain the “they”, maybe even using a name or some other defining description. Listen and see how accurate my pollsters are (should I mention my distrust of polls and their relevance).

It is time we are called on the carpet in our description of or references to others. Let us try the honesty of direct address in our own speech and call on it from others.

“They” will never change unless we demand action!

Mountain Men

P.S. not noted: David Montgomery, aka"Ramrod". Prolific trapper of musk rats, beaver, raccoons, boy scouts, and leader of the "Mormon Battalion". Teller of tall tales, friend of the fur ball, hater of wolves, lover of chocolate chips and ice cream. This Arizona born Mtn. Man explored the wilds of Sandy Utah before following the call of the stealhead to the metropolis of the LoLo trail. He was closely associated with multiple Daves, known to run with the Dalton Gang as well as other knee capless ruffians. This character was well renowned for corrupting return and potential missionaries with his sideburns and goatee, terrified suburbanites with rules and structure, taught local school children to build rifles and long knives, and stirred contraversy with alum and rock salt. He was known to trade heavily in powder horns, mastadon, and plastic spoons. His lodge was always known to bring needed rains to the driest of climes, probably from his close communion with watercolors. He never met an old barn he would not do a painting of, a husky he would not do an engraving of, or an ear he would not bend. His jaw traps were legendary and will probably one day be his downfall.

Porter Rockwell

Geronimo

Brigham Young

the prophet Muhammad

sir Francis Drake

Me and Glenn Beck

OK, long drives in a car by myself, a cell phone with a bill I never see, and someone talking crazy on the radio are a bad combination. I thought nothing at all about calling...just dialed right up.

When someone answered the phone, no big deal. When they said "Dalyn in Philadelphia" I got unexpectadley nervous. It was the kind of nervous where you can't hear what you say while you are saying it, sort of like a real life 3 second delay. Reading back over this I am not overly impressed with myself and my inability to help Brother Glenn realize he sounds like the snotty kid in the back of history class complaining, "why do we have to study all this crap? All these guys are dead."

March 20, 2008 - 12:54 ET
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GLENN: Daylon in Philadelphia, WPHT. Hello.

CALLER: It seems to me the bigger issue is lack of intergenerational communication which results in black and white people don't understand each other and where that leads into conflict is a lot of people don't understand black culture as a whole was formed in conflict, about people that are teaching my younger generation lived through that conflict where the government and my people really did not support or like black people. Now, if black people don't have any social interaction with white people, there's no personal evidence to contradict that or to teach them that things may have really changed. And also white people aren't around black people enough to get a church or something of that nature. They don't get it. There's not enough people talking on a real personal level.

GLENN: Am I supposed to disagree with this?

CALLER: No, not necessarily. But I think it makes a white person like you and me need to take responsibility to really try to understand where they are coming from.

GLENN: No. No, I don't think so. I will take my half of it and take responsibility and that's what I'm doing. That's why I'm talking to African-Americans on this particular subject who agree with me and disagree with me and I'm trying to get a handle on what that, you know, -- where I am in my understanding. You know, I didn't see this one coming from Barack Obama and his preacher. I didn't see this coming. I didn't see this as being something that people on the left would embrace and say, oh, there's no big deal to this at all. So I do need an education to be able to understand America, not just black America but America in general to find out where we are. And I think that's what I'm doing, but I will only take -- I'll only carry the bag so far, my friend. CALLER: I guess when I say white people, everybody has a responsibility to understand everything.

GLENN: Yeah.

CALLER: And you need to seek that out but what I'm saying is if we don't understand the other side, you can't really paint a view of it until you gain some understanding.

GLENN: Yeah, I don't really need to understand -- I don't need to understand Al-Qaeda and I don't need to understand a theology that says that if God isn't against the white man that he is a murderer and we should kill God. That's actual Black Liberation Theology. I don't think I need to understand -- I don't need to understand that theology. That theology is racist. I don't need to go any deeper.

CALLER: There is a difference between agreeing and understanding. You don't have to agree with somebody. But if you come to some understanding, you have a view of where they are coming from so you can communicate.

GLENN: Yeah, I don't need to communicate with bigots and racists.

CALLER: Well, if a whole culture tends to create racist and bigots --

GLENN: Oh, okay. So we've created this?

CALLER: Well, this is where we are and I fear that both sides are getting further apart.

GLENN: Yeah.

CALLER: When it comes to understanding.

GLENN: What you don't understand is black liberation, you don't understand what our last guest just said about black liberation. It was not caused by the white man. It was caused as a political movement. Just the same way that -- I believe that the teachings of Mohammed have been so widely distorted and they have been distorted -- what people don't understand about Islam is that it's not Islam that is the problem. It is political Islam. It is using a faith for political power and that's exactly what Black Liberation Theology is. It's all about political power.

CALLER: Right. But also the history of the black church is rooted in political activism. That's what it took the organization of the black church is what actually made the civil rights movement successful. There's a legacy there that makes people --

GLENN: There is a legacy, my friend, in the white churches of America of activism as well, activism on freeing slaves. If it wasn't for white churches, the slaves would have gone on for a lot longer. It was the white churches that really were instrumental in freeing the slaves and changing people's minds. So there is activism in white churches as well as black churches.

CALLER: Right. There definitely where. When it becomes more recent, not talking about slavery, you are talking about the civil rights movement, you have church relations on both sides, black people moving and there's a lot of coalition with black and white on that side. You also have white churches and really the southern white conservative movement responding against that. That's the more recent legacy that people have a memory of today in their real life experience. It takes real life experience to counteract what you've been taught by your parents or what you've read in history books. That's helped people interpret. And there's none of that cross-cultural stuff going on.

GLENN: Again I don't need a cross-cultural dialogue with people who are bigots and racist. I don't ask African-Americans to sit down and try to understand the KKK. I don't do that. I don't need to understand the KKK. I see a man, and I've seen it in my own hometown when I lived in Cheshire, Connecticut, I see a man in a pointy hood, I don't need to understand his back ground, his childhood, his anything. I understand he's a bigot, he's a racist and I have nothing to do with him. I don't want anything to do with him.

CALLER: Black and white is so polarized now that somebody's going to have to cross that divide because you have --

GLENN: No, you do not cross the divide of right and wrong. You do not reach across the aisle to try to embrace, try to befriend, try to empower wrong. Bigotry is wrong. Hatred is wrong. You don't try to understand it and say, "Well, okay now, okay now, okay, let me see if I can understand your point of view. You hate black people. Okay, I don't hate black people. Where can we meet in the middle?" You don't do that! You know what? Let's compromise. Let's just both hate Asians. What are you talking about?

CALLER: Glenn, here's the reality of the situation. You have black people. As a general rule, and I'm making an assumption for another group of people that I don't belong to. So I could be way off, but in my experience it's generally true, you have a generation of people that have been taught that as a whole white people do not like you. That is the assumption that most people have. Why if they have that assumption would they try to cross the bridge, cross the divide -- GLENN: Let me ask you a question, are you a white guy?

CALLER: Very much so.

GLENN: Very much so. Isn't it true that whites have been taught that it's very much so the truth that African-Americans don't like you? I mean, what's the difference? We've been taught, both races have been taught lies. Both races have been taught lies by whom? Buy people who want to control us by power, people who want to keep us apart for political power. Political correctness has taught the white man you cannot talk to a black man because the black man will sue you, the black man will call you a racist, the black man will destroy you, the black man doesn't want anything to do with you, you can't say anything. I'm not just making this up as a white man. Obama even understands that. He said it in his own speech. So why has that happened? For political power. It's called political correctness for a reason. For political power. Well, the same thing has been done to the black man. The black man has been taught that the white man is evil. So we don't talk to each other anymore. So I guess the one thing that we can't agree on is that we have been taught lies. The one thing that the white man needs to understand is stop with the political correctness. One thing the white man needs to learn and needs to learn through time is that you can say something that might be offensive to somebody who's an African-American and not lose your entire life over it. Don Imus comes to mind. But that's only going to come in time. What the black man needs to understand is you are not going to lose your life over being in the wrong neighborhood or dating the wrong color person, but that's only going to come over time. Back in a second. But you know what? None of those things are going to happen over time if we don't recognize the progress that we have made. And why don't we recognize the progress? Again, because people teach lies for political power.

At this point I had a profound and witty remark that would have convinced both Glenn and the world that I am of course right, but I realized that I was talking to a dead line and had been for some time, as Glenn went off on his final tirade, having already cut my line. I had to turn the radio up to hear him finish up.