I recently wrote a post asking a question regarding the funeral of Coretta Scott King. In that post, I skipped several steps in my thinking that led from the uproar over the speeches made at the funeral and the question that I posed, and in the process of skipping those steps I conveyed a message at best incomplete and more typically misinterpreted. So, here I will fill in the missing steps, and I hope to turn this into a broader post on a related topic, that of context, because the context of my life and recent events in my life drove my thinking which was unexplained in my post. Unfortunately, more than one blogger misunderstood the context of my question because I did not explain it.

Regular readers of Random Fate know at least some of the context in my life, that of the recent death of my father, and I have first-hand experience of both funeral planning and how things go off the preferred track.

You see, at my Dad’s funeral there was a Baptist preacher delivering the sermon, and a sermon it was, with the proselytizing characteristic of evangelicals that infuriates me, especially in the context of my father’s funeral, because he was not a proselytizing man.

The preacher deviated from my preference, but his sermon was comforting both to my Mom and my Dad’s mother. You see, funerals are not for the dead, they are for the living, and not all of the living get an equal vote.

I have not seen any articles reporting on the family of Mrs. King complaining about the speeches given at her funeral. Please correct me if I have missed news of this, but if there are no objections from the family, then who are we, bloggers, commentators, politicians, whoever, to claim that the events of the funeral were “inappropriate” if the family of Mrs. King through their silence give their approval?

This was one step I skipped, noting that those expressing their disapproval had no vote in the arranging of the funeral, nor any right to judge what the family wished.

Another step I did not explain was my reasoning chain that led to me asking when else could opposing views be presented directly to President George W. Bush, because the reason behind my question was to prompt thoughts on if we truly want a President who is so disconnected from opposition that he has to be confronted in seemingly inappropriate contexts, such as a funeral honoring a public figure that the President feels compelled to attend.

One of the most troubling aspects of the Presidency of George W. Bush to me has been the exclusion of anyone who even appears to present an opposing viewpoint from publicly funded events at which President Bush appears. If these were funded through the Republican Party, or through private sources, they would not be contrary to the spirit underlying our Constitution, but when events that we are all paying for are exclusive to only those who support the views of the President, that is positively un-American, regardless of what the mindless cheerleaders would want you to believe.

What is democracy about? What is America about?

Dissent…

Our nation was founded on dissent. We should never forget that the American Revolution was a rebellion against the legal, legitimate government of the colonies, and the Declaration of Independence was nothing more than an attempt to justify an illegal rebellion against a legitimate government.

Yet we now have a President who apparently cannot confront dissent directly.

Think about this in the context of our tradition, not the context of the current partisan furor.

Think, don’t just react.

In the framework of our tradition, along with the context of the apparent wishes of the family of Coretta Scott King, was my question, “When, exactly, since the so-called ‘debates’ during the election (which were so controlled as to be laughable if they weren’t the sole forum for direct confrontation between opposing viewpoints), has President Bush had any opposition presented to him publicly in a forum that was NOT controlled by the White House?” so out of line, or even partisan?

Context, while not everything, is important.

A recent link I posted was to a parody trailer for the movie Sleepless in Seattle, presenting it as a horror movie instead of the obvious chick-flick it was shows the effects that context has on our perceptions. Watch the movie file in the link and think about how the music and the narration “frame” the images in a way completely contrary to the actual film, although the individual scenes excerpted were not altered.

Even over a quarter of a century ago, when I was in my early teens, I would look at the copyright date of anything I read, short story, novel, nonfiction, whatever. It was important to me to understand the time and the culture which informed the writing of whatever I was reading, and I discovered it was especially true in the case of science fiction. This is a topic that merits its own post, if not a book.

Another example of context can be found in educational films made in the wake of World War II. For example, the Encyclopedia Britannica made a film on the dangers of despotism in 1946, only one year after the surrender of the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese. Thinking in the terms of that era, given what the British and Americans had so recently experienced, watch the film (NOTE - it is about 10 minutes in length, watch it through this link, or download it through clicking on the thumbnail image below):

Even though the context of the short film was in the immediate aftermath of World War II, with all that implies with respect to democracy and despotism, there is a resonance that rings through the years of the Cold War, when we claimed to be fighting against the evils of Communism as expressed by the Soviet Union and a decade or so later the so-called People’s Republic of China.

What exactly did we say we were fighting against?

Think about it, not in partisan terms, but in fundamental philosophical foundations.

The culture which formed the context in which I was raised said that we were fighting against the despotism of Communism that ignored the freedoms we had chosen to enshrine in our Bill of Rights.

The arts of the time, notably the television and movies, can give a feel for the times to those who did not experience them, and for those who did live then provide a useful reminder.

The Day After (1983) - a television miniseries that showed the likely effects of all-out nuclear war and frightened a nation when President Ronald Reagan labeled the Soviet Union as an “evil empire” that must be destroyed.

2010 (1984) - both the book and movie are filled with the Cold War anxiety of the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction that had the so rarely appropriate three letter acronym MAD

The Searchers (1956) - a movie made substantially earlier than either of the two referenced above, but one that is very instructive of both the attitudes and ambiguities of the time, especially when the treatment of the Native Americans is considered, along with the uncharacteristic antihero role played by John Wayne, a courageous man who is acting out of questionable motives, a contrast to his typical role of the quintessential American hero

Each of these need to be viewed in full and considered with respect to the context of the time in which they were made, not in the context of the time in which we live now.

Think about it. If we view the film on despotism linked to above in the context of our current time, it could be interpreted in myriad ways, most of them negative in the view of those who are partisan fans of George W. Bush.

Yet, the film itself was made before George Bush senior even entered politics, much less his son would have been thought of as possibly being President.

Consider the contrasts, the context of the time in which the film was made, and the tenor of politics today.

Think about how our environment and the “framing” of issues influences our thinking, even when we try to go outside our partisan boxes that constrain us and require certain reactions to each issue.

In the end, that is all I ask when I write for this weblog, try to go beyond the spin, beyond the framing, beyond even our current cultural context and partisan boxes. Try to reach back to first principles, the freedoms that the founders fought so hard to achieve and which have somehow survived to our present day.

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