Thumper's Mother....

“If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all,” was early advice Thumper’s mother gave her young son as he and Bambi explored the new world they’d been born into.  It echoed through my head as I pondered what to say at last night’s city council meeting.


I think many of us were raised by Thumper’s mother, especially in my Boomer generation.  Daily I watch myself edit the thoughts in my head to match this cultural standard, and find myself appalled when other people speak without their words going through that filter.  Easter’s innocence, and the hope for resurrection of a better world, probably reminded me.  


Not saying anything at all is what brought us Viet Nam, however, and my generation rebelled not only against that war but also against Thumper’s mother’s advice.  We learned to use some very unnice words to describe what became a travesty against our own people as well as the Southeast Asians, mirrored in the civil rights struggle at home.  


Nice things were pretty much all Lindsay’s city council were used to hearing before September 2010.  The cloak of niceness was invisibly wrapped around the public’s podium, and when I first started approaching it, I felt it wrap around my head, smothering my words.  It was hard to get free of it, and even harder then to find civil words to describe why I was there.  It helped to remember the much-higher price paid by many civil rights workers and anti-war protesters for breaking the rule.


Niceness is a hallmark of small towns. In both, it often appears that the value of niceness overrides the value of truth.  A new book, Our Patchwork Nation,* describes twelve categories of American communities they call “the real America,” one of which is called “Mormon Outposts.”  In that chapter the mayor of a typical Mormon outpost community is quoted as saying “I think as long as you’re not doing something that’s offensive to the majority that you’ll be treated well and embraced.... But if you come in and you don’t - if you’re too radical in your look, behavior, or language...work ethic - there’s a long list of things that is expected for a person being a good community member.”  The authors then ask “And if someone wants to change any of those things or bring a new perspective?”  The town’s mayor replied “That’s not gonna happen.”


Citing Mormon society’s qualities, the authors note “Harmony, order, union, intelligent cooperation - not bad things to build a community around.  But they can be tricky in a democracy.”  One of the trickiest things is speaking against the hierarchical power that creates the order.  The book Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer exploring the roots of the conservative LDS societies in the mainstream church offers ample evidence of the dark side of holding your tongue. 


Thumper’s mother meant well, but we need to outgrow her initial caution, meant to preserve ourselves as well as the feelings of others, and learn to dialogue with each other under the banner of truth.  That’s the trickiest, but also most necessary, part of democracy.


-*By Dante Chinni & James Gimpel, Gotham Books, 2010, in collaboration with The Christian Science Monitor, PBS News and the Jefferson Institute.