Put Caitlyn Jenner on $10 Bill
No one really bothered to check with the American public about changing pictures on greenback currency. Executive decisions come from strong leaders who pursue social ideologies to whatever extreme is necessary. It looks like US paper money is going the way of the postage stamp. Each new president or treasury secretary will change pictures frequently to help shape popular culture.
Not that there’s anything wrong with Harriet Tubman. Her political values fit both the Left and Right today. She aligned herself with radicals who wanted to overturn a social order that they found repugnant and politically incorrect. “Underground movements” remain a low-cost course of agitation when corrupt governments hold all power. Abolitionists knew it back then just as surely as terrorists do now.
Tubman helped round up fighters for John Brown’s multi-racial guerrilla band who methodically murdered innocents at Harper’s Ferry, with Brown becoming a martyr to many (like Thoreau) after the government hung him. Tubman said that “[H]e done more in dying, than 100 men would in living.”
Suicidal Jihadist gunmen and bombers would agree. Will some future bill carry the pictures of political activists like Ted Kaczynski or Timothy McVeigh, both of whom were prosecuted by Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland?
McVeigh was rushed to death within four years of his conviction, undoubtedly to “set an example.” In contrast, Kaczynski, the Unabomber mathematics professor (University of California at Berkeley) was allowed to spend his life in prison being taken care of, though Wikipedia reports that “On May 24, 2012, Kaczynski submitted his current information to the Harvard University alumni association. He listed his eight life sentences as awards, his current occupation as prisoner.”
The latest pop culture icon is Caitlyn Jenner who is even more current than Harriet Tubman in the long line of civil rights categories who deserve victim status. LGBT is the latest. Being cause celebre is a tacit form of public support, isn’t it? Sports celebrities are the ultimate role models these days, and Jenner’s picture on the Wheaties cereal box completes the vetting.
Reservations? Wikipedia reports that “Jenner is a Christian, leans politically conservative, and is a Republican”: “I have gotten more flak for being a conservative Republican”, Jenner says, “than I have for being trans.” Caitlyn Jenner represents who we’ve become under our dual-machine democracy.
Treasury Secretary Jack Lew gloats that “America’s currency is a way for our nation to make a statement about who we are and what we stand for…Our paper bills — and the images of great American leaders and symbols they depict — have long been a way for us to honor our past and express our values.”
Lew still respects the powdered wigs and perfumed coiffing of the old Federalists, but feels a duty to champion social justice issues as they evolve. Lew may have his detractors, but it’s disrespectful to call him a pantywaist.
Hollywood celebrities like Prince and David Bowie and Michael Jackson and Robin Williams have been the latest to be sanctified and promoted, without challenge in our society, so don’t they too deserve a moment in the sun on some of our paper bills?
