Let me preface this post with some background. I was born in 1935 in deep south Mississippi, so I’ve experienced the whole range of race relations since that time. I also had very different experiences travelling in the circus world in my early years where race relations were very different as we traveled across the US and even Canada. I’m not a racist – I learned better very early. (It’s gotten me in trouble with some growing up.)

I preface this because I recall a story from those decades – actually a story and even a Disney movie from Songs of the South. One of those stories reminds me so much of the current situation in Iran that I thought it was maybe worth sharing. Many parallels with what’s happening as I type.

In the story, Brer Bear and Brer Fox want to trap Brer Rabbit. So they build a dummy figure from hot tar, dress it, and set it along Brer Rabbits path. Brer Rabbit speaks to it, receives no answer, gets angry, tells him what to do, and kicks him in frustration when he doesn’t respond. And gets stuck to the tar baby. The more angry Brer Rabbit gets, the more he hits and kick the tar baby, and the more stuck he becomes.

That story is no longer popular because of the perceived relationship between the tar baby and a black person – racist implications. Disney even made a second movie where the tar baby became a doll covered in glue to suppress such perceptions.

I only bring it up because that story has so many parallels with our current situation with Iran. They wouldn’t listen and respond. We decided to kick them. And got an unexpected response. They just stood pat, and the more we kicked, the more we’ve gotten stuck.

In the story, Brer Rabbit escaped from the tar baby by asking his captor, Brer Fox, to throw him into a nearby briar patch. He used reverse psychology to become freed from the tar baby. He got back to his former place before being trapped.

I don’t know if Trump has any such plans. Or can have. We’ve blown our prior relationships with so much of the free world.

We’ve done this before in other similar situations – Viet Nam, Afghanistan, Iraq. But none of those had the potential that Iran has to impact world economies. We were warned in advance – Trump’s prior National Security Advisor briefed him in his first term. I’ll bet others tried – he simply doesn’t want to listen.

As Peter;, Paul, and Mary sang: “When will we ever learn, when will we ever learn?”