Our Sorry-ness

 [from 6/24/09]

It's three hours to deadline and all I have is a note to myself that says, "write about how sorry we are." OK, um, we're very very sorry we didn't start thinking about this column a whole lot earlier.

The note concerned two or three oppressed minorities that I don't belong to. The "we" in the note refers to me and the other nonmembers of the minorities in question, AKA "the Sorry."

Of course, one of the things we all aren't good at talking about is that you can be an oppressed minority for the purpose of one discussion and one of We the Sorry or We the Should-be Sorry for the next. Complicating matters, there are oppressed majorities. For example, Christians are severely oppressed, as passages from the Bible may be engraved in stone and propped up almost anywhere EXCEPT public property. Demand reparations!

But I digress. I was talking about oppressed minorities, having in mind African-Americans, specifically those descendent of slaves, and the LGBTQ crowd, and maybe one other.

One of the points I always want to get across is that we oppressors and/or former oppressors are the real experts on oppressions, and the "go to" people for information about them. I mean, if you just want to know what it's like to be an oppressed person, go ahead and ask one of them, they have that down. But if you want to know how someone can be oppressive asked an oppressor. It's just common sense.

For example, the recently passed Senate version of an apology for slavery contains a clause that would disallow its use as a basis for claims of financial reparations. If you ask an African-American descendant of slaves about this you can expect to find out how they feel about it, but don't expect any useful information as to why that clause is in there. For that you have to ask racist white Senators.

While not a Senator, I HAVE been white and racist, so I can guess for a fact what it's about. White people are doing this calculation: "There's so many of us, and so many of them. If we give all that money to them, that takes away so much of our money. Damn, that's no good. OK, let's just say we're sorry and hope they're satisfied with that."

It's really all about the money. Frankly, guys, it was all about the money when our ancestors enslaved you. It was all about the money when they set up segregation. The idea was to use you to make money, and then when that didn't work, to keep you from getting a share of what money was left over. It was all about the money then, and it still is.

It's all about the money. It's not about hate. Racial hate was just something that was invented by rich whites to bring poor whites on board with the money thing, to get them to go along with whatever it took to hang onto the money.

With the Japanese it was the same. Make reparations just for that generation, drag your heels until most of them are dead, make the amount as paltry as possible, and you can shelve the hatred.

Sunday will be the 40th anniversary of Stonewall, as good a time as any to ask why it happened. More to the point of this column, we need an oppressor to step up and explain how that oppression comes about. I'm at a total loss when it comes to the general issue of oppression of LBGTQ people, but I have a guess about the opposition to same-sex marriage.

It's all about the money! The whole idea that it's about preserving the sanctity of marriage is a load of crap used to string the poor people along. The real issue is, marriage benefits cost money, and the majority is calculating "more for them means less for us."

It's all about greed, never about justice. That's how sorry we are.

Go Seahawks, in the Sense of Motion

Since I started reeling off my pet peeves last time, I've discovered it's addictive. Soon I'll be the old man in the communal room at the rest home cursing everyone. The cursing will release endorphins. These will allow me to get by on less debilitating pain medication than my sweetness-and-light fellow residents. Therefore I will outlive their sorry asses.

Why isn't football over? Didn't the last game of every season used to be played on New Years Day? Or am I being confused by the slowing of the Earth's revolution and the introduction of the Gregorian calendar? Doesn't anybody else remember how, when the last game was played, the players on the winning team all had their hearts cut out and offered to the gods and the rest of us got to enjoy a little closure?

Which reminds me of this huge peeve category: People who feel that if I don't share their sentiments then I'm somehow invalidating them. OK, I don't support the Seahawks in any sense of the word "support." But that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with other people supporting them. In fact I make it easier for the rest of you to get tickets to the games, because I'm not there taking up a seat.

Other sentiments that I have been at one time or another perceived as "invalidating": somebody's love of Jesus, someone's feeling that all sex is ultimately rape, a love of textile technology and fabric science, a love of scattering matrices, appreciation for long hair, short hair, ancient Sparta, and the Rolling Stones.

It's only a short step from "If you don't like the Rolling Stones I'm going punch you in the nose" to the position of political correctness that says "If you aren't sensitive to my feelings of victimization I'm going to use my political clout to silence you."

I hate all varieties of political correctness, including all the favorite forms of left-wing PCness. You know how, for example, it's considered so foul to use the N-word by some people that Mark Twain, a dead white writer, is believed to have no right to use it even in a book attacking slavery, and that such books should be banned from libraries. For other examples of left-wing PCness that I hate, all of them, see countless columns by John Leo.

But here's a pet peeve: There's right-wing political correctness too! And Leo and friends like it! And it's on the rise!

There's the Israeli ambassador who vandalized a work of art in Sweden because he perceived it as offensive to victims of a Palestinian suicide-bomber. He called the piece an "abomination." Ariel Sharon backed the ambassador's action and praised him. It recalled another famous time a nation's leader was praising the destruction of artistic abominations, back in the 1930s.

Oops! Look at the bad I just did! I made a comparison between Sharon and Hitler! Oh no, now I may have trivialized the Holocaust! I am now as bad as MoveOn.org for posting ads comparing Bush to Hitler! I must be chastised by the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Congress, the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Republican National Committee for my own good, then I must apologize profusely, withdraw my comments, and then… well there is no then because I'm sure none of that would satisfy them.

Here's the deal: Hitler didn't leap into power in 1933 and instantly kill 6 million Jews. First he had to get laws passed that weakened legal protections. Then he had to exploit the backlash against that move so he could win support for more drastic measures. Then he had to develop a secret apparatus to carry out those measures with as little resistance as possible. The Holocaust took time and preparation.

I'm sorry, but I can't help but notice that Bush HAS taken Hitler's baby steps. That's just how a lot of people see the matter. It doesn't trivialize the Holocaust to harbor fears that we have smoothed the way for another one. It also doesn't help political discussions any to try to silence people when they express their fears openly. It's PC-mongering at its worst.