Site Presented By
Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Thank you. You're right. And this is the problem as I see it, and as I have had to live in it: one can only descend to the level of the monstrous if we don't take Nietzche's advice. We become what we behold, and civil society can't afford that.
"An eye for an eye and eventually the whole world is blind."
Indeed...
Thank you, that was perfect, and crystallizes very well the difference I was trying to put my finger on.
--Ron
<<Clearly there is a difference between irrational hatred and justified hate. Unfortunately, conservatives - as well as many liberals it would seem - would have us believe that irrational hatred is justified and justified hate is irrational.>>
I appreciate your comments and I hear you. However, I think you make a common error when you ID the problem as southerners and the south. It is certainly the most obvious example of what's been wrong with us as a nation since its inception, but hardly the inately knowingly evil region. There have been racial and other sorts of "differentness-related" atrocities committed all over our fair nation. As a southerner I am inclined to think of people such as Morris Dees and Wendell Berry as beacons of heroic rightness. Perhaps even Wm. J. Clinton would qualify. The late William Bradford Huey. Faulkner. Willie Morris (with whom I particularly identified because of his childhood). These are not a rare breed, and they have all taken to task Mr. Helms and others like him in their respective times.
By the same token, one of the most egregious lynchings in the history of this country took place in Pennsylvania. One can't very well lay the Black Wreath upon a single region, as fashionable as it may seem. To be fair, racism and simple bigotry have been pretty evenly distributed, and the south has evolved, generally, much faster than the rest of the country, given the handicap under which it has worked.
As the apocryphal bumper sticker spoken of by Brother Dave Gardner read, "I might be slow, but I'm ahead of you."
If the south is "our crazy uncle in the basement", then consider that most at large child molesters are relatives, even if they live in the midwest, California, Boston, New Jersey, etc. They're all over the place, and none is worse than the others, except that the more subtle the racism and bigotry (as in Boston as a grand example), the more difficult it is to uncover and undo.
I'm not saying you're wrong about the south: I just think you left out a lot of other territory that's got its own human stains to deal with.
I would only say that hate is hate. There isn't good hate vs. evil hate. Contempt for evil is understandable, but hatred is what stains the human soul, and when and if we learn to feel hatred because of hatred, then the first haters have simply won us over. They've won.
I've read your letters. You're human. So am I, and I am every bit the hypocrite at times. Human, you know. No saint. I just keep trying. It's a goal, not a status.
While I once again largely agree with the thrust of your post, I find it aimed at a particular group of people which betrays a certain prejudice which, as always, blinds one to the wrongness of others, who look or act or smell or sound a little more like us.
I am a lifelong Republican and a congenital conservative -- in the mold of William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Dwight Eisenhower, even Barry Goldwater late in his life. I detest what has become of the party of my father, and I think I probably addressed most of your points in my previous post to you. It is a very strange place I find myself in, racially mixed but outwardly whiter than white (so that I can conveniently say I don't give a rat's ass about race), a southerner who has been called "the consumate southern gentleman" without a trace of irony, and also a "bleeding heart conservative."
I believe in punching the big guy -- but while he is alive and in front of me.
So I would say I have to relegate turnip to the same status as many of my countless dear cousins, many of whom pretend to be white or honestly believe they are -- and why not? They pass for white whether they know they're passing or not. Maybe turnip's doing the same thing for all I know. If so, I feel for him. I certainly do feel for his ignorance, and I do call it that because I have no evidence that he is an evil person (if he is even a he). I have plenty evidence he is dumb as a stump, but apparently he knows that because of the moniker he uses.
That's how I deal with people like turnip, but if I knew him or was related to him, I'd still show up at his funeral and I wouldn't piss on his grave. He is a fellow human, and we're all of us far from perfect.
The problem is that some of us are actually evil. I believe in evil as a potential, which I have found to be a sticking point with many atheists and folks from thataway, because it implies something supernatural. It's just an argument I've encountered. Clearly you have no problem with the concept of evil. I'm glad. I only wish you didn't seem to believe it is confined to below the Mason-Dixon line.
You said something worth repeating: "...civility is not about being kind to those who are like you... that's just tribalism." Amen, my brother. And tomorrow I will go meet once again with my tribe.
Pray for me.
Thank you for this. If anyone here understands where you're coming from it might be me. This means a great deal.
I am absolutely delighted that Jesse Helms is no longer walking the earth, spreading his hatred and fear.
Helms is a member of an elite short list of people who have come close to bringing me to religion, simply because it would be so gratifying to believe that there's a special room in some place called "hell" where they can join the likes of Jerry Falwell and Richard Nixon on a barbed spit inserted up their nether regions until it comes out their hateful mouths, and slowly rotate for eternity over an unimaginably hot fire.
Alas, I'll have to settle for them being simply dead. But that is enough. There is joy in the fact that they'll no longer be polluting humanity with their perverted ideas.
My own beliefs tell me that I ought to feel guilty about feeling joy at the death of another, but I justify my current feelings of delight with the thought that it is the final shutting off of the font of ignorant hatred that spewed from his very being every time he opened his mouth that I celebrate, not the passing of the man himself.
If I'm deceiving myself, so be it. Like Helms himself, I'm only human. It is only human to feel joy when something which hurts horribly is removed from the scene, and what came out of Helms' mouth was a thorn in the side of humanity.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Salon headlines in your mailbox
