What Did They Say Before Kristallnacht?

 --Mr. Holder's Lynch Mob 
 ______________________

[Lisa has been taking "news fasts" as an adjutant to a program of maintaining sanity and emotional equilibrium. Dr. Weil says it's a good thing, and she finds that nothing much has changed after a period away, anyway. However, what continues to stand out in sharp relief is the media's shameless bias and hatred.]

Take yesterday's Slate piece, "Jew Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me",  which uses the examples of disgraced public figures Weiner, Spitzer and Filner to ask, "Are Jews less likely to cheat? The data say no."  The title is neither funny, clever nor factually correct.

What an egregiously anti-Semetic non-descriptive title for this piece of non-reportage. This was not a story in the White Supremacist "Stormfront", but in a supposedly liberal, supposedly credible online magazine. Cocking my head, I thought, "O.K. -- someone thinks this is a clever title, probably borrowing from the Kenny Rogers song, but what does it have to do with the copy?"

When I asked Ranger why my feelings of revulsion at the title, he said correctly, "It's just offensive. It's racial profiling." And he's correct. Why is it that liberals -- who claim to be for the underdog -- cannot find sympathy for a people composing just .2% of the world's population? That is about 14 million people, versus say 1.6 Billion Muslims, who make up just under one-quarter (23%) of the world's population. Must not racially-profile Muslims or Blacks, but apparently we are happy keeping our old scapegoat the Jewish people in place.

The piece offers nothing beyond the author's decision to NOT BELIEVE a 2005 survey taken by the condom company Durex regarding its users self-reported behaviors. In that survey, Israelis were the LEAST LIKELY to respond they had an affair:

The survey included more than 300,000 people in 41 countries. On a list of possible “sexual experiences you’ve had,” the questionnaire asked respondents whether they’d ever had an “extramarital affair.” Israel came in dead last. Across the 41 countries, the average percentage of respondents who said they’d had an affair was 22. In Israel, it was 7.

Not one to be discouraged by facts, the creative statistician Saletan summates his piece with a Redbook survey of WOMEN to arrive at the non-conclusive statement that Protestants cheat probably a little more than Jews or Catholics. And this passes for reportage in an otherwise respectable publication. So ... why the pejorative title? 

Is this not as offensive as going through the list of black personages who have cheated and calling them "Mandingos" or some such? Why is Slate singling out one racial group and suggesting they suffer from a racial taint, as the result of a handful of examples? Is there a useful or positive message behind this non-story?

This is akin to the offensive "driving while black (DWB)"; we will call it, "Living While Jewish (LWJ)". Just as with blacks of a previous generation, Jewish people must be twice as good as a white Christian person to be free of contempt. This is probably a sour grapes extension of the Zimmerman non-story: Because some in the press are disappointed over not being able to skewer a Jew as a gunman (Zimmerman = not) killing one of their ACLU buddies (a black), they will go after their target population in another way. By any means necessary to disguise the egg on your face.

However, instead of the offensive and misleading title (these men did not leave their wives), why not ask compelling questions about these disgraced men like, "Did they remain married after their transgressions? Do they pay for their children and their family? Their schooling? Do they marry their sweet things more often, and do their offspring tend to matriculate into college more often?

"Disgraced" -- an interesting term, no? For the usually irreligionist Left, grace would seem to infer a status of moral rectitude, and morality is something enlightened Slate writer Saletan and ilk would argue vehemently against. Yet exploit the concept of morality they do.

Anyway, it's all piffle, right? Someone's misguided effort at humor, or not-so-cloaked prejudice. Hardly worth a look.

A tidbit for your Sunday.

{As an aside, my friend Alex Lickerman has written a brief piece today on morality fr. a Buddhist MD's perspective @ his blog,  HappinessInThisWorld.}

We Are Zimmerman

The “difference … between man and other forms of life”
is that man has invented what he calls
“morality’ and ‘reason’ to justify what he is doing. …”
--Patriotic Gore, Edmund Wilson

If you have the facts, argue the facts;
If you have the law, argue the law;
If you have neither, pound the table really loudly
--old lawyer's adage

The range of what we think and do
is limited by what we fail to notice.
And because we fail to notice
that we fail to notice,
there is little we can do to change;
until we notice how failing to notice
shapes our thoughts and deeds
--R.D. Laing

War is the spectacular and bloody projection
of our everyday life, is it not?
War is merely an outward expression
of our inward state,
an enlargement of our daily action
--The Causes of War, J. Krishnamurti
_________________

The U.S. serves as the neighborhood watchman of the world, proudly and without apology. We figure we are the Good Guys for trying to keep order and teach the heathens a better way. Unfortunately, since they often behave in ways antithetical to our neatly arrayed protocol and are full of tribal enmity and such, they get killed sometimes.

This neighborhood watchism of the U.S. is related to the outsized news coverage of a discrete tragic event which occurred in late February in a small town in Central Florida, a story which has quickly fired up most of the blogosphere.

We are outraged as a nation over the death of a single young black American shot by a supposedly self-appointed "neighborhood watchman." We know nothing beyond this fact, and the loud and persistent calls to bring Zimmerman to justice hinge on the following claims:

• Trayvon Martin (TM) ™ did not present a mortal threat, therefore the killing was a criminal act

• TM ™ was just a convenient target for Zimmerman's (Z) fantasy of being an American Super Hero

• Firearms are too readily used in our society

All of these are clearly articulated presumptions of a civilized society and a liberal democracy -- hard to refute on the abstract level. All life is valuable, to include that of the most heinous criminals and low-life serial killers. The U.S. is a nation of law, and no individual transcends these precepts.

If TM ™ was not a threat to Z or to anyone's life, then his shooting was not justifiable and not in accordance with our societal values. However, into the simplicity of the legality of the issue creeps the fact that we are NOT a post-racial society, and we are a violent one pretending to be otherwise.

Returning to our neighborhood watchman analogy, If TM ™ was killed illegally, then so too every Afghan, Iraqi and Pakistani whom we killed simply for being Afghan, Iraqi or Pakistani, for we just as assuredly racially-profiled them, too. It's quite simple on that level: We are hypocrites because get morally outraged over one act of supposedly inappropriate violence while supporting a national policy of inappropriate violence.

Yet we project our collective moral outrage and guilt upon Z for his willingness to apply deadly force in what we interpret as an illegal use of violence while we as a nation habitually murder the moral equivalent of TM ™ every day of the week in the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©), and do so without any self-mortification. And without the slightest irony, we figure if we stamp him (Z) out, we can gain some sort of vindication and atone for our transgressions. We love our martyrs, and if that were to happen, we would get a two-fer in the TM ™ saga.

The U.S. was on board with invading Afghanistan and Iraq and 10 years later is still killing people who posed no lethal threat to our national or personal well-being. Yet surely the Iraqis were simply trying to buy some Skittles and iced tea (biscuits and kaffir) with rags and not hoodies on their heads, and we killed them as frivolously as Z. supposedly did a helpless, cookie-baking young man.

While the Afghanis never entered the sanctum sanctorum of our protected personal lives -- the sacred gated community -- they did enter the symbolic sanctuary of our sacred financial and business lives when their supposed charges attacked the Twin Towers in 9-11-01. As a result of that violation and intrusion, our taxes and lack of outrage have allowed the U.S. to "go Zimmerman" on tens of thousands of hadjis.

We are all Zimmerman.

Media Lynch Mob

Everybody's so busy wanting to be down
with the gang.
"I'm conservative", "I'm liberal",
"I'm conservative". Bullshit!
Be a fucking person! Lis-ten!
Let it swirl around your head.
Then form your opinion.
No normal, decent person is one thing, okay?
--Chris Rock

The cops reported you as just an another homicide
But I can tell that you were just frustrated
From living with Murder Incorporated
--Murder Incorporated,
Bruce Springsteen

one may smile, and smile,
and be a villain
--Hamlet, I. v
__________________

Rounding out race week: What it means to be liberal.

One of Ranger's associates once asked me, "So what are you?" after their discussion of their early years in Catholic school. "I'm a human" I said (thank you John Lennon), so absurd seemed the question, as though he could draw a bead on me via such categorization.

So how do we know who anyone is? We have been discussing the rush to judgement this week on the Trayvon Martin case. In legal matters, we come to know what's relevant based upon the workings of our legal system. If we no longer have faith in the process, we have a problem.

The quick and severe sectarianism even in the legitimate press over this issue has been shocking. Among the commentariat, if one sides for the guilt of Zimmerman, one is correctly liberal, and if one calls for delegating the matter to the authorities, one must be a bigot. I am confounded by the majority of my supposed fellows who cannot countenance my position of non-outrage over the non-revealed facts.

To be a liberal thinker is to be broad-minded and inclusive, to consider as many angles as possible, and to shut off no option until it becomes a dead-end or fails to jibe with the preponderance of the data one ingathers. Yet -- it seems today, liberal equates with toeing the party line, swallowing an agenda, being either-or. How did thought become so factionalized and such a bully point?

In the Martin case, what does this imply, this imperative to whitewash any possible culpability of the killed member of a confrontation if he is black and his killer is not? I am not making any judgement here, but simply asking the questions. Is this another opportunity for the anti-gun crowd to argue their agenda?

We have a race problem in this country; of this there is no doubt. It is Hobbesian in proportion, as it really is all against all. Of course, this is not admitted in polite company, but if you drive a mile across Division Street in most towns, you'll see it. It is confusing why we cannot seem to get it together. Part of the problem is that we are not brave enough to speak about it; part is that we -- none of us -- do not even understand it. Magical thinking -- not acknowledging the problem or erasing any culpability is not solving it.

There are some nuts and bolts deficiencies, but there are esoteric and philosophical aspects, too. It may be that people always need a scapegoat. Maybe we are lazy and scared, or angry, or a little of all. What seems clear is that we like to be outraged and like to feel righteous, but still, NIMBY rules the day for most.

I loved the "Portlandia" clip about the principles deep and abiding concern for the provenance and well-being of the chicken they were ordering at a restaurant, but the bottom line? They are going to eat Harold the chicken, providing his upbringing is devoid of enough terror so as not to upset their delicate equilibrium after ingesting him. And this is not to bang Portland (how wonderful to have a microbrew - cafe culture; I wish we had such a thing!)

So you can gussy it up and make eating meat a little more palatable, or you can stop eating it altogether. Your degree of conviction is what is on the chopping block.

All I'm saying is, we have some race problems, and we have people entrenched on both sides of the matter. The problem cannot be solved through outrage over one incident which only got print because of some salacious thinking in the hardcore liberal circles. The problem is not going to be fixed by throwing money at it; it is intransigent, and has thus far resisted the solutions offered.

So, you can get up in arms at the police, or call people pansies for not walking in the Tenderloin or being suspicious of a guy with a hoodie pulled over his head. But it's all about place and time, concealment and intent: A burqa, niqab or a chadri would arouse similar suspicions in our terror-fearing world, and what to do about that?

I'll stick with my original statement: Martin's death would have been a non-starter, save for some crime reporter picking up up on the novelty of the name of the shooter. By the time it went national, the reporters had only just discovered that Zimmerman was not only not white, that he was, in fact Hispanic and Catholic.

The Jewish students who campaigned for and died fighting in the American Civil Rights Movement are forgotten; it is a long-known sociological phenomenon that those who help pull you up are later resented for the inequity of power which they once represented.

In one of the more grotesque examples of the hatred in the Left, the radical's darling rag, CounterPunch (The Second Killing of Trayvon Martin), describes Zimmerman as "a pathetic, chubby, Chaz-Bono-lookalike" -- boy that really makes you bust a gut, huh?

Writer Eskow goes on to enjoy more schadenfreude at Zimmerman's expense: "Any man who lived through public high school knows George Zimmerman, and may well have had occasion to kick his ass," because, you know, George is fat and pathetic, and looks like a transgendered individual. Hey, let's laugh at some she-males ... do we feel bigger, yet?

And the final line delivers the knock-out punch: Zimmerman has "a shyster lawyer" -- surprise, surprise. So, dammit, we have missed the bus on finding a Jew perpetrator, but we can surely skewer a Jew sort-of accessory to the fact, right?

I see this media lynch mob as a prime example of racist bullying, and racism is racism. If you want to present as anti-racism Mr. Eskow, et. al, it would be really good if you were not racist.

So the liberals do the weighing act, and I guess up against the shysters and the alternatively-gendered buffoons, Mr. Martin in his hoodie is looking pretty good. Is this the best we can do in our efforts to ferret prejudicial rot out of our society?

You are either all in about civil rights and human rights and trust in the rule of law, or you wallow in a personal miasma in which you are constantly tallying up the score of least-reviled individuals based on your proximity to the perceived threat.

It looks like easy outrage has trumped rationality for the moment.

A Comparative Analysis

--Capital City Bank sign:
"NO HOODIES"

[my goal is] the creation of a society
without domination
--Adrienne Rich

I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
--Maya Angelou

It was the last night before sorrow
touched her life, and no life is ever
quite the same again when once that cold,
sanctifying touch has been laid upon it
--Anne of Green Gables,
L. M. Mongomery

Ranger Question of the Day;
My bank has been robbed a few times and
has a sign on the door:
"No hoodies allowed in the lobby"
--Is my bank racist?
__________________

[NOTE: The zombie white faces and Anglo features in the "No Hoodie" bank sign. Just 'cause most of the robbers were black, we didn't notice that, you see? So, no racism, right?]

Subtitle: Florida -- the Death Knell State.

The death of Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old killed by a community watchman, has been called a martyrdom and an assassination by his bereaved mother.

If so, consistency requires that we also call the targeted killing of the U.S citizen and 16-year-old son of Anwar al-Awlaki also an assassination and a martyrdom. With martyrdom comes the need for a cause, so what shall we call it -- the death of innocence?

Why is the younger Awlaki's death cheered, while Trayvon's is decried? Are we less discomfited when the kill is called by our president on an erstwhile innocent than by a civilian? If this is truly a racial issue (as so many arguing), then is it simply that a black man can kill a brown man, whereas a brown man may not kill a black man today? Do we only turn the other way when African Americans kill their own (as they do in 91% of gun murders in the U.S.)?

Is it that we just presume that it is a righteous kill, or that we simply don't care -- we don't want to get up in their business? And could that be because we know how entirely and hopelessly estranged we are from a culture that lives under the rubric, "U.S.A."?

But let us forget the dark-skinned little man called al-Awlaki's son, as dark-skinned deaths in the Phony War on Terror are oh-so forgettable; just another brick in the wall. Let's bring it closer to home, back to Florida and assassinations and all the stuff that is beyond the limits of civilized behavior, to another story of young black men involved in murder which you will not hear much about, though it is in the same edition of the paper that fronts Trayvon's saga.

But this story runs several pages back, and under the fold. It is the story of two British tourists murdered in cold blood by a 16-year-old black youth less than three hours Southwest of Trayvon's story. The murderer, Shawn Tyson, called his victims -- James Kouzaris and James Cooper -- "crackers" as they begged for their lives before he shot them to death last April. Tyson was just convicted of two life sentences.

One of the witnesses testified that Tyson told her the day after the killings that he said to the victims, "Well since you ain't got no money I got something for your ass." Calling someone one a cracker when you single them out for death because of their skin color would seem to be a hate crime, but no such charges were filed.

The AP reported, "Authorities say it was initially difficult to get people in this case to reveal details about the shootings (as) many of the witnesses were friends of Tyson's" -- how's that for civic responsibility? Nobody "saw or heard nothin'," a familiar refrain. (If you've ever dealt with the criminal justice system, you know every con was framed; no one really did anything. A culture of responsibility it is not.)

Tyson had been improperly released to his mother's custody from juvenile detention via administrative error the day before the killings for shooting into a car with an illegal firearm the week before. The silence continued when "savage" Tyson was observed tracking his intended cracker victims, enabling the two murders. While the witnesses were complicit in their silence, maybe in their neighborhood that is what is called "neighborhood watch."

Friends of the victims expressed their disappointment with the lack of parity in President Obama's non-response to their plight:

Davies said:"We would like to publicly express our dissatisfaction at the lack of any public or private message of support or condolence from any American governing body or indeed, President Obama himself.

"Mr Kouzaris has written to President Obama on three separate occasions and is yet to even receive the courtesy of a reply.

"It would perhaps appear that Mr Obama sees no political value in facilitating such a request or that the lives of two British tourists are not worthy of ten minutes of his time" (Parents of Murdered British Students Criticise Barack Obama.)

The same scenario was played out in 1993 at a rest stop in Monticello, about 30 miles from Tallahassee: four black youths executed another British tourist, wounding his companion; five days before that, a German tourist was murdered in Miami. After these events, the British and German tourist authorities issued travel advisories to their citizens heading to sunny Florida (the Governer Chiles also wisely suspended the "One Florida, Many Faces" tourist campaign.)

When one of the assailants, John Crumitie, was sentenced to first degree murder two years later, his mother blamed the change of venue -- and REDNECKS -- for the decision:

"It's horrible. It's horrible," said Crumitie's mother, Susie Mae Johnson, blaming the conviction on a change of venue to Pensacola. "The town ain't nothing but a damn redneck town, and Monticello is just the damn same."

Seems like everything boils down to blacks and crackers.

--He didn't like me taking his photo today

Today, our rest stops have security guards -- or post warning signs indicating their absence. Many have simply shut down anyway due to funding strictures.

Alas, there is no outrage in our communities for these murders. Everyone knows you don't roll down your window for a group of young black men . . . and they were foreigners, anyway.

Maybe it was that the victims were not wearing hoodies.

Survivor Florida

Black people yelling "racism!"
White people yelling "reverse racism!"
Chinese people yelling "sideways racism!"
And the Indians ain't yelling shit,
'cause they dead. So everybody bitching
about how bad their people got it:
nobody got it worse than the American Indian.
Everyone needs to calm the fuck down
--Chris Rock
____________________

For some more balance:

The Crawdad Hole offers A Different Look at the Trayvon Martin Case, from that of someone familiar with the police system of questioning and reportage.

Blogger Patheos lays it out simply in his: I have an idea for dealing with the Trayvon Martin shooting:

After careful consideration of all sides in the national conflagration over the shooting of Trayvon Martin and the massive amount of commentary from people who weren’t, you know, there and who have no idea what actually happened, but who are urging us all to choose sides and either cheer for the death of a rogue or scream about cold-blooded murder, my thought is this:

Suppose we have an investigation, not in the media and lasting only a minute or two before a verdict is arrived at, but instead use modern police methods for gathering something called “evidence” and “eyewitness testimony”. Just for kicks, let’s appoint both a defense attorney and a prosecutor who can examine this evidence and testimony and make the best arguments possible for the innocence or guilt of the shooter.

As an added crazy idea, what if we have a legally qualified judge who knows the laws of Florida to arbitrate the process? And to provide some measure of fairness to the process, what if we appoint a jury of, say, a dozen impartial people with nothing pre-invested in the outcome of the trial to ponder the evidence and decide if it points to the innocence or guilt of the accused?

We might even begin with a presumption of innocence on the part of the accused until he is proven guilty, though that is increasingly out of step with our Police State mentality.

It’s just an idea I’ve been noodling as it’s begun to occur to me that TV audiences full of of ignorant people adjudicating questions of life and death based on rumors and hearsay may not be the best way to handle such matters.

Interim

for B.T.

If a kid calls his granma "mama"
and his mama "Pam", he's going to jail!
--Chris Rock
__________________

In the interim until our next installment, some Chris Rock (fr. Kill The Messenger) for your consideration, because we are going to look at the racial problem in our country, as everyone is acting as though a rock has been dropped on their collective head now.

This is also in answer to a recent question from a friend in England who asked: "I hear the "N" word is the worst insult a black man can pay to another black man -- is that true?" Some of our dialog first, then Mr. Rock's explanation:
__________________


P: I have been told by folks from the States that for a black man to call another black man the "N" word is supposed to be the ultimate insult, is that true ?

Lisa (as his family is friends with Baron Cohen): No per the insult: Blacks may call each other that til the cows come home; a white person may not say it, though. It is considered an "owned" word by the black community. They have co-opted it, and use it in an ironic sense. I am not sure fully of the implications, but it is used frequently in rap, which is a big part of our music culture.

Sascha Baron Cohen playing Borat would make this sort of mistake. Snoop Dogg, a rapper, started the "Fo' Shizzle, my Nizzle"; roughly: "For sure, my nigger" ... which became a friendly greeting amongst lower - middle-class blacks. Upper classes would generally eschew this, unless, as mentioned, they were in the entertainment industry and amongst themselves.

P: Isn't it funny that it is one law for one set of people and another for others ? What happened to equality ? The blacks can use it but others cannot !?! Go figure ...

Lisa: Well, using the "N" word is not transgressing a law; we have freedom of speech. Hate speech aimed at harming others is against the law, however. It is odd how one can use a distasteful wd. and another may not.

P: Using the "N" word is not transgressing the law ??? This word is used to denigrate a person for the color of his skin !?! To hear a black person using this on another fellow black is not only ironic but it shows the blacks have no respect for themselves.

Lisa: We only have laws against libel and slander and hate speech. To call someone the "N" wd. is telling the truth, though in an unsavory way. I agree, for blacks to use it on each other seems highly distasteful and in fact, is repugnant. It is often heard in violent rap lyrics, and they make my skin crawl should I hear them in a passing car. How can one maintain their humanity while listening to such brutality... it is far beyond being mere drivel?

P.: I just can't understand how black folks can use the "N" word on each other and get away with it , yet if a white person uses it on a black person he/she can be accused of racism & be fined ?!? Moreover, there's now a term called "white ni**er" ????

Lisa: There is a hypocrisy involved in being "politically correct". Instead of saying what needs saying (that using the "N" word is always wrong and offensive), we take a hands off approach and just figure that is for them to work out. Bill Cosby said something a while ago and got attacked for it.

The white N. term has been around awhile. It is an attempt for bigoted white people to make it look like they don't just dislike blacks because they also ascribe their negative qualities to some whites!!! Talk about a doubly pejorative term. And yet, they think it makes them look more fair and balanced!

____________________

Now, to Mr. Rock, on when white people MAY use the N-word:

But the question remains the same: Can white people say "nigger"? And the answer's the same: not really.

But wait a minute, there's one exception. There's one exception. There's one instance where white people can say nigger. And I'ma let it out tonight. I'ma let it out here in Johannesburg. The one time that white people can say nigger. White people are like "this is what I paid for! It's a fuckin' great night now!" The one time white people can say nigger: here it goes; listen closely. 'Cause I may never say this shit again.

The one time white people can say nigger, OK: if it's Christmas Eve, and it's between 4:30 and 4:49 in the morning. If you white, and you're on your way to Toys 'R' Us to get your kid the last Transformer doll, and right before you walk into Toys 'R' Us, some black person runs up beside you, smacks you in the head with a brick, knocks you to the ground, stomps on your face--"take that, you cracker-ass motherfucker!" Riverdances on your head--"take that, you cracker-ass motherfucker!" Takes your money, pisses on you, and runs away--if you white, at that moment, you can say "Somebody stop that nigger!"

Matter of fact, if you white and that happens to you, you can say nigger for a whole month! But you gotta walk around with the police report in your pocket. In case any black people catch you sayin' nigger, the police report will act as your freedom papers.

"Hey, I heard you saying nigger; let me see your fuckin' papers. Gimme the papers; show me the papers!" [pretends to read a sheet] "Christmas Eve! 4:48! You just made it, motherfucker! Pissed on you! ...I hope they catch that nigger!"