Caution: Racists

by Reid Fitzsimons

My wife and I moved from NY to South Alabama in 2008,primarily for reasons related to operating our small charity project in Honduras.  During our almost four years there (about half in Alabama, half in Honduras) I encountered one true died in the wool racist, a relic of about 80 who happened to be our neighbor.  Chatting with him for the first time by the mailbox about lawnmowers he spontaneously declared, “I don’t care much for Afro-Americans (actually he used another word).”  He continued for a bit, talking about the good times when Afro-Americans (actually he used another word) ‘knew their place,” and so on. To paraphrase Crocodile Dundee: Now That’s a Racist!  My wife, who had never met a real racist,wasn’t there at the time so later I introduced her, forewarned.  The old guy didn’t disappoint- it was like going to some museum of bigotry and watching a real time exhibition.

Of course that was 2008, a quaint time before countless millions were declared to be racists by progressive fiat.  What exactly happened in the past 10 years to make so many millions of previously benign Americans become vile hate-filled bigots?  First we need to understand what it means to be a racist in the progressive, post-modern sense, and we can do this metaphorically.  Say an overtired kid has a tantrum when he’s told it’s bedtime and, as part of his personal resistance movement, yells to his mother that that she is a“poopy.”  Dad also tells him it’s bedtime but, seeing a little humor, asks him exactly what is a poopy.  The kid, crying more vigorously now, yells,“You are a poopy too,” but off to bed he goes off and is quickly asleep.

Obviously in this scenario the little tyke couldn’t be expected to explain himself rationally; he was fully controlled by the emotion of the moment.  A “poopy” was simply the creation of an immature mind directed at someone who didn’t give him immediate gratification.  Fortunately his parents didn’t have to worry that their lives would be damaged by a silly and nonsensical accusation from an upset child. It would be a worrisome world indeed if immature and self-centered beings could hurl insults and accusations they couldn’t actually define and truly injure people with them. 

A couple of ideas here should be self-evident.  First, if words don’t have agreed upon meanings or those meanings are constantly in flux, then language ceases to be a means of communication.  Second, the term “racist” is not particularly difficult to define or understand, at least for a grown-up whose intellect is consistent with their chronological age.  However, for people whose age indicates adulthood but emotional functioning is more like our cranky little guy above,then a “racist” simply means a “poopy,” which doesn’t really mean anything at all.

One might ask how did we devolve into this linguistic and emotional chaos?  The answer to this is multi-faceted but certainly the absurd wealth we possess plays a major part.  Never before have so many people been so totally removed from the requirements of sustenance: kids having to getup and feed the chickens or milk the cows before school, as recent as my generation, is as far away as another universe.  Our wealth is such that an endless abundance of food, technology,entertainment, etc is simply “there,” and when something is redundantly ubiquitous one needn’t consider its source. 

Picture, for example, our socialist antifa hero who, after an evening of smashing car windows, peels off his sweaty but stylish balaclava and takes a well-deserved Starbucks break, enjoying a $5 Serious Strawberry Frappuccino.  With satisfaction of as job well done he uses his I-Phone 10 to log-on to the news and hears kudos from the college president and local progressive mayor for standing up for tolerance-another conservative speaker has been run out of town!  Never once does he contemplate the enormous and complex transportation and logistical chain that brought together the components of his tasty beverage and the innovation, built on the back of decades and centuries of prior innovation, that allows for his phone, let alone the auto glass he bravely destroyed.  If someone suggested it all happened because of capitalism and hard work, he’d simply yell, “you are like Hitler” and storm off.

While excessive wealth and its associated elitism is perhaps a foundational basis for the proliferation outrage, hate, and name calling,there are other significant factors as well. Broken families underlie much of our societal dysfunction but this applies largely to the non-elite, keeping in mind that feminist dogma has long rejected the necessity of fathers; feminism is an elitist phenomenon and those that can afford the nannies and parent substitutes can get by just fine.

 I propose it’s the intact progressive minded families and the supporting institutions (i.e.schools and universities, celebritydom of all stripes) that have shifted the paradigm from setting limits for kids, meaningful discipline, and a sense of respect to child- centered, self-esteem driven self-absorption.  Here is a blatant example- I once witnessed  (for real) a boy of perhaps10 hit another child of 12 or so in the chest with a branch.  The mother’s response was, “What a good boy,you could have hit him in head but you only hit him in the chest.”  The mother’s overriding concern was that her child “like” her and, of course, once a parent abrogates their obligation to be a parent as compared to a friend, the chances of the kid growing up to be a respectful and successful adult greatly diminish. 

When wealth is so great it ceases being primarily a means of reasonable comfort and security and becomes frivolous, and frivolity is inconsistent with a deeper or more meaningful significance to life.  In this void we find guilt and indolence, a sense that there must be something more, but to find this would take actual effort, perhaps at the unacceptable expense of our material comfort.  Hence we have found a work-around: Yes,there unfairness, inequality, and suffering in the world and at some level I would like to help, but doing something actually useful would take me out of my comfort zone, and perhaps cost me money, time and effort.  Therefore I can assuage my own inadequacies by feeling, or at least feigning, outrage, and by projecting it at people who don’t possess the enormous compassion and empathy I know is within me.  I am a wonderful and righteous person, and you are a racist, Nazi, bigot, homophobe, transgenderphobe, Islamophobe, misogynist, or Fascist.  By hating you I am absolved of my guilt, now off to the wine-tasting fund raiser for Planned Parenthood, where I know everyone will be wonderful, just like me!

Calling people “racists” is so common these days that it has become meaningless, which is actually a problem because there are true racists who can cause misery for others, but the reality of their malicious beliefs becomes diluted- putting someone who doesn’t embrace illegal immigration at the same level as a Cross-burning Klan member may be satisfying on a transitory basis but at the same time it diminishes the vileness of the Klan.Whatever the reason(s) progressive leftists cannot control their self-righteous anger and angst, the recipients of their vitriol,which presently includes conservatives, Republicans, believing Christians,white males, and white females who aren’t progressive leftists (and, curiously,sometimes non-white people who reject progressivism), can take solace in the knowledge that the social justice activists, whether college students, “antifa”morons, or wealthy Ivy League professors, are simply calling you a “poopy,”which has no significance beyond the emotions of an overtired child.  Unfortunately, while the four year-old kid will wake up happy and refreshed, the “woke” activist will wake up angry and offended, ready to hurl insults at people who don’t agree with them on all matters of life, politics, culture, and philosophy.


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