By Reid Fitzsimons (see the image gallery at the end of this article)
Many forces in our culture, which could properly be described as elite and privileged, have begun invoking a mantra- essentially an incantation with trappings of religiosity- consisting primarily of three words: diversity, equity, inclusion. These words especially emanate from the mouths and pens of the "woke" in academia, partisan political circles, corporate-financial-globalist interests, the celebrity world, university students, government bureaucracies at all levels and, increasingly, the military hierarchy. They are vacuous words, of course, used by people who shouldn’t have vacuous minds, but nevertheless tend to frame their thoughts with slogans and chants. I suspect if one of them were asked, for example, “What do you mean by ‘diversity?” the answer might be, ”People who don’t look like me. Diversity is our strength!” Does “equity” imply equality of opportunity or mandated outcomes, regardless of effort? Do those who demand “inclusion” embrace people who have contrary beliefs and opinions, or those they otherwise deplore?
This mantra has been incubating and evolving for many years, but its prominence greatly accelerated with the killing of George Floyd in May of 2020, and the many opportunities his death afforded, such as the power and money amassed by the elite black racialists of “Black Lives Matter.” If a mantra can be considered to be underlying principles, so to speak, then associated slogans are often calls to action, for example, “No Justice! No Peace!” or “defund” the police!” While mantras and slogans can be emotionally satisfying, they really shouldn’t form a foundation for law and social policy, and certainly not by those who are given authority over such things, yet sadly, and often with horrific consequences, they do. With this in mind, let’s consider a sobering historical fact and how it is applicable to today.
Note: USAA (United Services Automobile Association) is a membership based insurance company begun in the 1920s by a group of Army officers. Over the decades they grew considerably and branched out into financial services. Some type of military association is required to be a member and they developed a deserved reputation for integrity and service. Sadly, their reputation has been slowly declining over the past few years to the point they traded quality and service for volume and greed; USAA is now indistinguishable from any quasi-legitimate financial or insurance conglomerate, and indeed fares poorly among the lower end of that spectrum. In June of 2020 the new CEO, the first one to have never served in the military, decided he wanted to offer up USAA to the gods of wokeness, so to speak. I posted an article at the time (https://conservativeproletariat.com/?p=603), and below is a follow-up that I posted on their in-house member’s community forum.
George Floyd was killed during an encounter with police in Minneapolis in May 2020. Floyd was a lifelong criminal, mostly petty and drug offenses but with a little bit of violence. Nevertheless, the events of that fateful day did not involve a running gun battle or anything of that sort, rather he was being arrested for another suspected petty offense, and was fully contained when a rather brutish police officer decided kneeling on his neck seemed like a good idea; this was the major contributing cause to his death. Pretty much anyone seeing the video could not feel disturbed, and for a brief moment we, as a nation, could have unified around this sad event, searched our consciences, and used what transpired for constructive change. This did not happen.
There were elements among the privileged that viewed the death of Floyd not as doleful and tragic, but as an opportunity, a chance for enhanced wealth and power. The main player was a group called “Black Lives Matter,” but many self-serving politicians and racialist activists/celebrities saw an opening for further profit and fame. In fact, there quickly developed a “social justice” bandwagon, and some of the wealthiest and most elite in the corporate world decided to hop on. This included Wayne Peacock, the CEO of USAA, and the ovine and avaricious Board of Directors. A month or so after Floyd’s death Peacock issued a manifesto of sorts, with an almost a religious tone, in which the sins of America were great, but he was among the handful of enlightened ones who could lead the USAA membership into the shiny new world of wokeness. His thoughts and observations were sophomoric at best, as if he cut and pasted clichés from a term paper of a privileged student at a private academy writing about personal angst associated with “white privilege.”
Note: The following is a letter sent by a friend (and supporter of this website), Carole Milljour, to the rather duplicitous and moral reprobate Chuck Schumer, Senator from NY. She had originally signed on to a group letter opposing the use of Federal government money to pay for abortions (i.e. repeal the long-standing Hyde amendment), and in this letter she is responding to his reply, which, of course, is both despicable and predictable (his response is below Carole’s letter).
There are many parallels between slavery and abortion, the most obvious being there are those who create a culture which allows for sub-humans, and this entitles them to use their Untermensch as chattel: if it’s not human you can treat it like an inanimate machine, and if it proves to be troublesome, simply sell it or kill it. Curiously, there were many slave owners and supporters of slavery who did in fact have moral qualms about the horror they propagated, but were essentially addicts to the convenience and power that apparently comes with owning people. This raises the great moral question- which is more depraved, to know it is evil ad do it anyway, or to be so reprehensibly inhumane as to not even recognize evil. Chuck Schumer is somewhat atypical because he fits in both of these categories.
Dear Honorable Charles Schumer:
It may be a woman's body, but it is not her life she is sacrificing, but a child of God. Our government should not be funding abortion services or services in which body parts of an unborn baby are sold for profit. As a taxpayer, and voting resident of NY, I do not like the attitude of anyone who thinks they have any power at all to vote for taking a human life, especially when that individual is in office to work for the citizens of this state. It may be your opinion, but not the opinion of everyone you were chosen to represent.
I am shocked and angry that you can have such little concern for an unborn child with the feeble excuse that it is okay to terminate it under the guise of “it's a woman's right since it is her body.” No one should have that right. That unborn child suffers when it is torn apart in the womb. Abortion is a moneymaker and people who are for it don't care one way or the other for the child or the mother. It's a disgrace. A woman has the right to use the various types of birth control, because that is her body; but the body she plans to remove from her womb is not hers: that child is a separate entity unto it's own. I was my mother's child, not my mother! It may have been her body, but I was her child!
T-shirt available at E-Bay for $19.95 by Reid Fitzsimons
The word “racism” is used in our current culture with impressive frequency, and often with frightening consequences. From a societal standpoint, it is tantamount to being called a “witch” during a time when Western governments were largely theocracies, and such accusations could lead to severe punishments with no real opportunity for defense against the undefined charge. Similar to those dark times, when those in control were not concerned with the betterment of the people under their rule, but interested only in maintaining their elite status, vague accusations were (and are) an effective means to obtain and wield power, a way to intimidate opposition into silence and compliance. At the present time, despite the ubiquitous (and even cultish) nature of the charges of “racism,” it is largely used generically, and often by very immature people, much more like a 4-year-old calling someone a “doo doo head” while having a tantrum than a reasoned adult. The premise of this article is to actually consider what “racism” means, if indeed it was exclaimed with any thought at all. For Part 1 of this article, click here: https://conservativeproletariat.com/?p=631
“They are all like that” racism: At one time I was well acquainted with a person, a former physician, who was living as a ex-patriot in Honduras (My wife and I have spent a number of years there running a small charity project). Often over the duration of our association, he would declare, “ALL Hondurans are VILE!” Not some, not many, not most, not just a handful, but ALL! There was, obviously, no basis for this other than his deranged feelings. In a way his worldview was fascinating, as if generic and immutable attributes could be applied to large numbers of people linked by whatever- race, nationality, ethnicity, religious traditions- with no allowance for individual variation.
In the US at the moment there are declarations made by racialists that ALL white people are racists- it is genetic, generic, and immutable. Like the concept of Original Sin in Christian theology, there is a stain among (white) people simply for being born, but unlike Christianity it applies only to one class of human, there is no option of redemption or forgiveness, and the intent is to see an entire race of people grovel in perpetuity. The irony here- that this in fact is racism in its most primitive form- should be obvious, and it probably is, but for some it is used as a means to power. Another irony is that the person mentioned above took great pride in the belief that he alone was the only white person who wasn’t a racist.
Accusing others of Racism in our present political and social climate is an efficient means for a person to find validation and meaning in their lives, at least for the kind of person that needs a bad “Them” so they can be part of the good “Us.” This is not unlike ill-balanced religious zealots who need others to serve as sinners so they can view themselves, in contrast, as Saints. Of course, as with so many things of this nature, word meanings are vague and often remain poorly defined.
In reality, racism is a concept that resists simplistic definitions, but rather it is better explained by category and example, which this article endeavors to do. First, an introductory warning: to anyone reading this who is emotionally and culturally fragile- prepare your fainting couch, because in a few instances the “N-word” is going to be spelled out fully.
Those who are inclined to hurl out the insult of “Racist” typical do so mindlessly, and they largely mean nothing more than anyone who disagrees with them, but if they were able to attach to it some significance, these are some possibilities:
True vile and hate-filled racism: In prior times, up into the 1960’s perhaps, truly vile racism was often public and even proud, but, where it exists today, it’s more of an hidden internet phenomenon among a handful of losers: the mostly mythical “white supremacists.” It is, fortunately, the least common form of racism, despite what social justice activists yearn to believe.
In my 62 years I have encountered this type racism twice. The first was in the late 1970s in Mississippi, where a complete jerk from a privileged family, who somehow became a lawyer, talked to me about “blacktopping the road-” intentionally running over black people. He also talked about the joys of “coon hunting” at night. As far as I know he was (fortunately) a despicable coward and never lived his fantasies.
The second encounter I had was in South Alabama soon after my wife and I moved there in 2008. I went to introduce myself to our new and elderly neighbor, and was asking him about lawn mowers when he spontaneously declared, “I don’t care much for niggers.” He went on to talk about the good old days when “niggers knew their place” and one time they got uppity and had to be driven from (presumably by the local KKK) a town in the area. We came to learn he had been a lifelong angry drunk who, ironically, had a hypoxic brain event soon after, and ended up being cared for by black caregivers.
Biased racism: this is a form of racism that has existed in my lifetime and was somewhat common- an inculcated a belief among certain whites that blacks were, simply, inferior. A perfect example of this type was as follows: I knew a person who owned (in the government backed loan sense of the word) a large amount of farmland in Mississippi, and he had a habit of hiring people as his farm managers right out of central casting for thieving rednecks.
Once, just after the latest manager absconded with pockets full of loot, I asked him if he might consider hiring Archie as the manager. Archie was a black man who had long been a dependable employee and knew farming front and back. He, the land owner, replied succinctly that Archie could not be considered because, “He’s a nigger.” He did not say this with any animosity and indeed he treated Archie and all his black farmhands well. It was simply a belief that a black person couldn’t function as a manager. In his defense, sometime later a woman with an agricultural related college degree applied to be the farm manager. I asked him why he didn’t hire her and his response was a predictable, “Because she’s a woman.”
Observational and descriptive racism: When I lived in East Africa many years ago it was common for kids to run about excitedly as I passed by shouting “Mzungu,” which essentially means “White Person” in Swahili. They were certainly not racist, simply observing that they saw a relatively rare white guy. Unfortunately, invoking a description of race, for example saying in a rural mostly white small town, “I saw a black guy crossing the street,” might be construed by easily offended “social justice” activists as racist.
Progressive politicians, feeling anointed and obligated to somehow shield black Americans from reality, have decreed that using race in describing a suspected criminal, for example, is prohibited. Hence, in some cities it is disallowed to say, “The suspect is a young black male of average size.”
Unfamiliar racism: There was an old widow neighbor (recently deceased) who my wife and I helped quite a bit- we live in a mostly white rural area and she simply hadn’t been around black people much. I was telling her that we were going to bring over from Kenya a black man to attend college in the US, that he was going to spend some time with us, and that she would enjoy meeting him. She said, “I don’t know, I’ve never had a black person in my house before,” a statement that could easily elicit a charge of racism from sensitive activist. Once he arrived she was very welcoming, was quickly and thoroughly charmed by him, and even gave him a hug when he left for school. This man is from a very dark-skinned tribe, and she observed, “He’s the darkest black person I ever saw!”
Note: This was sent to Sen Toomey following his announcement that he has sided with the Democrats in supporting the impeachment/Senate trial of Donald Trump, no longer in office.
Sen. Toomey:
Almost 20 years ago my (future) wife and I decided to depart from our comfortable small town, middle-class lives and venture into the world of volunteer charity work. This first led us to Guatemala, then East Africa, and finally back to Central America. In Kenya, in 2002 and 2003, I was the medical director (PA) of a very remote clinic, this being during the time of the AIDS crisis. I suspect you couldn’t begin to imagine the misery, suffering, and death I encountered on a daily basis: malaria and AIDS especially, but also diseases as far reaching as typhoid, cholera, and even rabies. There were too many failures, never enough successes, lots of gut-wrenching sadness, and even occasional joy. My wife had the courage to travel by herself and join me at this clinic, and I recall with timeless admiration when a young woman had just given birth with resultant vaginal tearing, and my wife held in one hand the patient’s hand, and in the other a flashlight so I could see to do the surgical repair. In looking at a summary of your biography, I suspect we saw more of this reality of the world in a day then you’ve seen in your lifetime.
In the mid-2000’s we decided to develop a kid’s oriented project in Honduras, which we opened in a small, rural village in 20007. This included educational and reading experiences, a feeding program (typically we served 100’s of meals a week), wholesome recreation and sports- basically a place where impoverished children could feel safe and be kids. Once we were told of a 2 ½ year-old girl who weighed 11 pounds, was hairless, and covered with scars. We took her to an “expert,” a local physician, and were told she was beyond salvage. Nevertheless, we provided her with intensive nutrition and other measures, and today she is a healthy teenager. In this type of work there are frequently unexpected and significant challenges.
I received a call the other night from someone I didn’t recognize who wanted to ask me two quick questions. It ended up he was a campaign worker for a candidate in PA’s 12th congressional district, Lee Griffin, running for the seat currently held by Fred Keller. Once I was oriented to the purpose of the call I asked if his guy was a Democrat, and eventually, after some equivocation, the answer was yes. I explained that I cannot find it in myself to vote for anyone who aligns themselves with the hatred and racism of the Democrats, a party of, by, and for “Black Lives Matter,” which itself is an organization that primarily caters to privileged white and black leftists and manipulates and exploits black Americans for personal and political power and profit- quintessential racism. The caller, who was very polite, said that his guy Griffin wasn’t a racist because he had an inter-racial marriage. The call ended amicably. Admitting to my own embarrassment that I should have known who Lee Griffin was, I decided to take a look at his campaign website, leegriffinforcongress.com, which to me has the feel of zealous religiosity rather than a political tone.
There was a time when the Democrat party was in fact a political party, and in my lifetime they defined themselves as the party of the workingman, as compared to the Republicans being the party of the wealthy. Whether this was true or not is debatable, but nevertheless the Democrats were a political enterprise, and ran the gamut of union workers, law and order types, and the occasional wacko (like any party), but no one questioned their basic allegiance to the idea and fact of the US: George McGovern was pretty far out there in 1972 but he was a decorated and courageous WW2 bomber pilot.
Trump visits the Suresnes American Cemetery in France, Nov. 11, 2018.
Note: Belleau Wood denotes a significant military engagement in France in June 1918 in which (especially) US Marines displayed enormous courage- and incurred enormous casualties- in a victorious battle against German forces, this being of course WW1. Two years ago there were commemorations in Europe marking the 100th anniversary of the end of WW1. Trump attended some of these and now, two years later, The Atlantic magazine published an article accusing Trump of odious behavior related to his visit to France in Nov. 2018. There were reportedly four anonymous sources for article and the allegations have been vigorously denied by the Trump administration. Links to both The Atlantic article and an article discussing Trump’s refutation of the claims are below.
The other day I received a brief e-mail from a highly educated scholar with an impressive amount of real world experience. He is a serious and very respectable person who tends to be a “never Trumper.” His e-mail expresses his belief that the accusations are true and his associated disgust with Trump; the bulk of this article is my responding that such accusations should be viewed with objective skepticism. Note the syntax used reflects a familiarity between him and me, hence it might sound as such.
His e-mail:
in other news, the latest from our esteemed president (via the Atlantic):
Trump rejected the idea of the visit because he feared his hair would become disheveled in the rain, and because he did not believe it important to honor American war dead, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day. In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump said, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed.
My response:
I can appreciate the frustration a historian must feel at times, hoping to find a gestalt, so to speak, among disjointed and largely non-existent source materials, and then to make the discovered knowledge meaningful in some way. Say a music historian found an unsigned piece of paper in an ancient manuscript that stated Salieri had frequent intercourse with Mozart, what might be inferred? Here are several possibilities: Salieri and Mozart had an ongoing homosexual relationship; the word “intercourse” often had a different, non-sexual meaning in the historical context of the time and that they were frequent collaborators; or that Salieri wanted people to think he was a close confidant of Mozart but didn’t want to personally state such. Let’s say the historian was also a gay-rights activist, the kind who, for example, use salutations from the 18th century as evidence that many founders of the US were homosexuals, and we see a headline, “Renowned historian discovers that Mozart and Salieri were lovers.” Something that seems so benign can become, willfully or not, interpreted or misinterpreted in so many ways.
If a primary Spanish speaker, in learning English, transliterated “Mi tio Pedro me molestaba cuando yo tenia cinco años,” he or she might say, “My uncle Peter used to molest me when I was five,” but this wouldn’t be correct, though someone who didn’t understand the linguistic context might accuse Uncle Peter of being a pedophile.
18 months ago or so it was widely and unequivocally reported in the most august news organizations in the US that Nathan Phillips (the 60+ year old guy who banged the drum in the face of the Covington High School student) was a Marine Corps veteran of the Vietnam war, but he wasn’t, nor was he a “Marine recon ranger,” which was also reported as fact.
Two years ago this month it was reported that Brent Kavanaugh and some high school buddies were involved in essentially a gang-rape assembly line in which they drugged young girls and had sex with them while they were incapacitated. People that hated Trump were ecstatic, and never really asked themselves, “Is this really likely to be true?” because they so desperately wanted to believe it.
So we have an article in the Atlantic, very much a leftist publication but one of the few remaining with some traces of true liberalism, using (I believe) four anonymous sources to report rather ignorant and odious statements emanating from Trump’s mouth made two years ago. Anytime something like this is proposed, an intelligent and educated person, tempered with a bit of wisdom and complemented with some real life experience (and always with a bit of skepticism), should ask themselves not if it’s possible it’s true, because the answer is always yes, but is it likely to be true?
If it was reported that Trump said something like, “Belleau Wood, what the hell is Belleau Wood?” that would be believable, especially because ignorance of history runs deep in the US, and I wouldn’t doubt that 95% of Americans (and 98% of elected officials!) have no idea what Belleau Wood was nor its significance and, more worrisome, wouldn’t care. As to referring to the Marines killed during that engagement as “suckers,” I don’t buy it for several reasons.
First, obviously, is the anonymous nature of the sources, but even if the claimants were known, we’ve seen in the last four years any number of people making false or specious claims against Trump (or his representatives) out of hatred, greed, desire for celebrity, political reasons, or a combination of these factors: as we learned with the “whistleblower” during last year’s impeachment proceedings, he (though I think his name still remains officially undisclosed) was a blatant partisan. Second, the timing is suspect: if Trump made such an unfortunate statement two years ago, why was this not made public at the time, in an environment ripe for any and all accusations against Trump. And the other half of the timing question is, "why now?" I imagine and suspect in the next two months we are going to see many similar accusations, with some being reported as “bombshells,” and these, regardless of veracity, will dominate the news cycles. Thirdly, though Trump clearly has a tendency to say nasty things about people he perceives as opponents, there is no real motivation for him to say such things generically.
An unfortunate trait of human nature, shared by all of us, is pleasure derived from hearing bad things about people we don’t like, and accepting them without critical regard or context or perspective. In some cases, if dislike becomes hate, it goes beyond schadenfreude and becomes almost a drive to hear and believe things that will elicit blind outrage, which sometimes I think is a neurophysiologic state: a paradoxical pleasure stimulation evoked by a barrage of neurotransmitters!
Thinking and mature people, who seem increasingly rare (perhaps even more so in academia!), will view reported "bombshells" with healthy skepticism. A personal example for me were reports that Obama ordered the White House to be cast in a purple light when Prince (or the “artist formerly known as Prince”) died of a drug overdose. Actually this was very conceivable based upon Obama's precedents, but before I personally began to express and share my “outrage,” I checked it out and, much to my disappointment, found it wasn’t true. And it didn’t matter whether I “felt” it was true or that “it might as well have been true,” it simply was not.
You might consider to reading Trump’s response and see if there is there is a basis for questioning the article in The Atlantic.
Note: USAA (United Services Automobile Association) is a membership based insurance company begun in the 1920s by a group of Army officers. Over the decades they grew considerably and branched out into financial services. Some type of military association is required to be a member and they have developed a deserved reputation for integrity and service. I’ve been a member for 37 years, and I (along with my wife) use them for our car and house insurance and many of our banking needs. One great plus of USAA is that it has been operated by serious and competent adults who never gave in to societal and political fads and pressures, until now. Below is a letter to Wayne Peacock, the newly installed CEO of USAA and the first who has never served in the military, in response to a position statement he released fully aligning USAA with the woke social justice activism (that statement can be found at the bottom of the page).
Greetings Mr. Peacock:
I had thought to myself with satisfaction that USAA was one of the exceptional companies that had the strength of character and sobriety to not succumb to the coercion and disingenuousness of the popular culture of the moment. That is, until I found your letter of supplicating mea culpa apologetics when I signed on to my USAA account.
I cannot recall in my lifetime a situation in which there has been unanimous agreement on a value- in this case revulsion at the brutal murder of George Floyd- that was so quickly exploited so as to create division and foster hatred and even violence. The underlying premise, that black lives matter (BLM), is fine as far as it goes, because everyone’s life matters, regardless of race, ethnicity, etc. What we know is that the political and cultural movement known as BLM in fact embraces racism by selectively applying worth to black Americans on a commodity basis, and finding marketable value only when the manner of death can be used for profit: if a black American is one of the handful killed by a white cop, for example, there is titillation; if a black American is one of approximately 6,500 killed by intra-racial violence every year there is something between silence and embarrassment: the former must be exploited, the latter ignored.
This is an article published in a small local newspaper on April 29, 2020 by Reid Fitzsimons with the intent of suggesting people who could afford it to donate their virus relief money to charity. It was run unedited except for the headline- the original title was "Retired Pennsylvania Couple Donates Virus Relief Money To Orphanage"
In 2007 Patricia Huenemoerder and her husband, Reid Fitzsimons, of Thompson, PA, opened a small charity project in a rural village in Honduras, which they described as a center for children with a mix of nutritional, recreational and educational programs; overall a safe place where kids were free to act like kids. A variety of reasons, including increasing violence in Honduras and Fitzsimons' son being deployed to Afghanistan, led to the closing of the children's program in 2012, but in 2013 they began a less involved program focusing on vocational training for young adults and small community development projects. It was for this reason Fitzsimons went to Honduras on the 12th of March, just days before the global corona virus restrictions were put in place.
Carpentry class with the 2 oldest kids 2019
"I was able to get everything up and running pretty fast; the carpentry shop, English classes, the sewing co-op" he mentioned, "but soon thereafter Honduras essentially shut down, leaving people largely confined to their villages and being jailed simply for being found outside." He eventually was no longer able to accomplish anything and finally, heeding dire US Embassy warnings returned on an emergency evacuation flight on April 6th.
