My comments, as copied below, are a response to a shallow opinion piece in the Boston Globe, dripping with gooey self-righteousness, written by a 'liberal,' an excellent example of a large aspect of what we're 'up against', (the self-serving self-righteousness of 'liberals'). http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/09/09/perfect-storm-troubles-our-world/y418mHVvP9UCekGHyKm6nK/story.html - RZ I accept personal responsibility for this tragedy. It is as much my fault as anyone else’s. The rise of populism on the Right only points to the abject failure of the Left. My own political analysis is thus a good long ways to the Left of Ms. Abraham’s rather tepid (and often self-contradictory) ‘liberalism’, but I do agree with her on most all the issues she mentions in this article. But I can only shake my head, in sad resignation, when she exposes herself so unashamedly as such a central part of ‘the problem’, making no effort whatsoever to become a part of ‘the solution’. (For those who don’t remember, it was Eldridge Cleaver, writing in ‘Ramparts Magazine’ in the 1960s, who coined the pithy phrase: “If you’re not part of the solution, then you’re part of the problem“). Ms. Abraham here recounts a litany of her fears and concerns, which most of us likely share. Global warming; the fear of apocalyptic war; Nazis marching in the streets, etc, etc. (she sees “hurricanes and lightning”….she sees “a bad moon on the Right”). Her greatest concern, however seems to be that in the face of so many serious problems, we, as a nation, are so “divided”. Exposing the self-contradictory nature of her own ‘liberalism’, however, she never once even so much as mentions the ‘one ring that binds them all’, the one issue that gives rise to most all the others. She never so much as even mentions the gross inequality of wealth among human people, leaving some in tragic and soul crushing degrees of want, (many of them seething in anger and hatred over their plight), while others bathe in milk, and dine on delicacies. Ms. Abraham is concerned that we are “divided”, but her concern just doesn’t go quite far enough to encompass the most basic divisions, the division between The Rich, and the Common People, and the most dangerous division, between The Poor, and everyone else. Instead, rather than look to find the root of ‘the problem’, she fashions herself into an intrinsic part of it, as she shamelessly indulges her self-righteousness, and thus becomes yet one more black iron pot deriding all the black iron kettles, (for being black). She demonstrates not so much as one single shred of self-awareness. She is completely and blissfully unaware of her own self-righteous biases, as she condemns others for theirs. The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines ‘bigotry’ as “obstinate or intolerant devotion to one's own opinions and prejudices”. Mired so deeply in her own self-righteousness, Ms. Abraham clearly has no idea at all how perfectly this definition fits HER. The shoes fits as if it had been custom made for her own foot, but she will not wear it. In one breath Ms. Abraham decries that the citizenry is divided. In the next she is calling tens of millions of her fellow citizens “brainless”, and “completely lacking in intelligence”, (that is the definition of ‘gormless’, for those who don’t know). She dismisses people’s genuine concerns by demonizing those people with epithets, calling people “Nazis” and “white supremacists” for daring to express their own ethnic self-pride, in their defense against exactly the kind of demonization that Ms. Abraham so casually and carelessly wields here. Ms. Abraham has not a shred of self-awareness as she reveals herself so nakedly as part of the problem. She decries us for being “divided”, immediately before employing divisively incendiary language to express her own divisively incendiary self-righteousness. Pots and kettles folks…..Pots and Kettles….Which is blacker? If our good citizen Ms. Abraham wants to begin to fashion herself into a part of ‘the solution’, if she wants to be a part of a beginning of a healing of the dangerous divisiveness that plagues our nation, she must look first in the mirror, to see the role that she herself plays in it. Then she must make the effort to understand the concerns of people with whom she does not agree. Rather than demonize them so glibly, (which takes no effort at all, no brains or intelligence whatsoever, and is thus an exercise in gormlessness), she must make the strenuously difficult effort to understand why people walking in different shoes have come to the beliefs that animate them. If she would do that, she would then gain the power to begin to reach across The Divide she decries, and she could then begin to possibly affect the hearts and minds of her fellow citizens on the other side of this tragic divide. Indeed, there are real Nazis, and real white supremacist out there, for example. It is tragic to see such an ugly spirit inhabit them. Rather than react to their hatred by hating them, perhaps we could endeavor to find some means to appeal to what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature”, in them. We might also make the effort to set aside our own tragically ridiculous self-righteousness, to understand that tens of millions of our Caucasian citizens are sick and tired of being hatefully demonized for the sins of History that they, as individuals, had absolutely nothing to do with. Do you want to begin the process of healing the divisions you decry, good citizen Abraham? Or are you only cleverly disguising your own contributions to these tragic divisions by pretending to decry them only to give yourself the opportunity to pour salt on any and every open wound you can? Perhaps this article fools some. It does not fool me. The most important question for our good citizen Ms. Abraham, however, is does it fool you? Are you REALLY and TRULY indulging yourself this freely, with no shred of self-awareness, in this degree of self-delusion? Raymond Zwarich * |
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