To all the Really Good Ones, and to all in peril on land or sea: The essay below is hereby 'published' into the public domain. It can be re-posted/re-published anywhere anyone may want to. ** Jewish Culture and the American Bolshevik Marionette Left There is now an extremely 'tricky', extremely uncomfortable 'issue' open here, ('on the table'), that we MUST deal with. Yea ... Well ... It's only Caliban's table ... but there it is, nonetheless. That issue is Jewish Culture, and how it has organized itself into perhaps the most powerful political force in America. Understanding this issue is crucially relevant to understanding the American Left, because the Left is so heavily influenced in the manner of its own thinking and behavior, by Organized Jewish Culture. As in so many facets of American society, Jewish people exert a FAR outsized influence over the Bolshevik Left, (just as they did in early 20th century Russia). 'Bolshevism' is a manner of thought, much more than it is any particular set of beliefs, or any set political agenda. Bolshevism is a religious culture. It is something its adherents "believe in", with truly 'religious', and usually fanatical, spiritual commitment. Bolshevism has, historically, arisen among people steeped in Jewish Culture. It is a manner of thought that holds that "whatever we think is Truth". Jewish Culture, of course, holds that Jews are God's own favorite/chosen people. Bolsheviks feel far superior to the riff-raff whose interests the Bolsheviks pretend to represent, just as Jewish Culture teaches Jewish people that they are superior to 'the goyim'. In his 'writ of prosecution', contained in his Letter of Proscription, Mr. Chris Scheer, the Minister of Truth for ScheerPost, an online business owned and operated by 'venerated' bolshevik Robert Scheer, (Chris Scheer's father), wrote, "Most editors will tell you -- comment sections are not worth the trouble. I said we should give it a try, ......". "Worth the trouble"? Hmm ... Doesn't he, in fact, mean 'profitable'? Is ScheerPost incorporated? Hmm... It'd probably be easy ... but I don't think they're really worth that much effort. Hmm...(Caliban will scratch his head on it over a good banana). ScheerPost so far refuses to answer any simple questions about its blog business, which is presenting the false posture of being some kind of 'political cause'. ScheerPost mostly presents material promoting incorporated businesses, and material from authors promoting their own books, (and their 'brands' in general).   I don't know this Chris Scheer. Never met him. Or his father either. If anyone wants a copy of Chris Scheer's clownishly arrogant 'Letter of Proscription' to me, let me know, be glad to forward. In that letter, which is ALL I know about this young man directly, Chris Scheer exposed himself as a foolish pretentious dilettante who thought he was addressing someone weaker than him. He actually told me, out loud, that if I'd promise to be a good little boy, if I promised to self-censor, if I promised not to "be rude" by presenting hard questions to the people who wrote the ScheerPost infomercials that comprise most of its content, he, Chris Scheer, ScheerPost's Minister of Truth, would allow me to post again.    These Bolsheviks, like Chris Scheer and his father, Robert Scheer, hold all other people in relative contempt. They believe they are morally superior. They believe that anything and everything THEY think and/or say is The Truth. These Bolsheviks are in the drivers' seats of all the looting and burning in our nation's streets, but they are, themselves, effete intellectuals with soft hands who hold 'rough' leather-tough working people in their clownish dilettante's contempt. That contempt mirrors the contempt in which Jewish Culture holds us 'goyim'.  The "Jewish Lobby", as some call it, is likely the largest and most powerful single faction among the many syndicated factions that comprise the Ruling Elite, (aka: The Syndicate). This is what Jewish people have ALWAYS done, in EVERY society they have EVER lived among. They focus, collectively, on gaining as much influence as possible, (with 'domination' always the objective), over any society's key levers of social and economic power. Over Banking/Monetary. Over the legal system. And over the communications system. Just EXACTLY as they have done in our own nation. Jewish people are about 2% of our population. Well ... There's no real way, (is there?), to really know, but my own 'guess' would be that Organized Jewish Culture might wield a third, or even more, of The Ruling Syndicate's total power. Jewish Culture is a wonderfully strong tribal culture that is gifted with great intelligence in its gene pool. But Jewish Culture is not merely rooted in how smart so many Jewish people might be. Jewish Culture is rooted in 'taboo'-type tribal insularity, (forbidding marriage with 'goyim'), and in a ferocious degree of collective (tribal) determination.  I am NOT anti-Semitic. I recognize that large numbers of young Jewish-Americans, and Jewish Americans of ALL ages, are themselves deeply troubled by the obviously egregious elements of Jewish Culture. I know some things about that. I had a romance in college days, with a beautiful Jewish girl named Rivka. Her family was orthodox. They lived in LA, so Rivka was a commuter student who lived in their orthodox home, but supported the aspirations and freedom of the Palestinian Arabs at UCLA political rallies. During long afternoons in my apartment, a couple blocks from the beach in Santa Monica, she 'made confessions' of her deeply troubled spirit over Jewish Culture. That's what it felt like to me. She was 'confessing her sins'. This young woman loved her family intensely. I met them. I had dinner at their table. I wore a yarmulke. (Rivka was forbidden to date a 'goy', and her parents were giving me that sideways "he sure doesn't LOOK Jewish" look). Her father was a man of stately dignity. He was a chiseled-handsome man. He could have played King Solomon in a movie. It was a ceremonial meal. (Seder? ..I'm not sure). Her father chanted and sang in a deep resonant voice that made the fine wine glasses in the cabinet just slightly rattle. I felt so 'at home'. This is the kind of ceremony that my own Ukrainian immigrant 'folks' did. My father's cousin had a voice just like that. Rivka's heart was torn. It was a soul-deep wound. She loved those fine good people so intensely, but she was horrified by many Jewish cultural beliefs, which the culture was DEMANDING that she assimilate. She was horrified, for example, by what she called the "slaughter of the Canaanites". "It was genocide. It was just unadulterated genocide", she said. For those who don't know the story, Jewish cultural (religious) beliefs contend that Jewish people have a "special covenant with God", that other humans don't have. They believe that Jewish people are God's own "Chosen People". When they first came to possess Palestine, long before Rome even existed, (way long before), that territory was already fully inhabited by other people, the Canaanites. In fact, the land was called Canaan. The Jews had wandered, homeless, as a tribe, since escaping the Pharaoh in Egypt. They claim that God had actually spoken to them, (through 'agents', like Moses), to forge the 'special covenant'. Even as they wandered, they held to their faith, because God promised this wandering tribe of Jews that he would provide them territory, which the Jews, of course, called The Promised Land. Jewish Culture holds forth, in its written legends, (like The Old Testament, etc), that God commanded the Jews, to kill ALL the Canaanites, and then to live in Canaan as their own 'land'. Jewish Culture claims that God ordered an actual genocide. God specifically order Jews to kill not just all the people, men, women, children, and babies, mind you. It's in The Bible, folks. God SPECIFIED that they were to kill EVERY living thing, all the livestock, all pets, etc. (It's right there in the Jewish Old Testament).  One of my best friends in my whole life, (and I haven't seen him in maybe 50-55 years or more), was Ronnie Burstein. We were best friends in the 8th grade, until we kind of 'went with different crowds' later in high school. (I was an athlete, and Ron was kinda 'pear shaped'. One of the smartest humans I have ever known, and funny, (you wouldn't believe), but he was one of those "whose names were never called, when choosing sides for basketball". J Ian, (from 'At Seventeen'. Ms. Ian is a truly great poet and musician, rivaling even LittleBobby in many of her insights she has so generously shared with us). The suburb I lived in was mostly white collar. It was almost exclusively white people as well. A pickup truck here and there, but mostly successful insurance agents, or middle managers, etc. My favorite little league 'dad' coach worked for Colgate-Palmolive. My father was an airline pilot.   But just maybe a mile from my house on W 72nd Terrace, Mission Hills, KS bordered right up against Prairie Village. At that time, Mission Hills was the 5th wealthiest suburban 'city' in the entire nation. Those kids went to the same high school. And LOTS of them were Jewish. You know, that's really not something we ever thought much about when I was a kid. Nobody cared much about what anybody's parents did. What determined acceptance/popularity was how good looking you were, how good an athlete or cheerleader you were, and/or how witty (or not) you were around the malt-shop table, or the campfire, or at the roller-rink, or cavorting in the pool, etc etc.  Rich kids had cooler stuff, of course. And cars, etc, were sure important. But the prettiest girls at that age are always drawn to the most handsome, athletic men. The smartest handsome athlete is gonna get the prettiest girl. There's your Homecoming king and queen right there. (In those olden days). Well ... Anyway, I sure didn't care that Karen Polsky was Jewish. My heart was in my throat in a hurry, any time she smiled at me. (Yea ... She smiled at me, but I NEVER got up the nerve .. LOL). People being Jewish or not was simply not a part of our reality as baby boom kids in a white suburb in Kansas.  When I was a young carpenter contracting home-improvement jobs, I did a job for a couple named Liebovitz. He was a tailor. I didn't see him much. She was an extremely attractive woman in her mid 50s or so. A young man like me, (in my mid to late 20s), could see that she was no doubt a complete 'knockout' in the days of her full flower's full bloom. She had the crude blue inked 'number' tattooed on the inside of her left forearm. She 'flirted' with me in a maternal way, as women her age often do, somewhat wistfully, with younger men. She made me lunches, etc. Mr Liebovitz 'saw', but he didn't care. He just 'saw' that a conscientious young man was doing an excellent job for them. He knew nothing was going to happen, and he was a wise enough husband to allow his wife to have a tender fantasy. Their thick slavic accent, (Polish), made me feel so nostalgic for my own Ukrainian family. When the job was done, (after a week or so), and everything was cleaned up, and all my tools loaded up, and I went to ask them for the check, they invited me to sit at their dining room table, and set out their best wine glasses, and poured us each a glass of very old homemade wine. We toasted to the future. I never saw them again. (The same scene had happened to me once before, with an old Italian couple named Cicci, in KC's Italian North End). Ms. Liebovitz almost surely has passed, but I still remember her, and her Jewish mother's affectionate flirtations, with great, deep affection.  So ... With my comments below rooted in the attitude I have developed as a result of such experiences as described above, let's get into 'the meat' of this issue.  I believe that our good fellow American citizens who are Jewish must acknowledge that there are factors in deeply seated Jewish Culture that actually explain why Jewish people have come to be 'persecuted', over thousands of years, in every society they have lived among, since the Romans cast them out from Palestine in 70 AD.   Jewish Culture asks us non-Jews, "the Goyim", (a term that is NOT used among Jews to show 'respect', and we ALL know that), to believe that the behavior of Jewish people has always been wonderful, but for NO reason at ALL, all those societies, over all these almost 2000 years, came to resent and dislike Jewish people because there was something wrong with ALL of THEM. Jewish people are God's own perfect "Chosen People", after all. Isn't that the 'bedrock belief' of Jewish Culture? That poor 'innocent' Jews have always suffered persecution at the hands of the goyim, over thousands of years? Jewish Culture teaches Jewish people to show one face to each other, but quite another to "the Goyim". I know what they SAY to we 'dumb goyim'. "We were chosen by God to carry an extra moral burden. God chose us to be obligated to be more morally perfect than other people". LOL .. Sorry .. Don't mean to show disrespect, but ya gotta admit it's pretty dang 'funny' ... Even in literally claiming to have been "chosen by God", Jewish Culture strikes a posture of Holy Victimhood. "It's such a burden how they suffer from being chosen as God's favorite people". THAT is the very heartbeat of Jewish Culture. This Cult of Victimhood that comprises such a central focus of Jewish Culture, has been fully embraced/assimilated, and fully elevated into the American Marionette Left's starkly racist Identitarian Left ideology. Left 'identitarians' are EVERY bit as racist, if not MORE so, than Right identitarians. One's personal status on the Left, for the Left's common folk, (not for the self-appointed, and duly incorporated, (501c) 'leaders'), is entirely dependent on where one's own tribal group, (as defined by either race or gender), ranks in the Left's official "Identity Politics Cult of Victimhood". This 'Cult of Victimhood', itself, is the heartbeat of Jewish Culture. In the Marionette Left's bizarre twisted cult 'thinking', a wealthy white female is officially recognized as a 'victim', (just for being female), and therefore ranks higher than a dirt-poor white man, who is openly derided as 'bad' for simply being a Caucasian male human. This is the bizarre manner of these people's thought processes, as we fight for social justice.   Jewish Culture, no ... It's much worse than that .. It is actually 'Organized' Jewish Culture, that is steadily exerting its immense organized power to have laws passed in several western European nations, that make it illegal to say what I am saying here. People, in Europe, are in prison, right NOW, simply for criticizing Jewish Culture, as I am doing now. Armed police would come to my door, in Germany for certain, and I think in France as well, (and England is pretty far gone, look at how they brutally 'assassinated' Labor's Jeremy Corbin), and arrest me and take me and lock me up in a cell, TODAY, in Germany, and France, simply for sending this email. Politically Organized American Jewry is among the most powerful political forces in our nation. Because they are so HIGHLY organized, they are able to exert an outsized, (WAYY 'disproportionate' to their 2% of the US population), degree of political, social, and economic power. Organized American Jewry, often called the Jewish Lobby, is steadily, and FORCEFULLY, trying to take away Americans' actual 'freedom of speech' itself, just as they have ALREADY done so in European nations. The Jewish Lobby is, right NOW, all across the United States, forcefully twisting every political arm it can, in EVERY social institution in which it exerts power, to make it a crime, punishable by imprisonment, to criticize Jewish Culture at ALL. We ALL surely know that in every society Jewish people have EVER lived in, they have focused all their collective tribal energies on achieving power, and dominance if possible, as a tribal group, over that society's banking system, legal system, and communications system(s). THAT is DEEPLY seated in the tribal cohesiveness, and legacy of social cunning, of Jewish Culture. Raw Jewish Power in the US is perhaps most starkly 'seen', at least publicly, in the heavy dominance of the IMMENSE power of US Mass Media by Jewish people. Last I read, (and it's probably changed, and probably gotten much worse), fully 35% of all Mass Media upper level executives were Jewish people. (2% of the population). And, of course, Jewish people control a similarly outsized 'hunk' of the nation's raw wealth, which ALSO gives them power over Mass Media, (via control of advertising dollars). Can any of us possibly not be aware of the outsized power exerted by Jewish people on Wall Street? Or by people on even higher levels than Wall Street in the Big Money temples of power? In the Old Money banks where the REAL power yet resides? How powerful is the Rothschilde Family? Doesn't their 'boy' currently rule France? (Etc). It's Jewish Culture's organized social and economic power that empowers the Jewish Lobby to exert the overt outsized power it OBVIOUSLY does over the US Congress. If a Congressperson votes against the Jewish Lobby, the entire nationally organized edifice of Jewish wealth and social power will be concentrated in that person's state/district to defeat her/him in the next election.  Looking at an online vertical bar graph table of the ethnic makeup of US district court judges, one can see that every ethnic group is represented in a reasonably close proportion to that group's percentage of the nation's total population. Hispanic and white people are always hard to count separately, because many people of more European (Spanish) heritage consider themselves 'white', rather than Hispanic. So the percentage of white judges in this table (71%) is a bit higher than the 61% that non-Hispanic white people comprise of the total population. Over 70% of Americans are white, if Hispanic people who consider themselves white are counted as white. And the 8% Hispanic percentage of judges seems commensurately lower. Jewish people comprise about 2% of our total population. Almost 20% of all US judges are Jewish. This is what Jewish people have always done in every society they have lived in. They remain insular. Marrying a non-Jew is 'taboo' in Jewish Culture. (That taboo is rapidly breaking down, and Jews know that intermarriage comprises a death knell for Jewish Culture and Jewish Power). Jewish people openly project themselves as God's "Chosen People", and they regard non-Jews as thus inferior. (They will deny it, of course, in the face they show us, but when they use it among themselves, the word 'goyim' is roughly analogous to the 'n' word used toward black people, and a word like 'shiksa', for a non-Jewish woman, translates roughly to 'slut'). Jewish people, as a cohesive 'tribe', through collective tribal effort, focus keenly on capturing as much control as they can over a society's banking/monetary, legal, and communications systems. This, of course, gives them political power. As they gain an outsized share of power in the society, resentment just naturally rises against them. People being the imperfect creatures that we are, the resented Jews have been tragically subjected to 'persecution', (the 'persecutors' have likely considered it 'retribution', rather than 'persecution').  I hope it is obvious that the primary reason this discussion of Jewish Culture becomes relevant to a discussion of the American Bolshevik Left, is that just exactly like the original Russian bolsheviks of the early 1900s, an outsized number of these American Bolsheviks are, indeed, Jewish. Black Lives Matter is funded by a Mega-Billionaire Jewish Oligarch. BLM co-founder Alicia Garza'a father is a white Jew. Basically, wealthy people who, coincidentally or not, happen to be largely Jewish, are trying to stir African Americans up into a lather of hatred of white people, for obvious reasons, (to divide and rule, to disempower ALL the nation's Common People from ANY measure of actual political/economic power). This kind of deeply seated cultural cunning we are 'seeing' the American Bolsheviks execute against the white working class, is most certainly NOT unique to Jewish Culture among other cultures. It's a matter of degree. Other cultures do it ... sure ... but none do it NEARLY to the degree, and with the sheer ferocity, that Jewish Culture does.  The Left drew First Blood. I was there. I saw it happen. It started about 25 years ago, not long after NAFTA was signed, and the tsunami flood of immigrants began to break over our entire nation. I argued against it 25 years ago. I have argued against it since that time. I have, of course, thus been scorned and banned from the rankly Stalinist totalitarian Bolshevik Marionette Left. When American working people, starting in the mid to late 1990s, immediately complained about the sudden wave of desperately poor immigrants, who were suddenly breaking over our nation like a tsunami ... when American working people complained that they were losing their jobs and homes and families to immigrants ... the American Left told them that they were "racists", (because these particular immigrants were brown people). Well ... That's just NOT the way it was. I was THERE! It did NOT matter what color American working people were, (and 75% of African Americans, even TODAY, "strongly oppose" immigration). American working people, of EVERY race, complained loudly when a sudden tsunami of Mexican immigrants began taking their jobs. In previous American generations, people like 'the Irish', and like my own Ukrainian grandparents, (who barely spoke broken English on the day they died), were resented when they came to compete for economic survival with people who were already just barely getting by. Race, on either end, the race of the immigrants, or the race of the workers the immigrants come to compete with, does NOT matter. When massive immigration occurs, wages go down. People lose their jobs entirely. And misery spreads among the working class, a large faction of which is now starting to learn pretty good English. The new immigrants come here to suffer alongside our own now expanded class of The Miserable Ones.(where's old Victor Hugo when you need him).  A few immigrants may proper, but most will now grovel in American Urban poverty, as excess labor, and over time, they will culturally devolve. Their strong rural Family Culture, which most of them brought with them, will be constantly assaulted by the cruel vagaries and ravages of the Demon Urban Poverty, and will gradually erode, until their children are as 'uneducable' as most poor urban American youth, (of every race), are today. The American Left IMMEDIATELY began demonizing American working people, black, white, brown, etc, it didn't matter, as "racists" for opposing immigration. I was there. I hereby swear on Honor itself. I 'SAW' the Bolshevik Left become the Bolshevik Marionette Left. I saw them start dancing their stupid jerky dance on the ends of their OWN fracking Enemy's strings. I SAW them start to serve their own purported Enemy's most important agendas, 1) importing massive excess labor as the coup d'grace, (after offshoring), against America organized labor, and 2) dividing working people into mutually hateful factions to forestall any possibility of working folk gaining ANY political power. The American Marionette Left has been in full energetic 'activist' support for both of those, our Enemy's, highest priority agenda items, for at least 25 years. "Hmmm ... Surely there's a lesson here somewheres", sez an ole ape, ole Caliban, t' hisself. I was THERE. I saw. I hereby testify. The Left drew First Blood. The Left IMMEDIATELY began demonizing anyone who opposed immigration as, ipso facto, a 'racist'. Well .. What quite naturally happened? Finding themselves demonized by the Left, where did American working people have to go? Working people, as anyone with two functioning brain cells would know they would, 'reacted' by lurching to the Right. ("Duhhhh".....saith the Left 'intelligentsia', so far at least, about all this). The idotically Stupid American Left put Trumpty-Dumpty in the White House. When fascist populism rises on the Right, it only points directly to the abjectly miserable failure of the Left. It is deep-seated Jewish Cultural social methodology. Provoke your enemy to war. (Demonize them). And then blame the war on your enemy, when they react. All cultures do it. Sure. But NONE do it as ferociously, or as cunningly, as Jewish people do it. Jewish people have tortured the lives of the Palestinian Arabs for some 70 years, with every misery their considerably cunning creativity can devise, ever since European (Ashkenazi) Jewish terrorists came to Palestine and started going door to door lobbing hand-grenades into the homes of primitive Palestinian villagers' families. When all the other villagers, all over Palestine, predictably fled this brutal murderous Jewish terrorism, led by people like Menchim Begin, when almost a million defenseless terrorized people fled their homes and lands, on which their ancestors had lived for millennia, to become refugees living in crude camps in foreign nations, (where their descendents remain today), the Jewish terrorists from Europe seized their land and called it "Israel". (The word 'cunning' has the negative connotation of intelligence/cleverness that is used for a dishonest/evil purpose, and/or in a devious manner. This is exactly the connotation that I am meaning when using this word). The Israelis provoke the millions upon millions of defenseless people they keep imprisoned under a murderous jackboot of brutal Martial Law. They provoke them. They provoke them s'more. They provoke them more still. They keep provoking them more and more until those people 'explode' in reactionist violence. THEN, the Jewish people turn to us, bat their eyes like dewy-eyed maidens, and say, "See? Didn't we tell you these people are violent monsters? Oh, poor us", they wail to their 'Gods of Victimhood'. "Look how we suffer again. We poor Jews must now suffer this horrible persecution, from these millions upon millions of people we have imprisoned, with our brutal hob-nailed jackboot on their necks". They say that out loud, right in front of us. After all, at the proverbial 'end of the day', according to Jewish Culture, Jewish people are God's own "Chosen People". They 'say' that, out loud. Clear as can be. Right out in broad daylight. This ferocious degree of fundamentally dishonest (two-faced) social 'cunning', as exhibited by Jewish Culture, is the EXACT kind of cunning social methodology these clown Marionette Bolsheviks are pumping out, with all their hysterical shrieking Stalinist totalitarian might. Demonize white people. When white people predictably re-act in kind, feign dewy-eyed innocence, and blame THEM for acting like that. It's an OLD trick in MANY cultures. Sure. But Jewish Culture does it 'ferociously'. And just as among the 19th century Russian Bolsheviks, a WAYY outsized percentage of the people who think they are 'somebody' among American Bolsheviks, on this clownish American Marionette Left, are Jewish people.  Organized, (HIGHLY organ-fracking-nized), Jewish Culture is trying, with ALL its power, right NOW, in the United States, to take away Americans' freedom of speech itself. THIS is the emergent relevance of Jewish Culture to the AUTHENTIC American Left we are building, which is entirely focused on UNITING all the Common People, of every race, ethnic group and/or creed, so that we can seize our fair share of political and economic power, and build a True Democracy in America. The people who control US Mass Media, (they have TOTAL, as in 'totalitarian', control), will do everything in their power to try to prevent the Common People from uniting, and thus from gaining ANY political power. We simply canNOT achieve our political objective, (if building a True Democracy in America is our objective), unless we rid ourselves of the 'social engineering' that we have already undergone. We can NEVER rid ourselves of it completely, but at the very least, the remnants we can't stamp out, we can at least recognize, (we can become self-aware), and we can then learn 'coping skills' to control these 'little demons' that pop-up in our lives to bedevil us. In facing this subject square on, we must take every GREAT care we can to NOT apply generalities to individuals. THAT is 'prejudice'. You 'pre-judge' someone, an individual you know nothing about, simply based on what you can 'see' in front of you. Well ... The 'thing' is, (rather obviously), that it is OFTEN very smart to do exactly that. In fact, it can be a survival issue. In many environments, people who don't do it, who don't 'profile' to recognize dangerous people, are less likely to survive and thus contribute their genes to the human gene pool. 'Profiling', which is most definitely a form of prejudice, is most definitely also a survival skill, and thus most likely a DNA-rooted human instinct. It was some 30 years ago, maybe more, that the Reverend Jesse Jackson said, "If I was walking to my car in a deserted parking garage, and heard footsteps behind me, I would be alarmed if it was a young black man in a hoodie, and relieved if it was a business person in a suit carrying a briefcase". (paraphrased, but substantially an accurate quote).  But 'enlightened' profiling will always be hyper-alert to learn quickly and adjust, so that fear/security does not keep one from honest and beneficial relations with good people that either like to look threatening but aren't, or else just aren't threatening but can't help looking that way. (I knew this guy in high school name 'a Steve Beasely. He had the meanest most glowering 'mug'. Geez ... Best steer clear 'a him. I was afraid of him. But then I met him, and he was the nicest, most unassuming and kind person you could imagine. He was just real shy, and that glowering look was just the way his 'mug' looked when it was blank. I was about 15 or 16, and I learned a BIG lesson.  I was born in Independence, MO, and I was mostly raised in Prairie Village, KS, a white middle-class suburb of Kansas City. (My father was an airline pilot). But I was partly raised in Roxbury, MA, where a small cluster of Ukrainian immigrants like my grandparents lived up and down Highland Park Ave, which would later come to be called the Fort Hill neighborhood of Boston. One night up at 'the Fort', Michigan Eddy, who was probably all of 16, slicked-back greasy, white t-shirt sleeves rolled up, his Lucky Strikes rolled in one. Blue jeans. Cuffs rolled neatly. Black boots we called 'engineer's boots'. He had a small revolver stuck in his belt. Big 'rumble' that night. He was getting 'psyched up'. BOY! Did he look 'cool' to us working class kids, or what? He coulda' been James Dean for what he looked like to us. That kid died that night. He coulda' been an 'extra' in West Side Story, but it didn't come out until a few years after Michigan Eddy died, at barely 16, or so. That's the kind of neighborhood Fort Hill was in the 1950s. Whops, ('Guineas' was sometimes used). Lotta Micks. Colly Brady (for 'Columba', and my uncle told me he must have Italian relatives, but I never asked him), was my best friend. Several Bohunks (like me). A couple Kikes. And a few "Negroes". The 'n' word was definitely a 'fighting word' on Fort Hill, in the 1950s. All those other tribal/ethnic epithets were thrown back and forth as good-natured 'buddy'-type banter. Like razzing a guy because he thought some movie star was hot that you thought was ugly. It's just what young male human 'monkeys' do. They 'razz' each other about their faults, to show acceptance and affection. "Get ova' heah' ya frackin' hebe", (or guinea, or mick, etc). "Gimme a frackin' hug. Who luvs ya?" You feign a hug and then try to get each other in a headlock and mess up yer buddy's hair. That kind of thing. Don't boys STILL act like that? Well ... We were boys, and tempers sometimes flared in the heat of a ball game. A push. A couple half-serious socks aimed half-heartedly at jaws. Yea ... The same 'epithets' served a far different purpose at moments like those. It's 'funny' how among all classes and kinds of people, males who fight each other, often SOON become the very BEST of friends. That's just how male humans are made. It doesn't matter, at ALL, if they are different races, or what race they are, or how old they are. And I've known a LOT of racists, like ten tons worth, that hated another race, EXCEPT for every single person of that race the racist happened to know personally. "Well ... Sure ... Kunta's a great guy. He's not like them others", when in fact Kunta was just a pretty average guy of that race. THAT is just tribal human nature. My grandparents barely spoke English. Those poor immigrant people were deathly afraid of black people. My Ukrainian grandparents were scared to death of the wild fierce 'chornie' (Ukrainian for 'black'). They were defenseless against those people who were poor and desperate and often preyed on defenseless immigrants. But Mr. and Mrs. Green, the black couple that lived directly across Highland Park Ave from them, (with the neat picket fence around their yard), were trusted, and looked up to, and were treasured friends who made them feel safer. Were my grandparents 'racists'? They were about the kindest, gentlest, most unassuming human beings you could imagine. They were simple peasant folk. They were kind loving people. But, like ALL humans, they DID have human tribal survival instincts. They feared the "chornie" for good reason. The "chornie" WERE, in fact, dangerous. Among us boys, the neighborhood 'ruffians', (every one some mudder's darlin' boy), our acknowledged 'leader' was Willie. I have NO idea his last name, or which house he lived in. He just came around the Fort, and he was the ONLY baseball player better'n me. ('Course he was 13, almost 14, when I was maybe 10 or 11 ... LOL ... And here's a funny old man on creaky old knees still braggin' on it after all these years. LOL. Are we humans 'funny' creatures, or what? ... LOL). Willie's mama had obviously named him after Wliie Mays. He was a 'dead ringer'. And he played baseball, and just generally carried himself, with the SAME natural easy effortless grace and laughing good humor. Just like Willie Mays. When he smiled, just the bare ends of his mouth turned down, just like Willie Mays. There weren't a lot of places for kids like us to play ball, (of course, back home, in Prairie Village, I played on highly organized little league teams, with uniforms, and cleats, and catcher gear, etc, on lighted fields). I think Willie came around 'cause those games we played on the broken rock-glass lot we played on, with the Fort wall as our home plate backstop, was the only game he could find. Yea ... Well ... Whenever Willie came around, we played whatever game he chose. He played them all much better than any of us. Whether kick-the-can or baseball, (it was always summer when I was there), Willie delighted in teaching us slightly younger kids the 'tricks' he used to always 'win'. He knew he couldn't be hanging out with us 'kids' much longer. These sons of America's immigrants used the 'n' word between themselves, just like we did the other ethnic epithets. It could mean different things in different situations. (I NEVER used it, because I had been taught not to by my middle class parents). But ALL of us understood that it was an IMMEDIATE 'fighting word' if used in the presence of a "negro" who was not afraid of you. (I got in a good wrestle with a skinny black kid once, much smaller and weaker than me. Right there in the grass on Fort Hill. And BOY! that kid could FIGHT! Let me tell you! Not many 'a them black kids were 'afraid' to fight. We ALL knew that).   An old man can have a roundabout way of getting to things ... This is Human Tribalism I am describing. Racism is no more than an ancillary sub-set of Human Tribalism. Race is simply one among many tribal identifiers. 'Fighting' Racism? The very idea, the very concept, of 'fighting racism' is, when considered with reason, rather than raw emotion, VERY problematic. Racism, at its most basic root, is a human tribal emotion. There is no way to 'fight' human emotions. Evolving cultural feelings and ideas is a matter of human communication over time. It's NOT something that 'fighting' is relevant to. In fact, 'fighting' is entirely counterproductive to building better relations between people of different cultures and/or races.  Moreover ... People have the freedom to think and feel whatever they do. If people want to draw generalized and emotionalized conclusions about whole groups of people, they have the perfect RIGHT to do so. We cannot legislate, and/or control, people's thoughts and/or feelings. People have a RIGHT to make whatever observations and generalizations they do. Human racial animosities arise from fear. Tribalism is a 'security strategy'. You identify with a group of people you trust. You distrust people outside the tribal (trusted) group because that's where more potential danger lies, (than among the trusted 'tribe'). People trust their own tribe, and fear people from other tribes. This is just the way that humans are made. Trying to overcome these instinctual tribal responses is a matter of the evolution of new Shared Culture. That's the only way to "fight racism", and the very use of the 'fighting' imagery, with violent emotions connotated by such imagery, when peace is the objective, seems seriously problematic to me. In most any population of animals, (and even other types of organisms, but let's just talk about animals, like humans), whether among humans or chickens, in conditions of generous 'plenty', social strife declines sharply, and social harmony often prevails. (Sexual rivalries still manifest, of course, and ALWAYS will, but their 'degree' is less violent).  In conditions of 'want', when unmet needs and desires prowl a society like ravenous predators, social strife increases dramatically, and social harmony often disappears entirely, (as it clearly has from our nation). If we want to "fight racism" the only real way to do that is to reduce social strife generally, and the only way to do that is to create Justice through a FAIR distribution of the collective wealth that a society produces from all its collective energies. And the ONLY way to do that is for folks to become 'enlightened; into a Shared Culture, in which they are 'enlightened' enough about their differences that they can set them aside, so's we can unite and catch these Elites who are ruining our nation right between the eyes with a hard right hand. If they get up, we'll get 'em with the left hand haymaker. We'll get 'em every which way, once we can UNITE! Surely we don't need to present an argument to prove the sky is blue. Do we need to prove that when human tribal disharmonies are reduced by a 'just'/fair/'equitable', (equitable, not equal), distribution of wealth, that racism is one of those tribal disharmonies that will be reduced? Do we really need to prove that we can only achieve social harmony through Justice, and that we can only achieve Justice for ALL the Common People if ALL the Common People unite? Well ... This is how 'logic'/Reason works. One building block paves the way for the next. One conclusion becomes a premise for the next. OK .. This old ape has droned on long enough ... I had a long conversation with my oldest daughter, Dr. Jennifer Zwarich, while writing this Part 2. (She uses her maiden name professionally. She uses her family/married name otherwise). She had read Part 1. It was maybe a two hour or more conversation. I was a bit embarrassed when I heard myself blurt out, "If I was a politician, I could easily take over this nation". LOL ... Yea ... Well .. I am kinda embarrassed I said that out loud, but ... I actually DO completely and seriously believe that. The thing is, I'm NOT a politician. I'm really not at ALL qualified for that role. My 'skill set' lies elsewhere. "And I hate power", I told my daughter. I was 'the boss' for so many years, and I always HATED it. Like ole Burt Lancaster, in 'From Here to Eternity', (shows you how old I am, although that was my parents' generations' story), I just could NEVER imagine myself as an 'officer'. I always have, and always will, yearn to be 'one of the guys'. But Caliban never was, never could be, and never will be, one of the guys. Solitude is a better option than loneliness, but sharing love and friendship is best of all. (You think this odd old ape ain't proud 'a my baby girls? ... LOL). Hope all are well and strong, or have someone if you're not. Caliban R Zwarich Bent Birch Farm 63 Webber Rd Brookfield, MA 01506 774 449-8030 |
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