The Things We Are Not Supposed to Talk About

A good friend of mine told me today about how one of her granddaughters recently got beaten up by a fellow student for:

1. singing a "black song."

2. responding to a question by said student about whether or not she wanted to be black by saying that she actually wanted to be Latina.

3. admitting that she was in actuality an Arab.

Needless to say, none of these reasons deserved punishment but that's what the poor girl got anyway. And unfortunately, such incidents are not rare. According to my friend, the girl's older half-brother got similar treatment from bullies when he was younger even though he was half-black. For that matter, so did the girl's biracial mother.

And sadly enough, the student responsible did not apologize until several days afterward -- and even then the grandmother suspected that the bully's true motive for apologizing was not genuine regret but a desire to avoid prosecution for a hate crime.

I could go on to say more but then again it should not matter what else I could say. The fact is that the little girl was bullied and I can't help feeling very angry about it. It should not matter if the girl responsible was white. It should not matter if she was black. It should not matter if she was Arab or Latina or Asian or anything else. A bully is a bully is a bully is a bully is a bully and anyone who tells you different is probably either a potential bully or an enabler of bullies.

I know that is fashionable in some sections of modern society to pretend differently but I prefer not to think that way. After all, when a former co-worker told me about how her younger sister had once been bullied by Mexicans, my first reaction was not, "Yeah, you Anglo girls deserved that." It was "My God, how would I feel if something like that happened to my sister!"

I also know that it is fashionable to rationalize the desire to not talk about such incidents on the grounds that such talk will only encourage people to get the wrong idea about certain minorities. This is an understandable sentiment but unfortunately, it is also a bit shortsighted if for no other reason that most of the victims of such bullies are themselves minorities. And even if they were white, the same attitude would still be shortsighted. After all, few white people -- especially white liberals -- would be flattered by the idea that there is absolutely no difference between them and the average white bully. Yet this is very often the type of assumption that white liberals are expected to make in regard to nonwhite bullies: that there is no difference between, say, the Mexican who beats up on little kids and the Mexican who does not beat up on little kids. And even if such assumptions could be "proved" to be just, the fact still remains that most people -- regardless of race-- resent like hell the idea that it's okay for people to beat them up.

In any event, this is not a recent problem. Some of my older Mexican-American cousins used to complain about the bullying they experienced in Detroit schools back when they were young. And I somehow doubt that they were the only ones who experienced such problems.

For that matter, I don't kid myself that any one ethnic group has a monopoly on school bullies. But I also don't kid myself that any ethnic group is immune to the temptation to bully.

As for the notion that we just should not talk about it:

1. The one thing we should have learned in the 1960s is that major social problems don't just go away because certain people don't want to talk about them.

2. Said problems are likely to affect people's behavior and attitudes whether we talk about them or not. So it is not very helpful to society to just pretend such problems don't exist.

3. Just because you don't want to talk about certain problems doesn't mean that people are going to stop talking about them. They just won't talk about them to you. And that attitude, needless to say, can come back to haunt you.

Liberals and Conservatives

For every person who conforms to the conventional stereotype of conservative or liberal, there are many more who fall somewhere in-between. Some people are liberal on some issues like abortion and conservative on others like gun control while others are just the other way around. Indeed, even some conventional conservatives are more complicated than they appear at first glance which might explain why the one female co-worker I knew who fought hardest against a male co-worker who was a sexist jackass was also the same woman who listened to Rush Limbaugh on a daily basis. (I'm not going to pretend that all Limbaugh fans are like her but she was definitely different than what I had expected.)

That said, liberals historically tended to be more pro-active at fighting against racism, sexism and the like while conservatives rarely participated in such fights. Granted, there were exceptions like Lincoln and Eisenhower but even these were more often than not reacting against a situation. For example, Truman took it upon himself to order the racial integration of the military while Eisenhower's decision to support the integration of Little Rock was more a reaction to events than a pro-active decision.

As for Woodrow Wilson, I would like to believe that he too was an exception since he chose to expand the limits of Jim Crow during his time in office despite his reputation as a very liberal president and not many presidents on either side of the aisle did that. Then again it was not unusual to find many Democrats -- especially in the South but also in the North as well -- who were not exactly in favor of integration.

Indeed, many of the "moderate" civil rights views that some conservatives like P.J. O'Rourke take such pride in today were once considered very radical as recently as the 1960s. For that matter, I can say the same thing about certain "moderate" views concerning feminism.

Contracultura and Daniel Ellsberg

When I moved to Texas I found myself attending school with kids who were taught that Vietnam War protester and folk singer Joan Baez was a Communist. Interestingly enough, that didn't prevent Baez's big hit "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" from being performed in a school play but then I doubt they necessarily associated said song with her political views. Nor do I believe they picked up on the fact that Baez's version was probably meant not so much to be a defense of Dixie as it was to be an anti-war song.

Even today, I come across some people -- including people way younger than me who practice many of the same customs as your average hippie -- who use "hippie" as an insult. Usually they say something like, "Of course so-and-so is fucked up. Her parents were hippies." But the sentiment is still there.

And, of course, back in the 1990s, it was common for people in my Catholic singles group to note that you could get away with a pro-JFK sentiment more easily in Boston than you could in Dallas.

That said, we shouldn't pretend that Daniel Ellsberg -- the journalist responsible for the the Pentagon Papers --was all that popular in his day. Much of the country's idea of political commentary back then began and ended with Merle Haggard and even moderate newsman Walter Cronkite--aka "the most trusted man in America"--was considered dangerously liberal in some quarters.

Despite attempts at evenhandedness in our high school history class, it seemed obvious to me when I was young that my teachers were biased toward the pro-establishment view of the Vietnam War and indeed, it wasn't until I ran into a fellow high school student who claimed to be a socialist that I met anyone who could explain what the fuss about the Pentagon Papers was all about.

And if you read the stuff written by people who actually lived through the period--for example, Harlan Ellison's "Glass Teat" columns--you'll note that there was as much despair over the effectiveness of the counterculture back then -- in an era which it was supposedly making much progress -- as there is today.

Quick Note: This is an excerpt from a comment I made in response to a discussion on another site several year ago in which the topic was the decline of the American contrac -- er -- counterculture. I hope it was not too eccentric.

2016

Midway through the 2016 Presidential primary season, I started feeling like Michael Corleone in that scene from The Godfather: Part II where he predicted a Cuban rebel victory just based on what he had seen on the street earlier that day. To be fair, I welcomed a Trump presidency about as much as Michael Corleone welcomed a Communist takeover of Cuba but that didn't stop me from noticing that Trump seemed to be becoming increasingly immune to media criticism -- almost as if the voters were deliberately ignoring anything negative said about him, no matter how true it was.

The final proof that my theory was true came when Trump was revealed to have employed illegal aliens for one of his construction projects. Given all the publicity given to his "build a wall" speech and his status as an opponent of illegal immigration, the revelation that he himself hired illegal aliens should have been a vote-killer. But no one who was voting for Trump gave a damn. It seemed as if he could have been exposed as the Antichrist on national TV and he still would have had a substantial following.

And things only got worse by November...

Thought About the Flint River

If a group of terrorists dumped hazardous chemicals in a local river and destroyed the drinking water of an entire community, most Americans would be screaming for Homeland Security to go out and arrest the bastards. But when American corporations do the same thing, we are supposed to just accept it as the price we pay for a healthy job climate...

Fiddler on the Roof 2018

"Rabbi, is there a proper blessing for the current U.S. President?"

"A proper blessing for the current U.S. President? May God bless the President... and keep him far away from us."

* Cue laughter *

Tonio Kruger's Political Fantasy of the Week

"Excuse me, Mr. Gianforte. Clark Kent of The Daily Planet here. If you don't mind, sir, I have a few questions to ask you..."

Why Trump Won the Election

It's tempting to say "just lucky, I guess" but I suspect Lynn of Violins and Starships has a far better reply.

For that matter, so does Michael Moore. That's right. The same Michael Moore whom I have dissed on previous occasions.

I may have to do a lot of major rethinking about that guy.

This Seems Like the Wrong Week to Re-Read The Dead Zone

No, seriously. It does.

Donald Does Dallas

Well, if Donald Trump's recent rally in Dallas proved one thing, it's that the guy really knows how to put a show. For that matter, he's rather shameless about sucking up to an audience as long as it's the right audience -- but then what politician isn't rather shameless about doing that?

That said, I still don't trust the guy and I would not be a bit surprised to find out that most of his "supporters" are just voting for him to yank the chains of the type of people who don't like Donald Trump. (And I'm not referring to people like me.)

I do find it interesting that though my mother and my middle brother both lean conservative -- indeed, my middle brother can be very conservative when it comes to politics -- neither one of them is a Trump supporter. But then Trump isn't interested in appealing to people like us so I'm not all that surprised.

Anyway, it sounds like it's going to be an interesting election year next year. And if nothing else, Donald Trump deserves credit for stealing Rand Paul's thunder -- which is probably the last nice thing I'll say about Mr. Trump this year.

Down, Down, Down...

A former co-worker of mine used to argue that the local economy won't really improve until gas prices start going down. Well, gas prices are going down now -- so much so that I almost expect to see gas stations start paying customers to come by and gas up.

Okay, I am obviously exaggerating a wee bit but I would like to believe that some turnaround is due soon and that the lower gas prices in my area are a sign of that. In the meantime, I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Something I Should Have Mentioned Way Earlier than This

Some time between the day I posted this item back in 2008 and the end of last year, the City of Dallas finally named a local street after Mexican-American labor organizer César Chávez -- surprise, surprise, it was not Ross Avenue. It says something about how rarely I go downtown that it took me a long while to pick up on this but I finally did.

I know I should have mentioned this news far earlier than today but a lot has been going on this past six months. Lo siento.

Quotes of the Year 2007

I actually wrote this back in December of 2007 but for some reason, I neglected to post it because I wasn't sure it would be all that relevant. Boy, was I wrong.

1. Don’t tase me, bro! -- Andrew Meyer, September 17, 2007.

Apparently this is becoming the most popular catchphrase in the year. Which would be nice if it was being quoted to establish solidarity with the dude who said it. But apparently it’s being quoted for the same reason Rodney King‘s “can we all get along?” was so often quoted -- to make fun of the person who said it. On one hand, I can understand this. No one likes a jerk, and it’s very tempting to see the person who said it as just another jerk who got his just desserts.

And yet one can’t help but find something ominous about the circumstances of that quote. After all, that guy who said it wasn’t harassing cheerleaders or schoolchildren. He was asking questions of a major Presidential candidate. And while he might not have been all that polite in the ways he asked his questions, he didn’t deserve to be punished so harshly for essentially doing no more than ask a few questions.

Yes, people will laugh at anything, and maybe I shouldn’t take the jokes surrounding that quote all that seriously. But then again, maybe I should. After all, if Americans have no shame about laughing at the tasering of a political dissident -- and let’s face it, that’s what the student in question is -- how long before they start laughing at far worse treatment?

2. Por qué no te callas? -- King Juan Carlos of Spain, to Hugh Chavez, November 10, 2007.*

Apparently this is becoming one of the most popular Spanish-language quotes of the year. It’s apparently appearing on T-shirts and everything.

Too bad that out of context, it comes across not as much as an effort to quiet a jerk’s insults but rather an attempt to silence free speech.

But, hey, that’s the Spanish tradition, right? Whenever someone tells us something we don’t like, our first response is not to debate them and prove them wrong. It’s to tell them to shut up.

Good thing we don’t yet have an attitude like that here in the United States, right? Er, right?

* Spanish for “Why don't you shut up?”

The Politics of Anger

It is the dark, dim period between autumn and winter and a not so young man's thoughts naturally turn to anger. Anger at all the shameless greed to which the latest TV ads pander. Anger at the fact that so many people are still unemployed this close to Christmastime. Anger at the indifference shown to our current economic situation by our nation's leaders. Anger at the way our police seem to be becoming more like the corrupt Latin American police we profess to despise and anger at the fact that no one seems to worry about such mundane problems as drug abuse, domestic violence and crime.

As usual, there are many on the Right and Left who would contend that the solution to all this is to get angry. And indeed, inspiring anger is usually the first step toward motivating people to seek political reform. But anger alone is not enough. Discipline is far more important for anger ultimately means nothing if it is not channeled in an useful direction.

Indeed, if the last two decades have proved anything, it is that anger is a bit overrated as a motivational force. For example, there was plenty of anger expressed by the Right over the Checkgate scandal in the 1990s –- yet little followthrough when it came to voting out the politicians responsible for that scandal. More recently, we saw plenty of anger expressed by the Left about the intrusiveness of the TSA scans –- but again, little effort to follow through with actual actions such as protests or boycotts.

Anger can be a powerful motivational force; that is true. But one can walk into any prison in this country and find plenty of people who are full of anger. And many of the people who are there end up there because of actions born of wrath. Moreover, you can walk into any battered women’s shelter and find plenty of people there who are victims of another person’s anger. Which means that anger can be a force for evil as often as it is a force for good and it certainly explains why Anger is numbered among the Seven Deadly Sins.

Control is the key. Not anger.

Classy Bumper Sticker of the Week

Don't blame me. I voted for the American.

My response: Hey, I voted for an American too. His last name just happened to be Obama.

Thoughts on the Tea Party Victories

Let's face it. For most people living in America right now, the status quo stinks.

Whenever you have a lot of people as dissatisfied with the status quo as the average American is today, that's usually not good news for the party in power.

We can go on and on about class privilege and white entitlement and so forth but the fact still remains is that a lot of people are hurting right now and when you're hurting, you're tempted to vote for whoever seems to have the most promising remedy for your hurt. Hell, you'd vote for a blind, lame idiot if you thought there was even the slightest chance he or she would change the status quo in your favor.

I don't particularly care for the Tea Party and I especially don't like the way the Lauren Valle incident has been dismissed by the majority of American voters as a minor issue. But I don't see the Tea Party going away unless both main political parties get their act together and start addressing their constituents' very real concerns.

I don't say this because I honestly believe the Tea Party is going to solve anything. Indeed, I would be very surprised if their actions didn't make things worse. But I also realize that you don't have to be a snobbish homophobic racist to be dissatisfied with the government right now and it's that dissatisfaction which was fueling the recent victories more than anything else.

Of course, the more attention the party gets, the more I'm reminded of that old Beverly Hillbillies episode in which a rival banker continually tries to woo the Clampett family away from Milburn Drysdale's bank by making them think that he would take care of their money much better than Milburn Drysdale. In order to prove this, he asks that the Clampetts attempt to withdraw their money in cash from Drysdale's bank, and of course when they attempt to do just that, Drysdale is forced to admit that he couldn't possibly convert all their funds to cash in just one day. Granny Clampett promptly accuses him of spending all their money and promptly persuades Jed to deposit all the family money with the rival banker. However, once they accomplish this, the first thing Granny wishes to do is to once again withdraw all the Clampett millions in cash, this time from the rival's bank. Of course, the poor man is forced to admit that such a withdrawal would be impossible, which drives Granny to the conclusion that the Clampetts might as well keep their money with Mr. Drysdale because the rival banker spent their money even faster than he did.

If you think the relevance of that episode to current events is unclear now, just wait a year or two. After all, the Tea Party candidates would not be the first politicians to gain office by promising miserly spending habits, only to turn into drunken sailors when confronted with the opportunity to control actual government funds.