Is there a bigger scam out there than racism? A scam? Yes, a scam. Think about it. People are taught to hate each other from a very young age and by the time we grow up it's sort of ingrained with the rest of our automatic assumptions; the sky is blue, the moon moves the tides and ______ people (you fill in the blank) are scum. Then you get out in the world and experience things for yourself. Sure enough, the sky remains blue, the oceans never miss a change of tides but then you meet people who you're supposed to hate and you find out they're really okay. It happens once and you wonder what's up, maybe I met the one good one. Then it happens a bunch more times and you realize you've been had. Maybe you're pissed off or just bewildered but you know something's very wrong with the picture.
If you're honest with yourself you stop hating people for no reason. There's only so long you can tell yourself that so-and-so is alright but the rest of them deserve my hatred. Then you meet and interact with more of them and it seems that all the people of the hated race that you get to know are screwing with your head by being regular human beings just like your own particular ethnic group. And just like your own bunch some of them are real jerks, some of them may also be filled with unreasonable hate and rage but for the most part they're a pretty decent group of people doing their best in a difficult world. Again you wonder what gives and you begin asking questions about the basic assumptions that were instilled in you from very early on in life.
Then you get really angry. You might know your history and can't help but be aware of current events and it seems like everybody's hating everybody else and doing horrible things to one another when by now you'd think people would know better. How can such a ridiculous notion last for thousands of years? Maybe most people never really got to know their fictional "enemy." Living in New York, you sort of can't help but rub elbows with every nationality and ethnic group you can think of, but that's no answer. New York can also be a very impersonal place if that's how you choose to operate, a place where it's possible to insulate yourself from any meaningful contact with others, even members of your own little group.
There's also plenty of small towns where people who hate each other live side by side and there's really no getting around knowing somebody a least a little bit in a small town. But still a lot of people hate people of difference. There's Whites who hate Blacks, Blacks who hate Whites, Latins who hate Blacks and Whites, Whites who hate Jews, all sorts of people who hate Muslims these days, except of course the guy you know at 7-11 who's okay, Blacks who hate Jews, Whites who hate Blacks, Jews, Latins and Arabs equally, Jews who hate Blacks, Whites who hate other Whites like Italians or Germans or Irish or whatever. A real hate fest, and not only in America but all over the world. It's a joke. A sad one, but still a joke.
The saddest sacks to me are the White Supremacists in America, a place where white people are already pretty much supreme without the help of these trailer trash morons. If you notice, these blowhard White Supremacists almost exclusively inhabit the bottom rungs on the ladders of education, achievement, intelligence, financial and social status, not only in comparison the their fellow Whites but all of humanity. Real supreme, eh? Their most famous offshoot, the brutal Aryan Brotherhood, operates almost exclusively in prisons and those who are out of prison soon return there like homing pigeons.
Don't these people own mirrors? Can't they see what idiots they are? The closest they will ever get to the really supreme White people, the rich ones who own and operate this country, will be to pump gas into their gleaming sedans, maybe wipe their windshields and doff their caps for good measure, hoping for a small tip. Well, maybe these clowns are a bad example of what I'm trying to get at. Stupid people like that are too easy to pick on. There's nothing worse to be done to them than leave them alone to be the pathetic losers they will be for the rest of their lives. Anyone who tattoos his hatred across his forehead is telling you flat out that his racism is his best friend and pretty much all he's got going for him. All you can do is hope their children might wake up and smell the coffee, or at least not preach violence against coffee-colored people.
I'm talking about regular people with good heads on their shoulders who should know better. Most people are very bright and well capable of thinking for themselves and they usually do. There are, however, some glaring exceptions in the thinking clearly department. Most are harmless, like when we attribute all sorts of virtues to our favorite sports stars or celebrities that they don't possess or blindly assume that we are the best drivers on the road, or cooks in the kitchen or lovers in bed. Those assumptions hurt no one (except maybe the driving thing) and give us a little self esteem. It is the failure to confront our useless hatred that really holds people back. Some otherwise lucid people who can see through a lot of false assumptions and who teach their children to have open minds never get around to investigating their own contradictions.
First, you have to ask yourself: Who does it benefit if I hate another group of human beings to the point of distraction? Distraction is a key word here because a distracted person takes his eye off the ball. And when you take your eye off the ball in sports it winds up in the hands of your opponent and you lose the game. In life that ball would be wealth and property. The opponents would be the people who take more than their share of it, to the point where 35,000 people every single day starve to death on a bountiful planet. A little extreme? Sure it is. It's very extreme when you're child is one of those dying that slow agonizing death.
Admittedly, being an American, I've never seen or known anyone who has starved to death. It is my great good fortune to have been born into a nation wealthier than any nation has ever been and where there's so much food even a lot of our poor people are fat, and where there's so much money even our poor own cell phones, televisions and enjoy a lot of other amenities including heat, hot water, electricity, proper sanitation facilities and the like that we take for granted but are certainly not universal amenities for the world's poor. Hell, a in a lot of places they're lucky to have water: running, muddy, malarial or otherwise.
I'm not saying America is a paradise but it's pretty much as close as human beings have come to creating one so far. It's one of the few places where people openly discuss their racism and realize it's dead wrong. Even if it is by the clumsy method of the passage of laws to ensure civil rights and equal opportunities for all, we are at least engaged in trying to confront and subdue racism. This is the country who gave the world the concept of a nation created on ideas and ideals rather than ethnicity, religion, monarchy or territory. It's still a place where Have-Nots can become Haves.
That said, the execution of those American ideas and ideals has been pretty inconsistent. Ask Native Americans how that worked out for them. Ask Blacks who were still enslaved for 87 years after the United States declared that all men were created equal. Ask Japanese Americans who were forced into concentration camps when Japan attacked America at the beginning of World War II. And what was World War II if not a gigantic exercise of racial and ethnic warfare, leaving 50 million humans dead and the question of racism unresolved? Let historians say what they like about the ideals of Fascism versus Democracy or tyranny versus freedom, but the bottom line was that people were being attacked and slaughtered for who they were, not anything they did or said. At least that was so in the minds of ordinary soldiers and civilians of the attacking nations who were led to believe these people were evil and a direct threat to them by their very existence.
The real reason they were attacked or imprisoned and murdered was what they had what others wanted. It might be wealth, it might be farmland, or oil or seaports, but it was an attempt to take by force what others had that the attackers did not. Sharing and trading in good faith seemed out of the question since everybody seemed to hate everybody else so war was declared. Mostly the war was declared on human sanity and the whole world joined the bloodbath. Were the British innocent victims of Fascist aggression? Ask the billion or so world citizens who lived under the iron fist of their rapacious Empire at the time.
Were the Germans forced to kill millions to avenge a bad Peace Treaty of Versailles that doomed their nation to poverty since they lost the previous race war, commonly known as World War I? Well, in case no one noticed, the same unemployment and destitution was occurring all over the world. It was called The Great Depression and eventually lifted, and so it would have as well for Germany without the Blitzkrieg. Imagine the monumental national effort that went into building the Nazi war machine being channeled into peaceful industrialization and rebuilding and you get the picture of a prosperous society once again trading in good faith with neighboring nations. Didn't happen. Hitler and hatred won the day and the hearts and minds of a nation.
Did Japan have no other choice but to devastate, loot and enslave China and attack Britain and America in the Pacific to challenge Anglo-American hegemony over that hemisphere? These are the questions historians ask and one presumes they are valid areas of inquiry. But not many historians wonder how it is that so very many people considered other people to be sub-humans worthy only of enslavement or annihilation. All that talk of Master Races and Empires of The Sun are pretty old hat and have been around for time immemorial. It was only during World War II that humans had the technical wherewithal to blow a good chunk of the the world and 50 million of their brethren to shreds.
What about the designation of being God's Chosen People? How convenient was that? Nothing like the sanction of God to justify slaughtering a rival group down to the last man, woman and child and taking their land, their wealth and their cities as one's own. Religion is a very useful tool for the powerful who wish to motivate their citizens to act very irreligiously indeed, to kill God's children and steal their possession for God's sake. How you can wrap your mind around that one is beyond me. Of course the average person didn't share in the great wealth stolen in these "holy" wars, only the elite few, but the rank and file had the satisfaction of killing for God and glorifying their kings and priests.
And then there's the Chines Dynasties who for centuries considered the rest of the world to be inhabited by apes with pants. Their people bought into it, too, even though they were treated considerably worse than apes by their royal masters, who lived very well indeed, their every whim indulged by scurrying servants. And if said servants didn't scurry fast enough or bow low enough there were other servants handy to chop them up into pieces. The sad fact is that there was never any shortage of bowers and scrapers willing to take their place, figuring it was a better deal than starving.
The Romans weren't so shy about stating that Roman citizens were superior to other humans. With that assumption they persuaded a lot of ordinary citizens to conquer and loot most of the known world. Again, only the elite few shared in the great wealth but yet the average citizen of Rome felt it was his duty to kill and maim in order to have the wealthiest and most bloodthirsty emperor to rule over them completely, confusing wealth and evil with glory and honor. How dumb is that? Very dumb, but it continued for centuries. When the Spanish encounered civilizations in South America every bit as advanced as their own except in the weaponry department they industriously destroyed those civilizations, enslaved the populations and dutifully sent back the incredible riches they stole back to their king and the tiny minority of wealthy aristocracy. Make any sense to you?
We had our own brand of elitism here called Manifest Destiny, the idea that White men would civilize and own the New World. Again, only a few grew wealthy while the rest toiled and bled to build their empires. Americans revel in the fact that we have so many mega-rich people here, never stopping to reflect upon how it was that the super-rich replaced royalty in the hero-wordship compartments of our brains. And like people everywhere in the world from the beginning of civilization, we hated who we were taught to hate and in general removed these people either from life itself or from being in the way of building someone else's great fortune. Never in history did it seem to occur to the rank and file to ask: "Where's my grand palace, dammit? Where's my golden goblet?" or "Why am I burying another comrade to glorify some asshole who doesn't even know we exist?"
Well it's long past time to ask those questions. It's too late to save the 6 million Jews slaughtered in the Holocaust. Too late to save the uncounted millions of Blacks who died in the bowels of slave ships or the millions more enslaved. Too late to un-drop the atomic bombs that vaporized two Japanese cities or resurrect the millions of victims of Japan's own racism and intolerable cruelty. We cannot un-destroy so many of Europe and Asia's artistically beautiful cities, the work of centuries gone forever.
It's too late to reassemble the mystical Aztec and Mayan civilizations or the many proud nations of Native North Americans, their cultures nearly eradicated, their once proud people herded into dusty preserves like Africa's lions. Too late for the lynched Black men in the Jim Crow era, too late for all the American soldiers buried all over the world who died fighting for ideals their country does not always practice, too late for a lot of people who were trampled underfoot throughout history for no reason except to make rich men even richer, powerful men even more powerful.
So let's wake the hell up and snap out of it. It's not too late for us and it's not too late for our children. Ask yourself what benefit any of us has gained from hating another human being. Ask yourself if the personal cost of harboring hatred in our minds advances our intellect or stifles it. And ask yourself who is the beneficiary of this hate. Ask yourself what honor there is in hatred. Who loses more human dignity, the slave or the slave holder, an owner of men? Ask why you fear other men who are but slightly different from yourself. Ask why you feel anger towards people who have done you no harm. So much of our anger is merely the violent backlash of fear, and you have to wonder who instilled that fear so deeply.
As an American, do you find yourself hating Iraqi people? And if so, why? They didn't come to America and kill one out of 25 Americans. It was America who did that to them, and in your name! Do you hate all Muslims because we're supposedly in a life and death struggle with them? I haven't noticed one here in America, and I live in a town that was viciously attacked by Muslim terrorists. Who benefits from this contrived global struggle? Not you or me, that's for sure. Not our dedicated and honorable soldiers either. The oil millionaires are doing pretty well for themselves, as are giant corporations like Halliburton and their ilk. A very small amount of people have been making a huge amount of wealth prosecuting this hate-feuled warfare.
And do you notice that when the super-wealthy of different nations get together they get along swimmingly no matter what their skin color, religion or ethnicity might be? They know none of that matters. They also know it is in their vital interest for it to matter a hell of a lot to you. Who do you think provides the funds for these little hate clubs? It sure isn't the morons who belong to them, most of whom couldn't plan and organize a decent meal, never mind a worldwide scam.
Why isn't that obvious when our wealthy President walks hand in hand with the multi-billionaire King of Saudi Arabia, the nation that supplied 15 of the 19 hijackers of 9/11/01 and is the homeland of their master, Osama Bin Laden and also a notorious bankroller of hate organizations? Can things be any more transparent? Presidents, kings and corporate princes know exactly what they are doing when they stir up racial hatreds. None of them take it personally because they know these concepts do not apply to themselves. That are not racists at all, they hate nobody and feel no sting when others hate their particular race. They are elitists, of course, but that's a different concept.
These people can't afford to harbor racist ideas, or any other notion that interferes with the acquisition of more and more wealth and power. Not because they don't possess ample amounts of both already, simply because that is their main occupation, amassing wealth and power and exerting control over the masses. Without that control over the vast majority of humanity, their unchecked greed and lust for power would be in jeopardy. And being such a tiny minority, controlling the masses is impossible by force alone. Slavery, tyranny and warfare always end sooner or later, usually later and at the cost of much misery and bloodshed, but still they do end eventually.
So what better way to control people than by setting them at each other's throats? It costs next to nothing and it's the gift that keeps on giving forever and ever, a new hater born every 8 seconds into this world, another sucker buying into the scam that someone else is inferior to himself and an evil being and thus eligible to be stripped of his rights, his property, his freedom and ultimately his very humanity. It's the best scam ever, the Bogie Man Scam. Why argue with success? On the other hand, maybe it's time we suckers that are born every minute of every day take a peek behind the curtain of the Great and Powerful Oz and check out that flabby little old man pushing our buttons so expertly and ask him just what the hell he thinks he's doing. Give the bastard two quick slaps and a swift kick in the ass while we're at it.
Are we too embarrassed about being fooled for all these centuries to admit the truth? Or are we so in love with our hatred that we can't part with it? The Great and Powerful Oz is but an optical illusion, a giant ball of flaming gas used to keep us cowering in fear at its power and majesty, obedient to its every command to hate our bothers and sisters and to kill them and lay their wealth at the feet of the Great Wizard. How long are we going to appease a ball of flaming gas by letting fear and hatred eat our souls? Well, like Samuel Goldwyn once said: "Gentlemen, include me out."
