Say What?

Carolyn Maloney is apologizing for repeating the “N” word while Claire McCaskill, Senator from Missouri clarifies and retweets that she supports the Public Option, not the Pubic Option.

Who said we in the US are schizophrenic about sex (Europeans and South Americans that’s who) and who says we are afraid to have a discussion on race (Attorney General Eric Holden, that’s who). You probably got both of those quizers right without my prodding.

While trying to noodle on whether someone should be able to repeat a word someone else uses, memories of text in movies and other works of art, books and music, literally dance in my head (of course not literally, literally). Similar artifacts of memory rush my RAM chip, swirling in a black hole alongside visions of “that word” in print on respectable sites such as wikipedia to say nothing of recollections of various other politicos, all types and colors, uttering it in some manner or another.

Feelings of the chilling social phenomena wherein blacks have taken back the word and redefined it and claim to be the only ones who can  use it, yeah, sort of chill me like the background music of a scary movie, a real one I mean.  Yeah, especially as an American born white man, arguably the source of all evil in the world and the class of humanoids historically credited with the enslavement of innocent Africans, something no other race nor country has practiced. :)  And certainly no one still practices anything of the sort today, except for white men who travel to Thailand.

It is sooo true that the horrible practice of owning another human being was practiced and condoned by many of The Founders, those great white male American power brokers, heralded politically by all sides of the aisle (there are more than two you know) as the geniuses who created a sustainable America, if only we would adhere to their principles. Hypocritical howls can be heard daily in the halls of our political venues and occasionally in blogs, from one sheep or another condemning the destruction of the constitution by some action by the wolf on the other side.

“All men are created equal” also presses it’s inspirational message to my mind all the while I remember learning it is so trite today to say that “men’ did not mean mankind for it excluded women of any color and black men. If I missed your group, my apologies. So therefore, I won’t say it. Trite, I’m not. Loquacious maybe, but anyway I’m pretty sure I had nothing to do with it. Thereby I have joined the victim society.

Yes, today’s evil white men cheat on their wives (But I don’t - check it out dude or dudesses,  follow me around like Gary Hart if you do not believe me, but for fairness sake, do not come down to the marina, everyone deserves a safe place). And unlike Governor Sanford, I am wearing my wedding ring today. I understand Bill Clinton always has worn his wedding ring, kinky, no?

Yes, white men have had most of the power in the US. And they really screwed it up, didn’t they? Plentiful evidence indicates no one wants to live here and by the way, we are so rich we can afford more foreclosures than any country in the history of the world. Combined probably. And we did it with greed and faulty regulations.

Not my bad either (nor my good for that matter, I just live here), although I did play a minor part back in the early 1990s, but that is irrelevant. Really. Actually, I had nothing to do with it. The mortgage mess, you know what I am talking about.  That’s the erstwhile background for Michael Moore’s new film, something condemning Capitalism and supporting Socialism using the complicated mortgage meltdown as the springboard for a lot of head fakes.

Yes, white men have prejudice in their hearts. So does everyone in some measure. Sure, some measures have been more than egregious, from slave holdings to lynchings of those considered to be second class humans beings. In fact, those oft heralded wise old white men of old, whose richness of experience, who pulled them selves up with their bootstraps when they actually had such a thing, unless they married, stole or inherited their money and power. By and despite their deeply inspired personal stories, some of which were admirable, some more pedestrian perhaps, they all finally accepted or acquiesced and used an interesting mechanism to allocate representation in the House of Representatives after determining that each state would have a fixed number, two, of Senators regardless of size or population of the state.

House representation was determined by  population, an important reason for a census, and slaves were counted as 2/3 of a person for apportioning political power and seats in the House chambers. Something like that anyway, (right?), memory is quicker than research but less reliable. Regardless, such a formula for a slave seems an obvious attempt to recognize but kick the issue of slavery down the road, and arguably created the disparate economic and political pressures that created the later theme that we can not be a divided nation, the reason Lincoln violated the constitution and held the union together with ugly military power. All of which also facilitated some other actions that conformed to his learned dislike of slavery and it’s ultimate removal as a legal institution in the land of the free.

So these wise men, some of them anyway, bought and sold black men and frequently thought of their white women as chattel let alone their attitude toward their powerless black lovers as legal property. I once joked in front of my wife that among the biggest mistakes man (READ: white men) has made was to give women the vote and also initiating the federal tax code to collect revenues on a temporary basis. Mind you, I only said it once and did so with an unusually large in your face type grin on my face.  Probably should have just kept that humor to myself.

For many decades I have been able to articulate, for instance, that in general business, I was the beneficiary of an affirmative action climate for white men. I somehow became aware that I did not have to compete on exactly the same basis for the same job as a white woman or a black man. Of course, mostly I looked for jobs in “white’ areas and in jobs that were considered “mens” work before I arrived. I did not apply to be a professional athlete anywhere nor for any job in Harlem. Had I, no doubt I would have come face to face with my lack of needed skills, and would probably have tasted some bitter racial prejudice.

But that was then and this is now. I do not want today’s young white men to have such advantages I had (another reason I am the Chief Hypocrite). And here’s the corollary: I do not want them to pay for the sins of human civilization begun long before even Nostradamus had thought of America.

My personal affirmative action was not given to me because we (white men) were disadvantaged. We somehow previously just won the power wars. Obama won a great power war last November. White men won something a long time ago, although they have lost it and regained it in different parts of the world, and are notoriously absent in many parts of the world today in many venues.

Consequently, white men have historically absorbed no racial nor gender sense of inferiority among their country folk, nor have they a deeply embedded sense  of deficiency other than between other powerful men mostly, who have bested them in battle or bed. Some individuals, too many, yes even individual white men suffer such things, but as a “class” white men do not compared to some other “classes”.

Other “classes” in this sense most notably black men and white women because they have been at some point in some numbers, historical properties of white men do. Do what, you say? They do have a history, one that angers or embarrasses them or frightens them or holds them back. One that has created a backlash, a deserved attention to equalty and one that has created the politics of remediation of past wrongs. Some say that has been the best thing that every happened, some say it is not. I am not sure. Education, awareness is not always equal, so maybe we could not be were we are today, whereever that is, without some affirmative action, some reverse discrimination, some special deals for the underclasses.

Today, it matters not one iota.

What does matter is where do we go from here so I got out my dusty old slide rule and engaged in some old fashioned calculus. I first listed all of the variables that have an influence on life today, conscientiously ignoring history at my political peril. As a result, I no doubt can not get a job as a regulator in the Obama White House or any patronage job for that matter. Regardless, I then proceeded to orgnize an algorithm which precisely lines up those 1, 342, 879 to the tenth power of variables in just the right way to weight them and brush up against each other mathematically. Einstein would be proud of me.

Then my tour de force was when I allocated perfect values to each of the variables and placed them in the perfect formula. Then I flicked my index finger to arrive at the answer. Before I tell you, let me tell you what the question was.

How do we maintain our heading toward our goal of equality, and equal pursuit of happiness, rather than a guarantee of outcome, and do it as fast as possible?

My slide rule and notepad gave me sufficient data so that I could reenter all of it in the supercomputer called my brain. Fabulous organ the brain. It can convince you of anything you want to be convinced of.

My conclusion:

Let’s pass a law saying all men (mankind) are created equal. Then let the content of our character be our judge and jury and let us accept any differences that occur as we each pursue our happiness in freedom in our own ways, owning the outcome.

Affirmative Action takes the soul away for those who have been truly disadvantaged because it tells them they are not equal to the Big Bad White Man.

By the way, due to global and domestic demographics and reigning attitudes, and always looking to the future, I am studying the feasibility of reclaiming the term “Whitey” and White Man and all of its derivatives, redefining it and requiring that no one but verifiable white men can use it. Updating the formulas of those wise old white men (The Founders), I decided after some fiddling with the slide rule, that a white man must have at least 50% Caucasian blood to quality.

That means that Barack Obama and I both quality to use the term. The best information available indicates he is at least 50% causasian and based on  murky misspellings and dusty documents and seldom spoken family rumors some will not acknowledge, I must be at least 90% white/Caucasian. But I’m not nearly so charasmatic as the hughly talented Obama, especially if you know him. No, I’m no Obama.

And perhaps, that is because I missed all of the affirmative action like reaffirming actions whose operating benefits are lacking in my psyche from those oh so important early years so formative to my young mind. You see, my folks could not afford to send me to kindergarten, when free education began in the first grade where I came from, and during my time of greatest risk.

I think there are lots of us and the Fed and Statue legislatures should propose and certainly fund a study of the “Lost Kindergarteners of the Cold War” a heart wrenching tale no one wants to talk about even fewer want to fund as it deserves. At least fund an exploration of how many of us still survive, we won’t last forever you know, and where have we landed in life and what good works have any of us have contributed to this country, so hated and so loved as a society that we have to build walls to keep people out.

Of course. You are welcome. I will pass that on to my and Barack’s predecessors next time I meet with that cross over creep. Edwards, not Gore. No, no, not that Edwards.