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| For over three years, I have worked in an office with the Confederate flag hanging overhead. It's a small flag, probably no more than 6 CM in area, but it still annoys me that it's there. I've contemplated everything from appropriating it, to bringing a flag of equal or superior animosity.
The majority of the office is female, so perhaps a flag of a boxum, pardon me, big-breasted, bare-arsed woman, with her legs spread like an eagle's wings and wearing nothing but moist lipstick.
The other demographic I could aim for would be those who are Jewish, and this would be simple: a swastika. Not the infamous red and black, but any swastika. An innocuous one used by Aative Americans or Asians.
I would justify either flag by saying I'm using it for a class, then leave it there and never remove it. I wonder if it would sit there for three years.
When I asked about the Southern Cross, I was told it was being used for a class, to instruct about the American Civil War. I suppose I should have been more streotypical or less subtle in voicing my displeasure, but I didn't feel it was necessary. I would not offer a Muslim a porkchop, or challenge a paraplegic to a footrace. I've the common sense to know that it would be inappropriate.
The Confederate flag seems not to trouble a room full of whites with only one black; probably the same way a swastika would not bother 100 people, if only one is Jewish. It should though.
The Cross of St. Andrew is said to be a sign of southern pride, and I suppose it is. However, blacks are also a part of the south, its history, heritage, and legacy. If as southerners and their descendants, they object to the flag, that objection is just as valid as any move to support the Confederate flag.
It's the argument of a child, but infantile arguments tend to be the strongest. If I tell a child not to play in the street, they will most certainly be there when I look next. If I ask for the Conderate flag not to be flown, they will rain from the sky.
At no point will an individual say: "You point is a valid one, and while I'm free to whatever I choose privately, publicly I should be more sensible, more appropriate."
To go a step farther, I recently received a review of my performance by my supervisor, which contained the the dreaded N-word.
Note: I never use the word, as I find negative words become
addictive, and replicate profusely with each use.
He used it en masse with other derogatory terms for people of various ethnicities and races, however, he still used it. The man took not a moment to think, (and this is crucial because it means I was never a thought in his mind at all) not a moment to register that the mere mention of the word would be offensive to me. While I fault him entirely for the incident, he is not to blame for the continued use of the word: Blacks are.
When Richard Pryor used the word to exorcise the demons that he struggled with, the insecurity that had been placed on him and fostered by him, he opened a door for every small-minded black person in America and outside. When Axel Rose is captured saying, "If a black guy can make a group called NWA, and call himself a nxxxxx, why can't I?", how sound is the logic of the simpleton, yet how inescapable!
I cannot tell people to describe me other than how I describe myself, or be angry and indignant when they do. A close mate of mine uses the word with regularity. When I addressed him about it, I was told, "I'll say whatever I want to say." He then went to go play in the street.
I suppose James Byrd's mangling needs to be a daily occurence, and Jim Crow laws and segregation need to be enforced again for blacks to learn that some words, this word, need never be spoken.
To close, if ignorance is bliss, the America is Eden. | | |
| I'm going to start reading The DaVinci Code (TDC) sometime this month, despite my aspersions towards the subject matter. The success of the book is based on the author's clever use of Christianity, doubt, and the distrust of the individual towards established organizations, i.e. the Catholic church. However, despite my willingness to read the book, I find it blasphemous to use Christianity in this fashion, and I'm perplexed by the relaxed stance that Christians on a whole show towards the novel.
I've heard some argue that Mary Magdeline was not a prostitue, that she was Jesus' wife, mother of his child, and subverted by the church because of her gender. Malarkey. The wife of Jesus would have been revered, and if Jesus had a child, he or she would have been done the same, if not attempted to be co-opted like any other child used to establish a dynasty. If the church wanted to marginalize Mary Magdeline, and through her, women in general, why include her in the gospels at all? Was she a prostitute? The gospels (Mark 16:9) say that Mary had seven demons/devils cast out of her. I'll leave it there. To be fixated with her past is to do the same as the revisionists who want to elevate her to a status that isn't true. If it were, what better weapon to deride Christianity than the notion that the Son of God was married to a former hooker?
It irks me that this (TDC) has no equivalent in any other religion. No Muslim would stand for a book that depicted Muhammed as a hashish smoker, whose vision of Allah was drugged induced. No Jew would stand for a book depicting the exodus from Egypt as a clandestine meeting between Moses and Ramses, where the latter allows the Israelites to leave as a favour to Moses, minus divine intervention. There are no written records outside of the Koran and Torah, respectively, to support the aformentioned. No heirogyphics depicting the exodus, no background on Muhammed, yet it wouldn't matter. No proponent of these faiths would allow guesswork and conjecture to incise into what they believe. Where are the indignant Christians?
I've told my students that if you want to find God in America, open up your wallet. For a Christian country to tolerate such drivel is beyond me, but then again, TDC is a best seller, with a movie in the works, and a singular tour at the Louvre. . . . | | |
| What has become of American men? I just finished watching a program on male menopause (andropause) and can only say: I beg your pardon? It's telling that I see more effeminate men now than I have ever seen in my life, with a love of areas that have traditionally been for women (clothing, shopping, accessorizing), as the decline of the American Male seems to be reaching 100 km a second.
I see more men crying at weddings, next to remarkably strong women who are unable to shed a tear, and wonder what is going on? I see men bearing grudges and looking villainously at each other, over simple misunderstandings. What is worse, I see women encouarging it!
It seems women have been given the metre to measure out the standard of a man, telling men that they are "secure in their sexuality" if they respond well to an advance from another man, wear a dress, or cry like a newborn on Oprah.
Andropause? It sounds like a mid-life crisis more than anything else, something that is not curable by an increase in testosterone, but moderating one's ego and accepting the facts of life. The press to turn the sexes into an amorphous, androgynous muck is mind-numbing. | | |
| I wonder often why God allowed humans free will and not animals. A cat commits no atrocity, no malice, and never will. It does not have the capacity for evil that humans do, for it has not the intelligence. To counter this, a cat also has no conscience, it feels no guilt, and has no concept of right or wrong, yet we have all of the aforementioned and have yet to aspire to the simplistic dignity of an animal, a cat.
Part of this stems from the mitigation of evil that has taken hold of society, primarily American society, where evil is tolerated by psychological arguments and cliché phrasing. That we are only human is apparent, any mirror will cement this fact. That no one is perfect is idiocy, as if we were ideal the world would be quite different. We use these gossamer arguments to allow mediocrity, and worse, evil, where we should be righteous rigid in our stance. A murder should never be justified, adultery never excusable, theft never understandable, yet we persist in looking for hypothetical situations for argument, that we then actualize and perpetuate.
Heroism is lacking today. The conviction to maintain a standard of righteousness regardless of what may come. Society has embraced the anti-hero, or worse, looks to be iconoclastic with any individual that sets a higher standard and reminds the common man of how little he is and how much he has to accomplish. We don't invigorate ourselves to strive to this height, rather we look for any hole or foible to connect the person to our own sorrid existence. I still believe in heroes and the ability to surmount the trivial pecadillios each person possesses. Then again, I read Superman comic books as well. | | |
| Were I to fornicate with an animal, any animal, no one would acknowledge this as my right or the normalcy of the act. It would be viewed as abnormal, strange, lewd, and only through snickers could I hear the popular phrase: There's nothing wrong with it. If I lie with a child of 2 or 3 years of age, I am a monster of the most grand proportion, sick, deranged, and should be watched for the rest of my life as a threat to the welfare of children. If I sleep with someone of the same sex, strangely, this becomes a subject of debate.
It is remarkable the amount of justifications that germinate for homosexuality, but not one of the proponents will allow for the fact that it is unnatural. Rather than fathom a way to restore the individual to a natural position, everything is done to justify a finite lifestyle. Limited in action, scope, and form, as it seeks its own identity, yet wishes to imitate a natural relationship ala marriage, children, and gender.
Most disturbing is the push for homosexual couples to adopt children, without the regard for the influence said couple will have on the development of the child. Having two fathers or mothers is not equivalent to a man and woman in the home, the template the child will look to emulate and attract.
The fallacy is that heterosexual or homosexual, we have accepted this illogical argument to the point of social degradation. Confusion, doubt, illogic, these are the bane of a rational society, for as we have to consider what is right, what is natural, we've not long for the fall. | | |
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