The Serial Thinker Blog

My Sh*t Is Earned

For the record. I don't feel guilty. About anything that I've achieved or accomplished. That I live in a nice community or that my kids go to good schools. I don't feel guilty that I am able to read and write and communicate proficiently in the language of the majority culture. I don't feel guilty that my kids have led a comfortable life and that they have experienced things that many adults will never see or do. My kids are kind and smart and care about other people. They are ambitious yet community oriented. They have been raised with solid values by parents who care about them and provide stability and counsel. I don't feel guilty about any of this because I can trace every single bit of it back to hard work.

 

Whether it's lengthy discussions about how to raise kids or putting in extra hours and saving the money to take a nice vacation, our own efforts have created the great lives we have. Not some mythical White privilege, not membership into an exclusive ethnic club that rains benefits down on us and not on people who are not like us. We belong to a club that is open to anyone. The self-reliance quit sniveling and work your ass off club. Membership is free but that doesn't mean that it's without cost. It costs hours and years and sacrifices, but membership has its rewards.

 

So to those sanctimonious liberals who are fretfully wringing their hands about whether or not they deserve the breaks they've had in life.... If you have to wonder about it, you don't deserve it. I don't wonder about it for a second. All of my shit is earned.

I wonder if the gondolas at the River Styx have signs on them (like buses) to carry people to different versions of the afterlife. For example, one's temperament might be more Valhalla than Nirvana and ending up in the wrong place could be terribly disruptive to the current residents. (A Viking in Nirvana, yikes!)

"If I can't troubleshoot this, it's not looking good for you."
Overheard in my living room as my technologically competent son expressed his frustration with a technologically incompetent person at some help desk.

Since social exclusion is the new pathology, I am hereby claiming my own acronym so that I can be cool like the LGBTQIA folks. At various times I've been called a racist, sexist, misogynist, bigot, homophobe and a Nazi, so rather than argue against these epithets I am embracing them as a fully RMBSHN (pronounced rambunction).

There is a phrase that I learned in college, "Ehre dem ehre gebuhrt" which echoes the USC motto, "Palmam qui meruit ferat," The underlying idea is that honor should be given to those who have earned it. There is no honor in being White or Black or male or female, those are probabilistic happenstances. Honor is the consequence of virtuous behavior, not genetic fortuitousness.

It must be difficult being an oppressed Ivy League educated millionaire lawyer....

I was listening to an interview with Prof. Jordan Peterson last night and he asked an important question about parenting: Would you rather your children be strong or safe?

I see this compromise being made all the time in a thousand different ways.

Has a single white socialist politician been spotted in a Black church or doing anything significant in a Black community lately, or are they saving that for later in the campaign season?

79 Years Ago Today

79 Years Ago Today....

 

A group of courageous people began an insurrection against a genocidal oppressor. Their revolt lasted for five months and halted, for a time, their forced deportation and execution. On January 18, 1943, the Jewish prisoners of the Warsaw Ghetto engaged the Nazis in the first rounds of direct armed conflict. With smuggled weapons and other improvised munitions they held the Germans at bay. Furious that ill equipped and seemingly untrained rebels could stall the Reich war machine, the German high command sent in reinforcements under the leadership of a new commander Jurgen Stroop. Despite depleted ranks and overwhelming opposition, the Jews did not yield. In fact, they held a strongpoint in the center of the ghetto in a place called Muranowski square and raised two flags high atop the roof, one the Polish national Flag and the other the blue and white flag of the Jewish Resistance Forces (similar in nature to the current flag of Israel). These flags flew for four days, enraging German leaders in Berlin. Finally, soldiers under Stroops command began using flamethrowers to burn buildings and bunker complexes. One of the few Jewish survivors of the rebellion, Marek Edelman, wrote, "We were beaten by the flames, not by the Germans." This heroic stand gave encouragement to others that the Germans were not invincible. It is recounted in wonderful detail in Leon Uris' classic novel, Mila 18.

If people do the right things, for the wrong reasons, is the world better or worse off?