FEAR AND LOATHING IN – well, Everywhere.
The Blacks. The Whites. The Spics. The Chinks. The Ragheads. The Jews. The Gays. The Cripples. The Cops. The Liberals. The Republicans…
Toss that stuff you learned in Grade School about being kind, not stereotyping and judging people by their looks or the actions of a few. Forget our common humanity – it’s the era of the ‘Other’ where Partizanship, Polarization, and Contempt are the order of the day.
BBC interviewed a young black man in Dallas who said a common sentiment among protestors was the white cops ‘deserved’ to be shot. WTF?
That makes as much as shooting Alton Sterling or Philando Castile because they’re black.
I’m not suggesting injustice doesn’t need to be addressed swiftly and severely, but it’s like some kind of Stuxnet virus is loose in our society; component parts are being isolated from the whole, stressed to the breaking point, all as inaccurate, dated information keeps it from being fixed correctly. It’s getting out of control and we’re tearing ourselves apart.
Elie Wiesel just died. Not like I have my finger on the pulse of Global Media, but my impression was his passing went strangely unremarked. Did everyone spend their quarterly mourning quota on Muhammad Ali? (It was like that with Mother Theresa/Princess Diana back in the day, IIRC) Scanning news, the net, and social media, I had this weird vertigo sensation. I was unbalanced like gravity changed or tectonic plates shifted.
Seems to me there’s an urgent need right now to bring the lessons of Mr. Wiesel’s life and legacy to the forefront, to remind ourselves of the consequences of the hideous philosophy of dehumanizing the ‘Other’. I’m not strumming ‘Kumbaya’ or glossing serious problems; I’m saying if we don’t smarten up, find common ground, and start working together to fix them, this story won’t have a happy ending.
As Elie Wiesel would tell you.
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Side Note: The Stuxnet Documentary ‘Zero Days’ is available as of today. Here’s one place you can watch. Google Play
I don’t know about mainstream media, but the news sites I read did cover his death. And some of them took the opportunity to blast him for ignoring human rights problems other than those of Jews. That’s another nasty aspect of our current culture: find some way to tear down anyone, regardless of their reputation or what they accomplished during their life. (Or what they might have suffered.)