The Metropolitan Man

This is a Facebook response to a friend who had comments about racism in the USA today. 

There’s much to say here, Joy, and unfortunately too much of it is unhelpful. True, our culture contains just as much bigotry, ignorance, and fear as any other on earth or throughout history. That’s one attribute of humanity that we all share, I fear. Each and every one of us has our unfair share. But that’s no different than at any other time or place. Ours just surfaced because of today’s circumstances. And as far as the founders of the US are concerned, they mistrusted centralized power, which is why we have a 10^th amendment. But that was circumvented almost immediately. John Adams authorized the Aliens and Seditions Acts, which made criticizing the US Government illegal. Thomas Jefferson, who publicly was against it, still made use of it during his administration. As they say in Washington: Never let a good tragedy go to waste.

Lincoln suspended Habeus Corpus. Germans were interned in WW1, as were Japanese in WW2. The few native Americans who were not killed by smallpox and tetanus were killed or rounded up on ranches like cattle. But it’s OK when we do it. Our government routinely ignores the teachings of Locke, Hume, Franklin, and the rest who contributed to our constitution and we slay our leaders who tell us what we do not want to hear. Yet we continue this disconnect between what America does and what America stands for. Maybe we should face it. This is who we are. We are a racist nation. Not a shining beacon on a hill. If we want to do better, then be better, one soul at a time. If we have sins in our background, own them. Make amends. Atone for those sins before judging the sins of others.

Since it is not wise, nor polite, nor worthwhile, to criticize another person, I will frame the rest of my comments as a conversation with myself. Let’s see how far that gets us, shall we? I hope I don’t start a fight with myself…

“Let’s talk about bigotry.”

“Let’s? As in, Let us?”

“Sure. We both do it.”

“Maybe you. But I’m not a bigot.”

“Of course not.”

“I went to a liberal, east coast, albeit predominantly Christian, college. I learned stuff about the world.”

“Of course you did.”

“And I lived in Israel for a year.”

“Cosmopolitan.”

“Our gardener was Arab and spoke three languages. Our accountant spoke four. I actually don’t know what ethnicity he was.”

“Looks good on paper. Some of my best friends are servants. Sort of friends, that is.”

“Do you have something to say? Or should I overmedicate you?”

“Just thinking out loud.”

“Well, think out soft for a minute.”

“Processing. Remember when you were little? A teen or pre-teen?"

"Barely. What of it?"

"The racist comments you routinely made with your cousins?”

“I got over those.”

“Did you, now?”
“It was the fifties and sixties.”

“Ah, so the age was racist, not you?”
“Yes. No. My parents talked that way. It was the time. I grew out of it.”
“So you admit that you were once into it?”
“Everybody regrets.”
“Precisely. Everybody regrets. And everybody whitewashes, or gaywashes, or femwashes or Trans-fill-in-the-blank-washes or whatever other coating we layer over our prejudice, but inside it’s all there, festering still. We may grow an abscess over the rot within but deep down inside it still exists, just waiting for a chance to scapegoat the “Other” for all of our own problems. We all live ‘only nine meals between mankind and anarchy.’”

“I know better now.”

“Oh? And what do you ‘know better’ now?”

“I’ve been educated. Traveled.”

“And that makes you, what now? A bigot with a passport?”

“What the fuck is the use of reading and studying and experiencing if it doesn’t alter one’s world view?”
“Normally I would agree with you, but right now I am the file.”

“The file?”

“Yes. The file. The file in the hands of the Endodontist. The little, irritating one that grinds down the vacancy left by the decaying, infected root that just refuses to die. Stuffed with infection from years of neglect and your body’s natural defense being to ignore it. Starve it. Seal it off behind a firewall and hope it just dies a hideous death, but it won’t. It never will.

“So it doesn’t. It waits. And gains control the only way it knows how. By causing pain and providing an immediate reason. A scapegoat. Something or someone else to blame for all of our problems. You don’t have an infection in your jaw, it’s the blacks! They were favorites of white, western culture. Or Jews? Some of them had it coming, like everybody else. They are not above criminality or cruelty, like the rest. But most? No. Most Jews are just like the rest of us. 

"How about liberals? Socialists? Trump supporters? Russians? A woman in Russia cautioned me about straying from our group because there were pick pocketing Gypsies about. Everywhere is an opportunity for bigotry. Everybody hates someone. When is it justified? Prudent, even? I don’t want my pocket picked again on the streets of a major European city, after all. Of course I’m cautious.”

“Now you’re talking about the real racists.”

“The real racists are just you with a toothache.”

“That’s barbaric.”

“Oh. And what excuse will you cling to when the going gets rough in your corner of the world?”

“I’m trying to be the light I want to see in others. You know, if you are not a part of the solution then you are a part of the problem?”

“But you still involuntarily cringe when you encounter a black person.”

“I do not!”

“Of course you do. You can’t help it. You leap to stereotypes and immediately try to repress them, which is quite noble of you, I might add, but it is not sincere. So you exercise your free will over your viscera to repress the negative thought that springs, full born, into your mind.”

“That’s only civilized.”

“Is that what we’re calling it now? Civilized?”

“I can’t speak for anybody else.”

“You can’t speak for yourself, apparently.”

“What do you want me to do, just express whatever base instinct comes into my head?”
“They are base, now. Is it? The things that you don’t like about yourself are base and the things you do are civilized, I suppose?”

“More so.”

“I need a score card.”

“Or a moral compass.”

“Morality is not the topic of conversation at the moment.”

“Thank God for small favors.”

“Well. If civilized means denying the ‘base’ impulses, I guess you are Metropolitan Man.”

“Better than cave man.”

“Ah, now. Does this bring us to the threshold of your dichotomy? Civilized vs. primitive? Homo sapiens sapiens vs. Homo sapiens neanderthalensis? Us smart, educated, liberal folk vs. the annoying, irritating backwards folk?”

“Well, why not? We value education for a reason. Not to become a generation of anti-vaxers, flat earthers, and luddites.”

“That is very true.

“Are you just dismissing my experience?”

“Absolutely not. Experience is vital to growth and the tonic of bigotry is familiarity. That’s my whole point.”

“What does it say to me, here, and now?”

“Simple. Bigotry is a visceral response that we, as higher level, intelligent beings, must deal with in one way or another. Ten thousand years of human history is a chronicle of the frontal cortex vs. the brain stem. Every poem, every Greek play, tragedy or comedy, every religion, every epic story recorded in verse or passed on by blind poets, every god chained to a rock to suffer eternally for some all too common failing, every Bazooka Joe comic or fortune cookie philosophy is an expression of that one eternal struggle, the I against the Me. The Jeckyls and Hydes. The Jesuses and Satans. Bielobogs and Czernobogs. Osiris and Set. And who can forget the Apostle Paul’s schizophrenic ravings in Romans, chapter 7:19-20. ‘For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.’  That’s a good start, but then he falls flat. He goes on to say, ‘Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.’

“I see, Founder of Christianity. Right there. St. Paul levies the full brunt of his own failings at the doorsteps of the sin that dwelleth within him. Well played, and well implanted in the hearts of billions of believers. You’re not responsible for your own failings. It’s not you. It’s ‘sin.’”

“But that’s… our fallen nature…”

“St. Paul’s ‘sin’?”

“No.”

“So it’s something you don’t like to think about?”
“No!”

“Something you keep buried deep, don’t you?”

“NO! YES! Not as deep as I’d like to keep you buried.”

“Ah. Now comes the rage. Have you gotten enough denial yet?”

“That’s fodder for another cannon.”

“Aren’t you proud of that little bit of family folklore you made up? About your grandfather being a Cossack?”

“What’s wrong with being proud of your ancestry?”

“Nothing at all, as long as you recognize the hazard that puts you in.”

“What hazard?”

“The hazard of thinking less of your genetically underendowed fellow men.”

“That doesn’t follow.”

“With a powerful enough map it will. Just look at how many Master Races have come before us? Responsibility 2 Protect? White Man’s Burden? The Chosen People? The Enlightened? The Arrow of History? Every World’s Fair ride depicting progress? Civilized Western Man who can ‘stand up for his own principals and sit down on his own stool?’ Masters of the Grand Chessboard?

“I’ve heard it all. Seen it. Smelled it. Saw it. Tasted it. And spat it out. How many ways can bigotry spring, full flower, from the fetid mass of the human cesspool? I’ve seen them all. From every tin can war lord to every philosopher in robes of ermine and gold thread, complete with mortar board brimming with big scoops of pomp. All catch the same diseases. All suffer from the same blindness. And the same attention to the wrong details. Naked they came from their mother’s womb and naked will they return. What’s left? A lot of naked people running around.”

“What’s that got to do with me? I’m a good person?”

“Your accountant.”

“Excuse me?”

“Your accountant. The one you mentioned knowing in Israel, who spoke four languages.”

“What about him?”

“What nationality did you say he was?”

“I told you. I never knew.”

“Precisely. Now go and ‘never know’ what race, nationality, color, religion, or any other bucket that any other human lives in. But while you’re doing that, still appreciate the richness and beauty of their own bucket’s struggle with the human gash upon the world. Just like you and your bucket dwellers.”

“How can I do that and still be myself?”

“Good question.”

“And does it have a good answer?”

“Time will tell. I am just your conscious, not your mentor. The answer, like the problem, is you.”