What's in a Name?

I would like to begin this discussion by stating firmly that I am not one to make fun of political correctness. I feel that those that do mock political correctness are simply folks who just don’t want to accept the legitimate rights of others nor do they want to admit that the rights of many people have been trampled on for many years. I would be more than happy to bury the whole notion of political correctness just as soon as everyone decides to accept everyone else who may be a bit different from them.

However, I’m not nearly as sensitive to the vicissitudes of political correctness when it comes to language as a lot of Americans. We seem to be changing our language so quickly in some cases that no one can keep up. When it comes to ethnic appellations I am perfectly willing to use whatever terminology the people of a particular group would like to use. If people would rather be called Native Americans instead of Indians I have no problem with that and it makes a lot of sense even though I used to call them Indians and I meant no harm. I think it’s ridiculous when some people go off the handle when someone calls someone from China an Oriental instead of an Asian when in fact oriental is actually a little more precise as Asia is an extremely large continent. I will defer to what is socially acceptable to the majority.

A lot of people of my parents’ era referred to Blacks as Negroes without ever feeling they were being disrespectful. I have used Black to refer to this group and I don’t think I am much of a racist and I have never used this term as a pejorative.  There are some who use the moniker African-American which again seems imprecise to me. Then there are those who want us to use People of Color when we speak about Blacks. I would wager everything I have that the person who coined this stupid name was a white sociologist at some dumpy university trying to one-up everyone else about how enlightened they are about race. “People of Color” seems to infer that the rest of us are without color but once again, if Black people want to adopt this name I’ll happily go along.

With that said I can never help from laughing when I hear the Spanish word for handicapped which is Minusválido (lesser-valued) and even to my insensitive ears seems a bit harsh. It’s not meant to be disrespectful here in Spain and there isn’t much controversy but I can only imagine that white, female sociologist who came up with “People of Color” positively losing her little mind over this term.

(I just noticed that this is post number 1,500 on Leftbanker) 

The Hottest New TV Show

So You Think You Can Watch Paint Dry? Well, we’ll just see about that as this new program from Fox will pit a group of competitors against one another and the winner won’t have the contents of a chili festival port-a-pot dumped over his/her head.

What Would Genghis Khan Do?

Most of you probably only see the upside of horrible abuses and unspeakable atrocities but you have to remember not to get carried away and go too far. It can happen, believe me. One moment you and the rest of the marauding hoard are playing polo with the freshly-severed head of a vanquished chieftain and the next thing you know someone goes and burns down the orphanage. Granted, we all laughed about it at the time but blocking the doors and boarding the windows really wasn’t cool, man. It’s always sad when one over-the-top psychopath goes and gives barbarity a bad name. The Orphan Torcher—as he’s now called—definitely doesn’t represent all of the reprehensible and he must be punished.

    

We are a group that is quite used to maintaining discipline within the ranks. In fact, we often torture one another just for the fun of it. The thing is, when you drag a man behind a galloping horse and consider it a harmless practical joke it can be a bit difficult to know when someone has crossed over the line or has somehow violated the unwritten code—and we’re mostly illiterate so written codes don’t mean doodly-squat to us. Just where do we draw the line? Is it too much to push a cart of bound and gagged widows over a steep cliff? How about having more than ten items in the express line? If one of our guys is doing something he really shouldn’t be doing it reflects poorly on all of us.  A group of savages who wear necklaces made of human ears can’t afford to look bad.

One thing that a lot of you may not understand is that in the realm of the hunter-slaughterer societies like ours we have no words for “restraint” or “moderation.” If you can’t get your little mind around that then you should stick to farming or some other sissy endeavor where these concepts might have some use. Just take a look at this quote from the Big Guy: “The greatest joy for a man is to defeat his enemies, to drive them before him, to take from them all they possess, to see those they love in tears, to ride their horses, and to hold their wives and daughters in his arms.” Not much room in there for restraint or moderation. If you try to use a bit of restraint while swinging a huge battle ax you could strain a muscle or even worse. Nope, it’s better just to put everything you got into it. Genghis Khan—the man who made the Vikings look warm and cuddly—knew better than anyone the importance of follow-through when hacking an enemy in two.

So I’m sure you’ll rebuild the orphanage and I’m equally sure that one of our boys will burn that one down, too. It’s all just part of the circle of life and for many of you we are the last things you'll see in that circle. There probably won’t be time latter to say this so please forgive us if we get carried away—and we always do because that’s just what we do. Just try to stand still or it will get messier and more painful than it needs to be.

How to Get Away with Murder

A jury in Florida has decided that if you instigate an act of aggression against another citizen and they decide to fight back you can then shoot them dead, even if you are advised by the police to keep your distance from the other person.  Even with this warning given to the killer a jury found him innocent.  Without getting into the whole sticky issue of “racism” just be sure that you are white and the person you plan to murder is black, at least that’s what this little test seemed to demonstrate.

In the supposedly liberal New York Times I don’t  think that I saw one article about the case that didn’t include the minor injuries the killer received. We don’t know exactly how he got these injuries because el Tubbo Zimmerman shot the other witness through the heart thus silencing the other witness for eternity. Just why we didn’t get to see Trayvon Martin’s injuries is a mystery to me. I think that a bullet hole through the chest trumps a couple of superficial head wounds.

I once served on a jury in a Florida court and I can say a few things that probably are true in many communities across America. First of all I would venture to guess that most prosecutors and public defenders are scraping the bottom of the legal barrel. In the case that I heard in Florida if you took the IQ of the prosecutor and the public defender you’d be 20-30 points short of Forrest Gump. The travesty of the Zimmerman acquittal has more to do with class than race. He had money for a decent defense that was pitted against what seemed to be a completely inept prosecution. Of course I’m not a lawyer but I don’t even understand how Zimmerman's statement to the police was admissible in the case if he was unwilling to take the stand. You can’t cross-examine a statement and the statement could have been a complete fantasy.

Zimmerman’s injuries were pretty fucking far from life-threatening and we don’t even know if they were inflicted by the murdered boy. For all we know Zimmerman beat himself to make it look like self-defense after he shot Trayvon Martin through the heart. Zimmerman referred to the boy as a “fucking asshole” without knowing anything about him. He was warned not to approach the youth who was simply going to his home and then the hero Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin dead while claiming self-defense.

This is a completely preposterous precedent if someone can be warned not to approach another citizen and then go on to kill them and claim self-defense. Zimmerman was obviously the aggressor. The mere act of approaching Martin was aggressive in nature. He had no business or reason to challenge the boy. Martin had committed no crime; he was simply going home when he was stalked by Zimmerman.

The saddest and stupidest aspect of this case—other than that a teenage boy was senselessly murdered—is how so many Americans have rallied to the side of this murderous loser, wannabe policeman. I offer up a bit of wisdom to American conservatives: if you are repeatedly accused of being a racist you're probably a fucking racist. It’s 2013, enlighten up for fuck’s sake.