A Corrosive Brotherhood
On borrowed time
I grew up on a chicken farm. Most mills where we had to buy our chicken feed were run by unscrupulous characters who abdicated on including the necessary nutritional ingredients — most notably calcium in their products. As a result, our birds gobbled up their own eggs during some magnificent scrams and pecked the shit out of each other in a cannibalistic bid to recoup the missing nutrients. Upon noticing this, we would promptly switch suppliers and sometimes have to subsidize the feed with expensive supplements. I found it quite fascinating that this only served to stem brand new casualties. Already hobbled or scarred hens were relegated to a lifetime of torture from their now quite healthy housemates.
A well placed peck from an adult Rhode Island Red is something you do not want to experience. You will yowl in unfathomable pain and there will quite possibly be dripping blood and dangling skin.
Very much aware of the giant bullseye on their backs, the unfortunate “select few” were understandably constantly paranoid. They took solace in various dark hiding places and only emerged when their tormentors were napping or roosting. They would make a mad dash for the feeding troughs and watering bowls before immediately retreating to their secret abodes. Still, it wasn’t a foolproof system. They ended up being viciously pecked at by light sleepers with some getting their eyes plucked clean out. Others would be missing most of their feathers, and were generally notably malnourished. They comprised of about 2% of the whole farm.
As humans, we aren’t any better than our avian counterparts. Sensing others’ vulnerability excites a predatory instinct within some of us that would otherwise not exist. While it is convenient to vilify White American males, it’s important to take into consideration that there isn’t a whole lot of them in Myanmar where the Buddhist majority have embarked on a grim endeavor of totally eradicating their Muslim minorities. Neither are there a whole lot of White males in India where the caste system is still apparently in full effect. Middle Eastern and North African countries continue to carry out atrocities against their Southeastern Asian and Sub Saharan migrant workers — It is a blatant revival of the slave trade that the international community chooses to turn a blind eye to.
I lived in Austin, TX a few years ago. As a black man, I can attest to facing way more discrimination by the Latina community there (most of whom were of Mexican descent) than Whites. What I took from the whole experience is some people taking society’s pecking order to heart and making a concerted effort to aggressively defend their position in it. Not too long ago, George Lopez got entangled in a scandal after making a seemingly accurate observation about what Mexican Americans think of dating and/or marrying black people.
Trump’s election burst a longstanding bubble that Americans are a unique people fundamentally different from everyone else. This is a flagrant falsehood. True, the US Constitution is way more tolerant than those in other parts of the world. But really, it’s just the gilded aesthetic casing encapsulating a frothy radioactive concoction.
As for ideology, I think we’re past the bamboozling that one side is better than the other. The only difference is how Conservatives and Liberals choose to deal with racial discrimination. One group embraces it head-on wrapping itself in Confederacy and Nazi ideals, while the other sweeps it under the rug.
I would like to believe that the Allies set out to fight Hitler and his murderous following because they oh, so loved Jewish people. Yet, fact after fact, points to liberation of the latter as an inadvertent act. A happy coincidence where oppressive regimes fought and prevailed over other oppressive regimes to secure their own survival.
The Mossad shouldn’t have had to hunt down senior Nazis in secret operations by themselves. In any case, I don’t know how you distinguish roles in such an arrangement. I figure most “regular Germans” were Nazis. Antisemitism wasn’t invented by Hitler and I refuse to believe Mr. Adolf held a gun to anyone’s head in voting booths after alluding to his agenda in poignant speeches at campaign rallies and radio addresses. Anyone with a conscience and intelligence that is superior to poultry would agree.
Setting ourselves apart from animals is ostensibly quite the low bar. Unfortunately, much is left to be desired when some of us make that leap. People like Steve Bannon have chosen to throw history books out the window and are constantly on crusades around the world convincing feeble minded sycophants of their ethnic superiority. Everyone has now been whipped up into a hornet-crazed frenzy and it’s only a matter of time before someone cracks and does something really stupid which will not give another future generation a chance to ignore the past.
[Cue nuclear dust setting accompanied by the silent notes of no music].
