Re: Curriculum question "Facing History and Ourselves"

[Victor Steinbok <Victor.Steinbok@VERIZON.NET>]

At 5:27 PM +0000 2/6/02, Rick Parkany wrote:
> Oh! I see, Victor:   *mob mentality* needs no validation...do you actually
> believe that there is no *red-lining* of crime and violence into the poor
> neighborhoods? have you ever worked, lived in them? do you actually
> not see the inner cities as today's ghettos? why not? this is the
> compelling question
> underneath your disquisitions, Victor...

Gee, Rick, reading the dictionary again? Yes, mob mentality requires
no validation from powers that be, although it might take *lack* of
intervention for the most vicious versions of this phenomenon to
manifest themselves. And, NO, I see no "*red-lining* of crime and
violence into the poor neighborhoods". Next, we'll hear that the CIA
channelled drugs from South America into the ghettos. What happens is
an inequitable distribution of resources, inequitable treatment of
criminals and inequitable enforcement of laws--that is a far cry from
the powerful bigots planting their perverted ideas into the heads of
the apparently-too-stupid-to-think-for-himself poor working-class
stiff.

> ..so tell me then, why WAS it that it took the French all the way until
> Vichey's reign to release these undercurrents and to conduct their own
> holocaust AND BOY, did they rake in the Jews once POWER allowed, yea, endorsed
> it.

If you knew anything about history, you would know that
anti-Semitism--including violent anti-Semitism--has had a long
history in France and all over Europe long before the 1940s. To
assume that it was only the Nazi occupation that allowed the French
to express their anti-Semitism is idiotic. The difference was that
persecution and extermination became the official policy, not
something that was forced on the "masses" by "Vichey's reign". Or
should we forget that the extermination was organized, planned and
carried out by the Germans with the help of the French, the Poles,
and others (but not in the case of Lithuanians and Ukranians who
volunteered their services in great numbers and were particularly
creative independently of the Germans).

> Please don't continue your envisionment exercizes and gedanken experiments
> with such naive intensity, if you MUST be so blind to the realities of power
> and oppression...and lest we forget another lesson in semiotics: *a node's as
> good as a wink to a blind horse!*--open your eyes and see the signals,
> Victor...

Please, don't let me confuse your rhetoric with reality--pontificate away.

> .., but, then again, on this side of the Atlantic, so long as the rioting and
> race wars are confined in the poor neighborhoods, not much is done to stem the
> tide of violence. I mention the poor, simply because they are the least
> educated and the least likely to have honed a critical perspective
> on their own oppresssion--this, again, is the point the New Dems are
> honing in their agenda.

My mistake--I thought Stratman was the only leftist demagogue on this list.

Being uneducated is no excuse. If a farmer in Oklahoma is a rabid
anti-Semite without even having seen a Jew (aside, perhaps, from
Kissinger on TV), the issue is neither education not the inculcation
of the bigotry in him by the powers-that-be. It is a choice--a choice
made of ignorance, but a choice nonetheless.

> The conivances of the rich and powerful are the organs of instigation and
> validation...when power puts its impremature on action, it is inherently
> oppressive to *non-traditionalists*, gimmeAbreak...can't you see ANY analogies
> betweeen what is happening to us in these USofA concerning the *spector of
> Islam* and Amerika's War on Terrorism (ah! a War on Violence: how novelan
> idea...haven't tried that since WWI, have we?) If not, try *Facing
> History* w/o the coloured lenses...   ;-} rap.

I guess the Communists are just as "rich and powerful" when they
spread anti-Semitic propaganda. I suppose what can only be classified
as reverse apartheid in Zimbabwe can only take place now because the
native Africans are in power or maybe it's just the generations of
oppression are speaking out against their former oppressors. Let me
know when you get a grip on reality, then we'll talk.

       VS-)

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