One impulse I’ve often been embarrassed by in my life has been the urge to pop victims right in the snoot. This is especially embarrassing because I strive to be a spiritual person. But one time, when young, I was saying peace and love were desirable, and another person sneered I only said that because I was a gutless wimp who couldn’t fight. So I punched him. It shamed me because my reaction was so obviously not peaceful and not loving.
Victims tend to especially draw this out of me when they become militant. Even when I start out sympathetic they lose my sympathy. For example, when I lived in New Mexico I was friends with many Latinos and was in sympathy, but La Raza does not touch my heart with warm feelings of love.
The problem with getting mad about being a victim is that it can make people react in a way that victimizes you and perpetuates your victim-hood. If La Raza starts a war there will indeed be victims, rather than an end to victimization. If they “win” the war then they will merely move from being the oppressed to being the oppressor. Then a new people can get mad about being a victim.
It can be very hard to remain calm. For example, when people in Europe were attempting to have a debate titled, “Blasphemy – crime or freedom of expression,” some militant feminists decided to debate in a way all their own.
The priest did rather well, quietly praying as the ladies doused him with water and raged, and then, after “security” had ushered the women out, (when the priest noticed the water bottles were in the shape of the Virgin Mary), picking a bottle off the floor and kissing it.
I’m not sure I would have done so well. I can’t say how I might have reacted. Attempted to give the girls a spanking? Gotten beat up? It probably would have been a shambles.
I tend to avoid rallies and crowds, as I am too easily provoked. And it has become clear that some are out to provoke. Even in Berkeley, once a center of free speech, Antifa appeared to use fascist techniques in what it claimed was anti-fascism.
One starts to wonder exactly who is the victim and who is doing the victimizing.
Some claim it would be good to “bring things to a head” and that they want “blood in the streets”, but to me it seems anti-American to destroy our ability to discuss differences in a sane and civil manner. I am starting to really be touched by any group which includes many races and nationalities, cooperating and harmonizing, because it defies the entire separative ideology that at times it seems the media supports, and desires to make rampant.
How can I say the media supports such a thing? Because the media has sought so hard to preserve its status as “the voice of freedom” that it blackballs other voices, attempting to make people who are not fascists appear to be fascists. For example, an effort was made to never show any pictures of Blacks, Latinos, or Asians supporting President Trump. A more honest press would have felt more free to report the diversity of America’s views. Here are some minsters meeting the President (which got little press):
What I see is two forces at work in America. The powers of division, and the powers of unity. The powers of hate, and the powers of love. If we are divided we will fall. If we remain united we will stand. If we are victims, we are victims of our own separative exclusiveness.
Only one thing can save us, and that is the Personification of Love.
One small child has the weight of an army
If God is in all, for in that small one
Is the same pure, stunning Infinity
Marching hoards are led by. The same warm sun
Shines on and out-of rich and poor alike.
The widow’s farthing means more than Miser’s million
When Love prompts her; for pride is a dike
Holding refreshment from sands parched by a sun
Which wants to be kind but must be cruel
Without water. If you compare your lot
With others, and sneer and resent, Poor Fool,
You are missing what you’ve already got,
For God’s in all, and you don’t have to wait.
See that and your aching will evaporate.
Sunrise's Swansong 