From: smith@ctron.com (Lawrence C Smith)
Newsgroups: alt.activism.d
Subject: Re: Bush is a scary individual
Date: 5 Nov 92 21:58:56 GMT
Reply-To: smith@ctron.com
Distribution: all
Organization: Cabletron Systems, Inc.

In article <2155@sousa.ltn.dec.com>, gentile@bcse.enet.dec.com (My name is Sam Gentile) writes:
>Because their world is crumbling around them. Business as usual is ending.
>Their scary racist view of the world is falling on deaf ears. They hang
>on for dear life but it will do no good. They talk about family values
>and spirituality (only if you're Judeo-Christian, all else we will destroy)
>but people are not buying into their fear-based system anymore.

GET A GRIP, SAM!

How much coffee have you been drinking?  You've been spouting nonsense for
weeks and now you've descended into ferocious, mean-spirited attacks.  If
you think for a single lurid moment that your drivel above is true then you
are surely part of the problem, NOT part of the solution.

Issues are _not_ always black and white, good or evil, up or down, they are
_not_ always polarized.  The "republicans" are no more a monolithic organ-
ization of racist fundies than the Democrats are invariably socialist tax
and spend lunatics.  It may be proper to try to understand the gestalt of
a party, the persona of the sum total membership, but even there you have
utterly failed to understand the message, let alone interpret it.

Your Incas and Aztecs had many admirable qualities, but neither they, nor
any other ancient American civilization, had a lock on all that was sweetness
and light, nor were the Europeans the stinking slime-of-the-Earth you so
blythly portray.  They were human beings, Sam, the same as the Democrats and
Republicans today, each with their own little world-view and each trying to
improve themselves and their kith and kin within that world-view as best they
can.  Yes, Columbus and his crowd were brutal, yes they brought disease and
cultural damage upon the indians.  We can recognize and understand that with-
out elevating the indians to near godhood, they had their own problems, with
human sacrifice and repressive centralized gov'ts, and we can recognize _that_,
too, without making Columbus out to be the immortal hero.

Learn this: just because people have white skins does not make them incapable
of understanding what racism _is_, and equally what it is _not_, and it _is_
possible to disagree and argue with your utopian vision without being some
sort of racist ogre.  You had damn well better get that into your head and
start _listening_ as well as yelling because _your_ display of racism against
whites and _your_ intolerance is seriously, and I _mean_ VERY seriously,
damaging your own case.  There is a good reason why people are levelling
accusations of "political correctness" at you, the words have come to mean
just what you do: to glorify one group over another _regardless_ of actual
historical or anthropological fact.  That is just as racist as screaming
"nigger!"  You are doing everything in your power to reinforce the image
you project of the screaming, revisionist, white-discriminating bigot.

You don't cure racism with more racism, nobody now alive is in any way
responsible for Columbus, and few people are unaware of his shortcomings,
and they SHOULD NOT BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE like this.  You do not visit the
sins of the father upon the children, Sam, or you are every bit as much
the ogre as anyone you try to paint.

Larry Smith (smith@ctron.com)  No, I don't speak for Cabletron.  Need you ask?
-
Liberty is not the freedom to do whatever we want,
it is the freedom to do whatever we are able.