[extropy-chat] The Trouble With Democracy

[Olga Bourlin]

From: "Technotranscendence" <neptune at superlink.net>
> On Saturday, December 06, 2003 12:41 AM Olga Bourlin
> fauxever at sprynet.com wrote:

> > Of course, there was that incident with the ship
> > St Louis, where the U.S. wouldn't allow Jews
> > fleeing the Nazis to disembark on our shores,
> > but, again ... another interesting aside to the
> > whole sorry saga:
> > http://www.ushmm.org/stlouis/story/voyage/
>
> A shameful episode.

But not all that surprising, was it?  Gregory Peck starred in a movie (mid
1940s if memory serves) called "Gentlemen's Agreement" (a Jewish variation
on the "Black Like Me" plot of the late 1950s/early 1960s) where the plot
involved pretending to be Jewish, for the sake of journalistic research.
Ooooh ... and the nasty goings on he discovered,  tsk, tsk, tsk.  That
movie - almost a decade *after* this St Louis incident - was about as
provocative as pabulum, but it was supposed to be groundbreaking for its
time (just as the namby-pamby "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?" was considered
oh-so-controversial in the late 1960s).

> > But seriously, you are being naive, simplistic
> > and intellectually dishonest if you are implying
> > (using your example) that "sitting [at] the back
> > of the bus" was about as bad as things got
> > for "blacks" in America.  You know better
> > than that.  You don't score points for your
> > case by soft peddling cruelly real issues like
> > the history of racism in America.
>
> As long as you're alive, you can live to fight or be free another day.
> However, many Blacks were lynched.

Yes.

 However, this was nothing like the
> mass killings of Jews and other groups by the Nazis and their allies.

We cannot justify slapping kids around in America by saying, "However, this
is nothing like the mass limb amputations by machetes performed on thousands
of children in Sierra Leone ..."

We cannot condone spousal abuse here by saying, "However, this is nothing
like the public floggings of Iranians prescribed by Shari'a (an Islamic law)
..."

We cannot excuse religious intolerance in our country by saying, "However,
this is nothing like the suffering people have undergone under the Taliban
..."

I never intimated that Jews who were caught by the Nazis suffered any more
or less than American "blacks."  Whether they did or not is irrelevant and
immaterial, as I was pointing out the racism in America during and after
WWII for this discussion.  My comment was fostered when the discussion
turned to a comparison about how well some German prisoners during WWII in
America were treated by some of our good-hearted citizens.

Of course, an apples-to-apples comparison could be made insofar as Jews in
America at that time.  Jews, like "blacks" in America, also experienced some
housing discrimination, job discrimination, being barred from "exclusive"
WASP golf club memberships and the like, but at least they could drink out
of "white" drinking fountains, marry other "whites," be "movie stars," and
generally be a part of  whatever was American society at that time (you
know, those years so many white Americans remember nostalgically as "the
good old days").

> > Whether your family is part Jewish (or not) should
> > have no bearing on your empathy for people who
> > are treated unfairly.   Or - am I the one who's
> > confused? - because I just can't help but think:
> > *Why* should that matter?
>
> It should NOT matter in the moral or cognitive sense, but it does matter
> emotionally.  Humans naturally band together into groups and show more
> empathy for those they can identify with.  I'm not saying this is right
> or wrong, but it is what happens.

Another aside:  it seems like if given half a chance, those once
discriminated against can turn out to be the oppressors (look at Israel).

Due to my upbringing (too many countries in so little time), I must have
lost out on the lessons of my tribe.  I can distinguish between people I
personally like and don't like (yet feel a compassion for  humans in general
because, after all, we are doomed to die ...).  I can try to distinguish
between just and unjust laws.  But I've not had any particularly special
feeling about my ancestral "group."  I do have a fondness for Russian
cuisine, but my palate - just as my current ethnic "grouping" - has broken
out of the boundaries of Slavdom (slavedom? - interesting ...).   Vive le
difference, I say.

Olga