Meme Rant in Normal entries

There’s this meme going around that says something like; The number of muslims that have threatened me; 0. The number of white men that have threatened me; too many to count. And, of course, it’s reposted by them what could only be considered white. I am not embarrassed to have mostly liberal ideals and values, all of which I can justify to my own conscience. In my mind, though, this sort of meme is the type of thing that makes me embarrassed to be a liberal. To use the vernacular of a few decades back; I’m not co-signing that shit.

Lets start off with traditional white folks. Every single fucking war in Europe including, and perhaps especially world wars I and II, were white on white crime. I just said that to be funny, the real point is that white people don’t think of themselves as a united front. As someone who has to list either white or other on every form from job application to medicinal marijuana card I can honestly say I’d rather see a black guy, a Latino or a Muslim in a dark alley than a skinhead, but that’s not co-signing that bullshit, a skinhead definitely has an axe to grind.

Now, let’s go to Semites, what the races from the middle east actually are called regardless of religious affiliation. My father was a Jew born to Jews, my mother was a Jew born to Jews (though her history gets more complicated) ethnically it makes me a Jew or, if in your liberal or conservative biased language you’d rather make a separation between religion and race, it makes me not a jew but definitely a Semite. I look a lot more like a German than, say, Hitler. Seeing how the few times I’ve been in a synagogue was out of curiosity and love of architecture , and then not on the Sabbath, and then asked to leave, I probably would have been able to live free in Berlin from 1939 to 1945 assuming I wasn’t killed by the allies.

There is no box to check on American forms for Semite and there sure as hell isn’t for Jew or Muslim. I submit that there are Muslims who look as Semitic as I do. Granted, some of them might be converts the way that some Jews are or some Catholics (nobody automatically assumes a catholic is Irish or Greek or Italian, though, ahem, er, um, people do assume Mexicans are catholic). My point being that I don’t know the religion of people who have personally threatened me, and, with all due humility and respect, I think I’ve probably been threatened more often than most meme posters. Maybe not attacked, I don’t know, I can’t recall being attacked for just being me and you’d think that’s something I’d remember. I mean I’ve been in a lot of scraps, but they weren’t personal. During my entire career in corrections and my entire career in permanent planning, I averaged a death threat per week, eighty percent of which were from white guys. But, how many of them were Semites? Haven’t a clue. How many were Muslim, Presbyterian, seventh day Adventists, Atheists, Buddhists … have even less of a clue.

In a PC attempt to even the racial playing field, the knee jerk Liberal Meme poster perpetuates racism. Not just against what white means but, in this instance, against Muslims who are hotheads; they’re allowed to be angry without making them a terrorist or anti-American. I mean if you short change a Muslim at a bodega and he says “I gave you a ten, you gave me change for a five, I want my money asshole” that, in my mind, makes him the quintessential American. In yours it might make him a Jew or a Scot. If he’s a Semite the way that I am he’s just an angry customer, and so the implied threat is from a White man. The Pennsylvania Dutch are white men, but it’s possible in the history of mankind none of them have ever uttered asshole to a bodega owner. They are a very specific ethnic and religious group and they are white, specifically. They also aren’t just in Pennsylvania. I have been threatened by as many Muslims as I have Amish or Mennonites.

Honestly if I had to break down threats by geography, 97 percent were from people living in Oregon from 1980 to 2000. As far as people actually taking a shot at me; Oregon and the Yukon, 100 percent of them were Caucasian, 50 percent American. I have no idea what their religion or ethnic background was, I was a bit too absorbed with the fucking live rounds. But, I’m positive that if either were Muslim they were covert about it and, honestly, they had reasonable cause if not just cause that had nothing to do with racism, the Qur’an, Torah or Bible. One expects Americans in America and Canadians in Canada, in both countries nationalism often trumps heritage, at least when it comes to a fair and speedy trial, which, let’s face it, is the upshot to the key word in the meme; “Threatened”.

Which brings me to the last point. If you can’t count how many people with white skin have threatened you, you obviously didn’t prosecute. My threats were from people either already adjudicated or in the process of adjudication. However, my assumption is not that eighty percent of all white people are criminals. It’s more like eighty percent of criminals in Oregon between 1980 and 2000 were white.

Shit. Lost my train of thought. Despite this stupid shit, here in 2017, I’d rather be mistaken for the worst kind of liberal, than any kind of conservative. I’d rather my bigotry were benign than the malicious type that seems to have overrun the GOP. They used to be smarter, their only deadly grievous sin being greed.