We are all Prejudiced

Photo by Stephen Melkithesian

I often think while I'm playing a mindless game and I realized that prejudice isn't about black or white, it is about the face we see in the mirror. We think that people that are different from us is the problem. That's wrong. The problem begins and ends with us. We are the problem. Prejudice and racism begin with the mirror, begins with us.

The face that looks back at us from the mirror makes it okay pretend for others like us to make mistakes as long as they are willing to say it out loud. I think that is why my father's hidden prejudice was so devastating to me because I grew up thinking he was not prejudiced and he was a fair man. After all, he accepted all people as they came and judged them on what they presented to us. That is why I was behind my Uncle Bob's open prejudice. He spoke up and told you to your face he was a racist. But that was not the problem, nor was it a problem that my father was racist. The problem was that he hid in plain sight, that he spoke the words of moderation and equality; he was actually a racist like my grandfather and every other Archie Bunker type racist I realized that I had been prejudiced all along.

I said the words. I espoused equality. I opened my arms and what I thought was my heart when I was as prejudiced as my Uncle Bob who said the words and would admit no black people into his home (like Mom) or into his heart. I realize that I am as closeted as my dad and every other racist person who pretends not to be racist. We are all in the closet and we say the words and we make the motions, but we are not free of the taint of prejudice. We are all racist in our heart of hearts, just like I am racist in my heart of hearts. Racism goes bone deep. Always has and always will be.

We will make allowances for those who are not like us, those who do not realize that racism is as endemic as the color of our blood, tissue, and ... ultimately sin color... because we haven't faced up to the facts.

Maybe racism began as a survival instinct. By that reasoning, that is why Islam and Mohammed have reached so far into the heart of this planet, this world. Islam is as closeted, and hence Mohammed, as a homosexual pretending to be straight. Of course, Mohammed was a twisted dwarf who fashioned his god to look as twisted and deformed as he was. That is a twisted and deformed way of thinking ... and believing.  We are all twisted and deformed when looking out of the eyes of Mohammed as he looks from the mirror of his soul and sees himself (or at least as he sees himself) to be. No wonder Islam forbids the believer to deviate from Mohammed's words as written down in the holy book, the Quran. That is why believers must say the words exactly as he inscribed them without deviation. How else could Islam have crawled from the depths of his deformed and twisted mind in the Middle Ages (1400+ years ago) into the modern world in the 21st century? Mohammed's twisted and deformed thoughts are squirming and deforming out modern minds because Mohammed decreed (as a commandment from the universe's GOD, Allah) it.

In Allah's words of course.

The problem lies with the mirror, the image that we see and that we believe is right above all others -- our own reflected image.

Photo by Stephen Melkithesian

We are not dealing with a rational mind -- especially in the case of Mohammed. We are dealing with the twisted and deformed utterings of an epileptic who had seizures and wrote his twisted and deformed thoughts into the Quran. The Quran is a holy book given to use through the medium of a twisted and deformed dwarf whose mother died when he was six and from out of the covering shadow of his mother's untimely death when he was tossed into the world grieving, twisted, and deformed. He was intelligent enough to figure out that a moon god in the pantheon where he had his brilliant epiphany that a forgotten moon god was the Ruler of the Universe, a GOD for all that he saw and codified in his holy book and thus GOD's utterances as he wrote them down while patterning his religion after the only religion in the world -- Judaism.

When Mohammed didn't get the seal of approval from the GOD OF THE JEWS, he decided to cover his backside by declaring that all believers in the GOD OF THE JEWS (Jews) had to be destroyed, annihilated, wiped out of existence because they had the effrontery to deny HIM (Mohammed) the stamp of approval he should have had because he was Allah's anointed prophet. How dare they? They must die. They could not be allowed to taint his holy visions with their ignorance and refusal to grant him the seal of approval he so desperately wanted -- and needed. How dare they?!

Much like Hans Christian Anderson's tale of the foul mirror that the demons carried up to place in front of God's throne to show him the foul warped mirror image dreamed up by Satan in his noxious dreams before they broke the mirror, the shattered foul mirror Satan devised broke into a billion pieces and warped that lodged in Kay's eyes and heart sending him into the Snow Queen's clutches to while away the endless hours in the freezing cold of her ice palace attempting to place the ice shards into the word eternity. Eternity is what Mohammed has damned the ardent followers of his warped and twisted religion, just like Mohammed damned his followers to fashion out of ice shards the word eternity. 

Eternity is what the Muslims will serve as they follow their prophet, Mohammed, into hell.

I would have followed Mohammed's warped followers into hell as well if I had not realized that racism begins and ends with the mirror -- a normal mirror not warped by the nefarious design of Satan. I am warped by my own imagination and my own closeted beliefs and feelings, not the warped design of my own fashioning. I am a racist.

There. I said it -- or at least wrote it for all to see and realize that I have finally admitted the truth, the truth that was denied by my father's own hidden truth -- he was a racist -- just as I am a racist.

Uncle Bob said it out loud. Dad refused to admit it out loud -- even to his own children -- he was a racist just as I am a racist. I am imperfect. I have always been imperfect and I am still imperfect -- at least to this point where I put it out into the world that I am a racist. 

I realize now that the only reason I tolerated my Uncle Bob's racism (just as I accepted Archie Bunker's racism because it was delivered in the form of comedy) is because Uncle Bob, like me, was white. He looked like the image I saw reflected in the mirror of my soul. That image accepts all things, even the warped and deformed, because he looked like me: he was white.

That is why I accept all things, because they look like me or are white.

That is also why I accepted the warped and deformed utterances of my mother because she was white. 

I fought her tooth and nail even though she was white because she was a racist. I accepted Dad's perfidy because he never said a thing. He said all the right things. He did all the right things. He was kind and generous and accepted all people; he couldn't be a racist.

Well, that is wrong. He was a racist just as I am a racist -- or was until I realized from where I was coming. All things are acceptable as long as the mirror reflects what you see as being just like you. That means the same is true, not only of me, but for all people. The mirror image you see makes everything acceptable.
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If you are black, you will accept all things because you see black in your mirror. That makes all things acceptable as far as you are concerned. Everything else is all right for you because it is black -- or red -- or yellow -- or purple with green polka dots -- because the image you see in the mirror is the same as the one looking back at you.

I apologize to all the wrong-headed people I criticized before I realized that I was a racist, too. I was wrong. I hope I am putting that wrongness right at last.

I was wrong.

I realize that now.

I apologize to all people (red, yellow, black, and white) for seeing you as wrong. I was wrong.

We all are wrong ... just not as wrong as a twisted and deformed dwarf like Mohammed. 

That is why I reject Allah and God and all forms of gods and why I am an atheist. I realize that we are all wrong because we cannot see or comprehend the reality of the universal being at the heart of all things. We can see and imagine a being at the center of all things, but we cannot really comprehend such a being because we are finite beings and, though we have a creative and vast imagination, we are not THE UNIVERSE'S GOD.

We are finite. We are human. We are wrong.

We are OH SO WRONG.

Here's hoping that we will finally realize that fact and not push our warped and deformed religious utterances on others.

I recently saw a documentary on how China deals with Muslims and Mohammed's followers -- they indoctrinate the Muslims and teach them  (brainwash them). I deplore using such methods on people, but hasn't Mohammed been indoctrinating his followers with their five times daily prayers? Where Mohammed succeeded with his CYA methods, warped and wrong-headed as they were and are, they and he has succeeded. He has demonized the Jews. He has brainwashed children and millions of believers in Allah. He has warped and deformed the mentality of the populace for over fourteen hundred years. He has obliterated and annihilated common sense and thinking/evolving for yourselves. He has set the course for Satan in his warped and deformed imagination for all eternity. He has placed the planet on course for destruction.

And he (or at least Allah in Mohammed's diseased imagination) has set our feet on the wide road into HELL for eternity (where we will remain for all time).

We will have no chance to free ourselves from ultimate destruction and will end up in Paradise or hell unless we examine our hearts and turn away from the abyss.

And yet we cannot because Allah declares it so (as Mohammed has writ).

That is all. Disperse.

Soiled Doves

There was a time in the old wild west that Judge Roy Bean was the only law west of the Pecos. Judge Bean was a hard drinking, hard fighting, moral man who surrounded himself with gunfighters and soiled doves (dance hall girls). As the only law west of the Pecos, this violent, imprudent man finally settled down with one of the soiled doves, content to be the law who dispensed his brand of law without restrictions and living by his own code.

He hung rustlers and thieves, assassins, and disturbers of his peace without mercy, but at least by his views a moral man willing and able to clean up the wildest patch of the west. He cleaned up his patch and settled down with a saloon girl, one of the soiled doves, and wrested his dusty corner of the west from the criminals and the dregs of society.

The problem was the soiled doves. Where Sundays were days of leisure, usually after Saturday nights of drinking, fighting, playing cards, and the usual ruckus over who pulled what card from his sleeve, the soiled doves saw their town becoming citified and tame and began to insist on spending Sunday mornings listening to the parson preaching his sermon while they sang in the choir. The old rough and ready frontier town had become safer, filled with the good people of town wearing finer to Sunday service and dealing harshly with newcomers who were less refined Sunday go to meeting trollops. The newly refined ladies didn't see to the morals of newcomers to the saloon and the town who chose the less moral portion of their upstanding population to get rid of.

Judge Roy Bean had less luck with the moral and upstanding female population of town. He recognized his soiled doves, especially his own personal soiled dove, possessed of a prim and proper demeanor that followed with the change in the town's status and high-toned feminine population, as newly whitewashed doves who didn't take to the rough and ready life of a frontier town, especially when the frontier town got a brand new general store, stagecoach stop, and restaurants just like the establishments back East. He realized his happy bachelor days when he was the Only Law West of the Pecos were behind him and he must also change with the times. He had come up in the world, no longer the Law West of the Pecos when he couldn't even handle his own soiled dove who was now the last word West of the Pecos and the arbiter of taste and refinement now that her soiled past was behind her and she wore the finest clothes from back East, a lady who would be welcome in the best and wealthiest homes of the wealthy town matrons.

Judge Roy Bean was tied in eternal wedlock to a dove white as snow that couldn't remember back to the rough and wild old days and wouldn't own up to her past as the Madam of the town's biggest and best brothel. Mention of her past brought out the vapors and fainting as though she had been tarred and feathered with the tar and feathers that bedecked dance hall girls that failed to please the gunslingers, thieves, and highwaymen that once flocked to her saloon upon arriving in town. Heaven forfend anyone who mentioned the past in her hearing or whisper that the silver dagger she still kept in her corset was the sharpest and deadliest blade in the state.

With refinement came morals higher than the mangy cats tussling over the drunks they rolled in the
streets, passed out cold from too many drugged drinks, to pay for their drinks and dances. Passing out was no excuse for not paying the bill. There were two laws West of the Pecos, and Judge Roy Bean was kinder law. Judge Roy Bean would only hang you by the neck until you were dead. His wife, Madam Moustache, would empty your pockets and slit your gizzard when you failed to pay. Then Judge Roy Bean would arrest you for vagrancy when she'd emptied your pockets. The hangover in the morning was less painful than the fleecing and jail was quiet -- at least until you were sentenced to hang and then that short drop would put a kink in your gullet that lasted until the undertaker filled it with dirt after you were buried.

That's the thing about the wild west, it was wild until you made that short drop.

Today, in modern times, we don't have the Wild West and all the soiled doves are in church come Sunday morning where they warble their hearts out for God and where the memories begin when civilization arrives in Judge Roy Bean's town. Instead we have Democrats whose memories are even shorter than those of Judge Bean's soiled doves and just as full of righteous indignation if anyone has the gall to remember the wild west when they were the rowdiest and wildest dancehall girls West of the Pecos showing their garters and their frilly bottoms on stage at Madame Moustache's Brothel and Saloon.

The thing about whitewash is that with a good hand and a thick enough paint even Tom Sawyer can cover the worst of the dirt so that soiled doves can hide the past and refashion the edifice into a Sunday meeting house fit to entertain the best of the best from back East with nothing soiled showing even on the worst gullywasher day of the week, especially Sunday.

Of course, the Democrats have a lot worse to whitewash than rolling drunks and knocking out
unsuspecting cowhands and gunslingers. Their soiled past history settles into the ranks of the Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow laws, and eating two helpings of the shit pie the maid shat out that morning. Whitewash is good for everything, especially covering up all that soiled, shitty past. Give that whitewash and refinement  a little time and it will gleam like a ghost town in the noon day Texas sun.

That is all. Disperse. 

Review: Greyhound by Steffan Piper

For Sebastien Ranes, the past eleven years of his life have been an exercise in futility in getting his mother's love and attention. Charlotte, his mother, does the best she can for him when she thinks about it and when her attention isn't on the man in the current line-up. Sebastien is not that man. He is an encumbrance and he is in the way, a stuttering embarrassment that will not make her upcoming marriage or honeymoon better, except by his absence. At least she is willing to drive Sebastien to the Greyhound bus station in Stockton at 3 a.m. to begin his trip back to her ex-husband's mother and father's home to live with his older sister Beanie. He's eleven, almost twelve in a day or two, and capable of taking care of himself, all evidence to the contrary forgotten as soon as the ticket is bought and Sebastien ready to board the bus as she and her current fiance get on with their lives. Sebastien knows what to do and will just have to handle whatever comes.

That is the beginning of Sebastien Ranes's education and the end of his childhood, what childhood there has been for him so far. Steffan Piper takes the rest of the journey across the country to Altoona, Pennsylvania showing how a boy ignored by his mother and her boyfriends/husbands/exes finds the world is less cold and uncaring than his previous years have shown.

Sebastien finds people willing to look out for him and care for him along the way, especially Marcus, a recent ex-con heading home to New York City to be with his moms and visit his pops's grave. Marcus is an unusual young man who shares the poetry of Langston Hughes with Sebastien and steps up when his young friend is nearly kidnapped and raped by a predator working the Greyhound lines. When the young man walks away from what could have been the end of his road, he carries with him Leigh Allen's driver's license. Marcus took it from the bruised and bleeding pedophile and gave it to Sebastien to keep and use if necessary.

Steffan Piper illustrates what I have always believed: people are basically decent and generous. Piper shows the kindness of strangers, and their disgust and horror at Charlotte's disregard for her son's safety and life. Charlotte's off-hand treatment of her young son is echoed by her sister, Sharon, in Los Angeles where Sebastien meets Marcus as he waits out the hours between busses alone and forgotten. Aunt Sharon never shows up, but a bus driver with a nasty attitude, Frank, demonstrates that there is cruelty in the world, something Sebastien knows all too well, from the people meant to protect and guide. Frank's rabid racist attitude toward Marcus sets off a chain reaction of retribution that will fundamentally change Sebastien's life and make the future far less bleak.

Although Sebastien's journey carries him through day and night, Piper keeps to the shadows, making the kindnesses brighter and the dangers much darker. I could not help but admire Marcus's generosity and hard won wisdom as he helps safeguard and guide Sebastien through danger, fire, and change. Greyhound earns 5/5 stars for Steffan Piper's vision and for the complexity and intricacies of the road to manhood and the utter simplicity of dealing fairly with fellow travelers on the road of life. Piper and Greyhound deserve twice as many stars.