Call Me an Anti-Victim Bigot
I do not beat my wife of more than 30 years.
Nor am I anti-semitic.
, Trouble is, neither plea will get me far once I've been accused in the media or on the Internet.
Not that anyone has ever said I've harmed a hair on the lovely head of my beloved Donna.
That said, my last several posts have unleashed a indignant gaggle of righteous readers who've blog-branded me anti-semitic for my public scorn for local politicians who've made a career of being loudly ethnic – as opposed to quietly capable.
My problem?
Basically, as anyone of minimal intelligence well knows, being aggressively Jewish is a way to garner a ton of votes in Broward County – just as being seriously Cuban “works” wonders for politicians in Miami-Dade.
Which frankly twists my shorts.
Like voting for a candidate because she is a “This” or a “That” is both seriously stupid – and a threat to our Democratic way of life.
True, I come from a long line of people named deGroot. But that doesn't make me Dutch-American.
Again, I was born and raised a member of the Society of Friends. But this doesn't mean I'm a Quaker-American.
In other words, like Popeye, I yam what I yam: an American who refuses to be either special, or hyphenated.
It's been nearly a century since former President Theodore Roosevelt nailed the subject far better than I during a speech to the Knights of Columbus in Carnegie Hall:
“There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all. This is just as true of the man who puts 'native' before the hyphen as the man who puts German, Irish, or English, or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter or spirit the spirit and the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance.
“The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin... would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality at heart.
“For an American citizen to vote as a German-American, an Irish-American, or an English-American, is to be a traitor.”
Period.
Which is why I have little or no respect anyone with the sort of schizoid identity that comes from being hyphenated – be they Jewish-American, Catholic-American, Hindu-American, Muslim American, Cuban-American, African-American, Gay-American and so on..
Which, I suppose will unleash a whole new blog barrage from the righteously hyphenated accusing me of being anti-whatever..
Of course, one of the main reasons an American insists on being hyphenated is the special status and narcissistic sense of entitlement they gain from being a Whatever-American – as opposed to a plain old fashioned citizen of the United States.
Okay.
This being a free country, I suppose anyone has the right to be an ethnic, or religious narcissist.
But please. Not at my expense.
However, that ain't how it works.
Since any hyphenated narcissist will go apeshit when you tell him to please be special somewhere else – basically because you just threatened his unique hyphenated status and sense of entitlement.
Which is why any hyphenated narcissist is invariably a closet victim at heart – and thus entitled to righteously accuse you of being intolerant of whatever it is that makes her feel both entitled and unique.
Anyhow...
So now the hyphenated narcissists are after me again.
So?
I've lost count of the times I've been called anti-this, or anti-that during five decades as a newspaperman.
How come?
Basically, I suppose, because I've had a life-long allergy to bullshitters, bullies, and buffoons.
Which makes me rabidly anti-stupid.
As well as rabidly intolerant of intolerance.
Naturally, this vexes certain folk.
Especially those whose narcissstic sense of self is based on their victimhood.
As in, “I am persecuted therefore I am.”
Or, “I am special because I suffer so.”
To which I usually respond with the Buddha's First Noble Truth: “To live is to suffer, Boychik. So kindly climb down from your cross because we need the nails and the wood.”
Okay.
The Buddha never said anything about a cross.
Nor did the he ever ask a perennially persecuted pilgrim, “Would you like some cheese with your whine?”
No matter.
You'll never win with a narcissistic whiner.
Especially when they play their victim card as trump.
Hence, I've learned the hard way that trying to respond to charges of bigotry and other public visceral slurs of this sort is like handling poisonous snakes for Jesus.
Personally, I'm not sure which breed of narcissistic victim is more outrageous: The life-long victim of his ethnicity, or the professional martyr for her faith.
Of course, there's also my late Aunt Betty, who – although neither ethnic, nor religious – spent her 80-some years terminally victimized by the horrors wrought by the Yankee Bastards who burned down her Granddaddy's Richmond estate and then forced the family servants to join Lincoln's troops some 45 years before she was born. (Not that she didn't make my poor Uncle Joe pay for what those Yankee Bastards did when he came home from his job as a fireman in Morristown, New Jersey.)
So, in honor of my Aunt Betty, I suppose we should add ancient tragedies suffered by previous generations to validate our narcissistic feelings of victimhood.
And, of course, I can't forget my dear departed older brother Peter who enjoyed calling my frail-elderly parents to drunkenly blame them for failing to accept his passion for first name sex with strangers in gay bathhouses.
Finally, I suppose, we should include a catch-all category like Miscellaneous Misfortunes which would cover everything from natural disasters and exotic diseases to dictators and stock swindlers.
Which brings our grocery list of reasons to justify a sense of narcissistic victimhood to:
Nor am I anti-semitic.
, Trouble is, neither plea will get me far once I've been accused in the media or on the Internet.
Not that anyone has ever said I've harmed a hair on the lovely head of my beloved Donna.
That said, my last several posts have unleashed a indignant gaggle of righteous readers who've blog-branded me anti-semitic for my public scorn for local politicians who've made a career of being loudly ethnic – as opposed to quietly capable.
My problem?
Basically, as anyone of minimal intelligence well knows, being aggressively Jewish is a way to garner a ton of votes in Broward County – just as being seriously Cuban “works” wonders for politicians in Miami-Dade.
Which frankly twists my shorts.
Like voting for a candidate because she is a “This” or a “That” is both seriously stupid – and a threat to our Democratic way of life.
True, I come from a long line of people named deGroot. But that doesn't make me Dutch-American.
Again, I was born and raised a member of the Society of Friends. But this doesn't mean I'm a Quaker-American.
In other words, like Popeye, I yam what I yam: an American who refuses to be either special, or hyphenated.
It's been nearly a century since former President Theodore Roosevelt nailed the subject far better than I during a speech to the Knights of Columbus in Carnegie Hall:
“There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all. This is just as true of the man who puts 'native' before the hyphen as the man who puts German, Irish, or English, or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter or spirit the spirit and the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance.
“The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin... would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality at heart.
“For an American citizen to vote as a German-American, an Irish-American, or an English-American, is to be a traitor.”
Period.
Which is why I have little or no respect anyone with the sort of schizoid identity that comes from being hyphenated – be they Jewish-American, Catholic-American, Hindu-American, Muslim American, Cuban-American, African-American, Gay-American and so on..
Which, I suppose will unleash a whole new blog barrage from the righteously hyphenated accusing me of being anti-whatever..
Of course, one of the main reasons an American insists on being hyphenated is the special status and narcissistic sense of entitlement they gain from being a Whatever-American – as opposed to a plain old fashioned citizen of the United States.
Okay.
This being a free country, I suppose anyone has the right to be an ethnic, or religious narcissist.
But please. Not at my expense.
However, that ain't how it works.
Since any hyphenated narcissist will go apeshit when you tell him to please be special somewhere else – basically because you just threatened his unique hyphenated status and sense of entitlement.
Which is why any hyphenated narcissist is invariably a closet victim at heart – and thus entitled to righteously accuse you of being intolerant of whatever it is that makes her feel both entitled and unique.
Anyhow...
So now the hyphenated narcissists are after me again.
So?
I've lost count of the times I've been called anti-this, or anti-that during five decades as a newspaperman.
How come?
Basically, I suppose, because I've had a life-long allergy to bullshitters, bullies, and buffoons.
Which makes me rabidly anti-stupid.
As well as rabidly intolerant of intolerance.
Naturally, this vexes certain folk.
Especially those whose narcissstic sense of self is based on their victimhood.
As in, “I am persecuted therefore I am.”
Or, “I am special because I suffer so.”
To which I usually respond with the Buddha's First Noble Truth: “To live is to suffer, Boychik. So kindly climb down from your cross because we need the nails and the wood.”
Okay.
The Buddha never said anything about a cross.
Nor did the he ever ask a perennially persecuted pilgrim, “Would you like some cheese with your whine?”
No matter.
You'll never win with a narcissistic whiner.
Especially when they play their victim card as trump.
Hence, I've learned the hard way that trying to respond to charges of bigotry and other public visceral slurs of this sort is like handling poisonous snakes for Jesus.
Personally, I'm not sure which breed of narcissistic victim is more outrageous: The life-long victim of his ethnicity, or the professional martyr for her faith.
Of course, there's also my late Aunt Betty, who – although neither ethnic, nor religious – spent her 80-some years terminally victimized by the horrors wrought by the Yankee Bastards who burned down her Granddaddy's Richmond estate and then forced the family servants to join Lincoln's troops some 45 years before she was born. (Not that she didn't make my poor Uncle Joe pay for what those Yankee Bastards did when he came home from his job as a fireman in Morristown, New Jersey.)
So, in honor of my Aunt Betty, I suppose we should add ancient tragedies suffered by previous generations to validate our narcissistic feelings of victimhood.
And, of course, I can't forget my dear departed older brother Peter who enjoyed calling my frail-elderly parents to drunkenly blame them for failing to accept his passion for first name sex with strangers in gay bathhouses.
Finally, I suppose, we should include a catch-all category like Miscellaneous Misfortunes which would cover everything from natural disasters and exotic diseases to dictators and stock swindlers.
Which brings our grocery list of reasons to justify a sense of narcissistic victimhood to:
-
Religion
-
Ethnicity
-
Ancient wrongs and tragedies
-
Sexuality
-
Miscellaneous Misfortunes
Oh yes.
Your best narcissistic victims are blessed with humongous brass balls – or chutzpah.
Just consider the grotesque chutzpah possessed by a few of World Class Victims I've encountered in my three score and ten years like:
-
Any driver who kills another while drunk and then begs for mercy because he's a “sick alcoholic.”
-
Grossly fat folk who refuse to pay for two seats on an airplane.
-
Life-long smokers who file multi-million dollar suits against tobacco companies.
-
People who build exotic homes in the middle of tinder-dry forests, flood zones, or catastrophic storm belts – and then demand tax-funded bailouts when the inevitable strikes.
-
Anyone who demands that I “understand” and “accept” whatever.
-
People who abuse a relative's handicapped parking tag.
-
Those who claim their God is trump
And so on.
PS: For a more scholarly and thoughtful view of my position, please read “The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society,” by the late Arthur Schlesinger.
Comments