I've responded with some asperity -- "roughness" -- to a couple of posts raised by others querying why this lists gets so exercised about what might be considered minor matters when there are much weightier matters being debated in the electronic *agora.*
While I don't apologize for my answers, I do think it is right to say this: Injustice, racial or otherwise, is a far, far more serious matter even than smoke from unprecedented wildfires. What the white settlers of North America did over 300 years to captured African blacks and their descendants is in the aggregate at least as bad as what was done to the Indians of the Americas (90% kill off) and to the Jews of the Holocaust. There has always been racism -- and other prejudices -- throughout history, but that of WASP Americans to African Americans was particularly horrible by its fear and it's malice. I am just old enough to remember when visiting my grandmother in early 1960s Georgia "colored only" drinking fountains and signs advertising Ku Klux Klan rallies on Stone Mountain. I was fortunate to grow up from 1968 to 1974, 13 to 19, in Kenya as child of a pure WASP father -- so white that he made any white man on this list look like a Sicilian, no offense to Sicilians, who are as God made them; "white" as such is* not* a criterion of excellence. He grew up ins the Deep South during Jim Crow and was smart enough to leave after High School; he married a Filipina in 1954. No, my mother wasn't a maid; she came over on a Fulbright Scholarship; the University of the Philippines was grooming her to be Dean of the School of Library Sciences, and the Librarian of the Library of Congress said to her after hearing a speech of hers, "Look me up if you are ever in the US and need a job." Ideological evils and ideological reactions swing back and forth continuously as they have throughout history; the oppression of one people by another people is millennia old, whether the peoples differ by race or religion or nationality or economic class or what have you. The material domination of western Europeans over non-European peoples is a mere blip in the timeline of history and will very soon pass; the first Englishmen to travel to Mughal India were fascinated rather than contemptuous of native culture and adopted it; the early nabobs got rich by imitating the locals, not suppressing them. It was only the pseudo-Darwinist racialist ideologies of the Victorian era that generated British contempt for the *babu.* Cetshwayo didn't ask permission of the other tribes he disenfranchised of their ancestral homelands; the Han Chinese oppressed the Tibetans and now turn their attention to the Uyghurs; the Leninists oppressed the peasants who managed to scrape enough together to buy a couple of cows; the Nationalists in Spain oppressed the Catholic clergy; the Falange oppressed anyone with Socialist relatives. Point: Nothing is new, and nothing you or I do will have anything more than a transitory effect, except one thing: reform yourself. Gandhi helped drive the Raj from India because of his interior greatness (Mahatma = great soul) while the Jacobins turned *liberte egalite fraternite* into a bloodbath, and the Leninists "reformed" corrupt Tsarist Russia by establishing an even more brutal tyranny that only petered out from sordid internal self-contradiction, cynicism, and psychological exhaustion after 70 years. St. John of the Cross said in response to someone who prodded him about reforming society*, speaking of those who were not interiorly reformed: "Sometimes they achieve a little more than nothing, sometimes they achieve nothing, sometimes they achieve less than nothing." *Nemo dat quod non habet.* No one gives what he doesn't have. If we ourselves are not internally reformed, why should we expect to have any effect on the world around us? * This reminds me of the response of Sri Ramakrishna to someone who told him that he had no time for spiritual discipline because he needed to reform the world: "Do you think that the world is such a small thing that you can reform it?" On Thu, Aug 27, 2020 at 12:09 PM Michael Baquerizo <mbaquer...@gmail.com> wrote: > OK. > > On Thursday, August 27, 2020 at 1:56:49 PM UTC-4 Patrick Moore wrote: > >> Can I post my favorite biscuit recipe or do I have to undergo ideological >> cleansing first? This sort of thing sounds very much like the obsessive, >> guilt-ridden self-scrutiny -- far more in-depth than any Jesuit-mandated >> examination of conscience! -- that used to afflict bourgeoise hangers-on to >> the Soviet Leninists. >> >> On Thu, Aug 27, 2020 at 10:24 AM Michael Baquerizo <mbaqu...@gmail.com> >> wrote: >> >>> since i don't mind the consequences, i'm sensing a double standard here. >>> posts from jan re: BLM have nothing to do with this group, but this post >>> about air quality in the bay area does. >>> >>> don't get me wrong, i see nothing wrong with either, but you can't use >>> the swift hand of moderation on one claiming it has no place but just let >>> this fly free. or you can, cause this is your google group, but a double >>> standard is a double standard. there isn't even a mention of rivendell >>> bikes here. >>> >>> >>> >>> On Wednesday, August 26, 2020 at 9:36:25 PM UTC-4 Bill Gibson wrote: >>> >>>> All week the smoke from California has made the sun copper and the sky >>>> pastel orange all day. Sending hope and rain your way. From Arizona. >>>> Bill Gibson >>>> Tempe, Arizona, USA >>>> My Photographs <https://billbgibson.myportfolio.com/> : >>>> https://billbgibson.myportfolio.com/ and on Behance: >>>> https://www.behance.net/BillGibson >>>> <https://billbgibson.myportfolio.com/> >>>> >>>> >>>> On Wed, Aug 26, 2020 at 1:14 PM Patrick Moore <bert...@gmail.com> >>>> wrote: >>>> >>>>> I cut short a ride yesterday because the air felt smokey and affected >>>>> my sinuses and eyes, even tho' the official particle report was >>>>> "moderate". >>>>> The air had been smokey for a couple of days with a "warning" in force >>>>> until mid-day yesterday. Today was fine. >>>>> >>>>> Fire near Santa Fe, and smoke from Phoenix; dammit, Phoenix, keep your >>>>> smoke to yourselves. >>>>> >>>>> The local "news" reported a local "be ready to evacuate" order, though >>>>> intended only "in general." We're certainly dry, and I live next door to >>>>> the bosque, which they are patrolling by helicopter, but no fire seems >>>>> imminent, thank God. >>>>> >>>>> Again, good luck to those in California Warming. >>>>> >>>>> On Wed, Aug 26, 2020 at 11:42 AM Joe Bernard <joer...@gmail.com> >>>>> wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> The air is just miserable here in Novato with an AQI of 155. >>>>>> Yesterday we were getting blowing smoke that made it seem like something >>>>>> was on fire just down the street, but it was the wind from Point Reyes. >>>>>> >>>>>> I can't emphasize enough that you guys can't be out in this. I've >>>>>> seen several reports around the onlines of people trying to ride or run >>>>>> and >>>>>> this is just not a good plan, we all need to be inside with windows >>>>>> closed >>>>>> as much as possible. Listen to your pal Joe! >>>>>> >>>>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------- >>>>> Patrick Moore >>>>> Alburquerque, Nuevo Mexico, Etats Unis d'Amerique, Orbis Terrarum >>>>> >>>>> -- >>>>> >>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >>>>> Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. >>>>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send >>>>> an email to rbw-owners-bun...@googlegroups.com. >>>>> >>>> To view this discussion on the web visit >>>>> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/CALuTfgtYwTSGCJmYyiit4_%2B0u_Dfcsqsfy2o6-RR7Ybv2%3DZ7nA%40mail.gmail.com >>>>> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/CALuTfgtYwTSGCJmYyiit4_%2B0u_Dfcsqsfy2o6-RR7Ybv2%3DZ7nA%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> >>>>> . >>>>> >>>> -- >>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >>> Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. >>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send >>> an email to rbw-owners-bun...@googlegroups.com. >>> >> To view this discussion on the web visit >>> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/2d2e9520-ced7-44ac-8d9c-0c64cfbb988en%40googlegroups.com >>> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/2d2e9520-ced7-44ac-8d9c-0c64cfbb988en%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> >>> . >>> >> >> >> -- >> >> ----------------------------------------------------------------------- >> Patrick Moore >> Alburquerque, Nuevo Mexico, Etats Unis d'Amerique, Orbis Terrarum >> >> -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "RBW Owners Bunch" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/94b89303-6630-4f9f-836b-82f21bb9275cn%40googlegroups.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/94b89303-6630-4f9f-836b-82f21bb9275cn%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Patrick Moore Alburquerque, Nuevo Mexico, Etats Unis d'Amerique, Orbis Terrarum -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/CALuTfgvXC%2BD6wjJA0%3DVz6qoj7pS%2BF3jpWgWXcKxHsPdq-5L_5w%40mail.gmail.com.
