Below are excerpts from one of the best (and longest) blog posts on any subject I've read in a long time, and that includes my own. From EjectEjectEject, Bill Whittle perceives a world broken down into different "tribes", and how they differ sociologically from one another. Beware, there are provocative thoughts contained herein...
...I had the delightful opportunity to read the comment of a fellow who said he wished that white, middle-class, racist, conservative c*cksuckers like myself could have been herded into the Superdome Concentration Camp to see how much we like it. Absent, of course, was the fundamental truth of what he plainly does not have the eyes or the imagination to see, namely, that if the Superdome had been filled with white, middle-class, racist, conservative c*cksuckers like myself, it would not have been a refinery of horror, but rather a citadel of hope and order and restraint and compassion.
...That has nothing to do with me being white. If the blacks and Hispanics and Jews and gays that I work with and associate with were there with me, it would have been that much better. That’s because the people I associate with – my Tribe – consists not of blacks and whites and gays and Hispanics and Asians, but of individuals who do not rape, murder, or steal. My Tribe consists of people who know that sometimes bad things happen, and that these are an opportunity to show ourselves what we are made of. My people go into burning buildings...
...There are some things my Tribe is not good at at all. My Tribe doesn’t make excuses. My Tribe will analyze failure and assign blame, but that is to make sure that we do better next time, and we never, ever waste valuable energy and time doing so while people are still in danger...
...My Tribe doesn’t fire on people risking their lives, coming to help us. My Tribe doesn’t curse such people because they arrived on Day Four, when we felt they should have been here before breakfast on Day One. We are grateful, not to say indebted, that they have come at all. My Tribe can’t eat Nike’s and we don’t know how to feed seven by boiling a wide-screen TV.
Care to have your worldview shaken up? Then read it all, here http://www.ejectejecteject.com/archives/000129.html , and see if you can still jump up and down and say if John Kerry was elected President, none of this would have happened....
2 comments:
Better still, rather than read the small extracts here, go read the whole piece for yourselves and make up your own minds.
It is a masterful article, no question.
...absolutely!
Whittle makes a lot of points; can't say i agree with everything, but his take is fascinating. I don't love the word "tribes" at all; seems like a better word could be used. Native American tribes (and aboriginal?)were generally a function of birth; Whittle's tribes seemed to be based on life choices.
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