Sun., June 27, 1999"Have you ever tried phone journalling? You should. Then you could hear all the involuntary moans and groans your words
induce." - Recent ICQ message from a friendI don't like the phone. It requires me to think too fast. I'm more like the Indian who never answered a question until he had a good answer, even if it took weeks. That can get pretty expensive on the phone, even if you use one of those special 10¢/minute long-distance companies.
The main reason I avoid the phone thing, though, is that I'm afraid that whoever I'm talking to might be able to tell from my voice what race I belong to. That's why I've avoided posting a photo of myself here, too. Although it seems extremely unlikely that anyone foolish enough to read this journal could tell what race I belong to from a mere photograph, posting even a small snapshot is a risk I'm simply unwilling to take in this age of mass education and the widespread availability of corrective lenses.Why don't I want people to discover what race I belong to? Because I'm embarrassed and ashamed of it. I know many of its leaders say I shouldn't be - many even say I ought to be proud to be a member of it. Somehow their words just strike me as wildly inappropriate.
The words of Jonathan Swift, on the other hand, seem very appropriate indeed. Even though Swift lived on another continent some 300 years ago, he managed to capture my thoughts and feelings in a little piece he wrote called "A Modest Inquiry." Alas, Swift, like Nietzsche, ended up stark raving mad, and thus like Nietzsche he can be a real challenge to readers for whom separating genius from insanity seems like a worthwhile activity.
Whether "A Modest Inquiry" is genius or insanity, the fact remains that it resonates within me as few other pieces of writing ever have. Indeed, I sometimes think that I just might have written it myself if only I had had the courage to sign my name to such inflammatory words.
Regardless, the words remain the same and are what's really important regardless of their source.What are these words? Exactly how good or inflammatory can they possibly be? Here's a short sample - judge for yourself.
"Once again I've awoken to a new day only to lose all enthusiasm for it as the realization sets in that it's exactly like the old. Same old minutes, same old sun, but worst of all, the same old question which nags me night and day, day and night - 'What is wrong with those people?''
"You know which people I mean. Everyone knows who I mean - even those people themselves - though few will admit it. How could anyone not dead, insane, or in government not know who I mean? Those people can no more hide the symptoms of their affliction than the moon can hide its roundness, the ocean its wetness, or the balding eagle its aging birditude. Indeed, it would require the divine assistance of God Almighty Himself and All His Angels for those people to have half a chance to conceal their extreme repulsiveness, and even then success would be doubtful, God Almighty and All His Angels having obviously expended such a prodigious amount of energy in the concealment of the logic behind His putting those people on this planet in the first place that it seems highly unlikely that enough energy remains to so much as start the job.
"First off, of course, those people smell. Granted, this is most often because they liberally employ perfumes, colognes, aftershaves, and various other ointments the newspapers and town criers have convinced them they need, the basic fact of the odor remains, and it raises at least two questions:
"If they don't smell bad naturally, how weak in the head must they be in order for lowly newspapers and town criers to convince them that, contrary to the testimony of their very own noses, they actually do in fact stink?
"If, on the other hand, they do most naturally stink, exactly how awful and terrible and wretched must that stink be, given the infernal aromas they choose in substitution?!
"Why those people are compelled to douse their sorry hulks with an amount and number of perfumes, colognes, aftershaves, and other ointments in inverse proportion to the openness of the space they will be occupying with other people is a third question I won't so much as mention, since questions which have no possible answer may only be mentioned if one's point is to annoy, which my point certainly is not."The thing about those people that really bothers me, however, is not their stench (whether real or imagined) nor their stupidity (whether located in their heads, their genes, or their fashion sense) but their obvious violent tendencies.
"As even the least informed among us must know, our realm has been beset in recent months by a veritable plague of school yard shootings. In each and every case, the same long list of possible causes for this plague has been presented by Learned and Unlearned Folks alike. The easy availability of shooting irons, the corrupting influence of the plays of Shakespeare, the undeniably passion-raising turns of the minuet - and so on, and so forth. What no one has had the courage to say (although it's as obvious as a fire in one's pants-pocket) is that all of the shooters have been those people! Had they all been left-handed Huns, tongueless Brazilian shoemakers, or 600-pound snails skilled in the art of origami, it would not have gone unremarked. Why has such an obvious common thread gone utterly unremarked here?
"Is it because those people control the media??
"Does that explain the suppression of the fact that it has always been those people who have assassinated or tried to assassinate our kings, our candidates for Prime Minister, and our minstrels?
"Can it also explain why few serious commentators remark upon (let alone dare to analyze) the obvious tendency of those people to organize themselves into well-armed gangs which have historically dressed up in certain colors and emblems, taught themselves certain hand signals and salutes, repeatedly set upon innocent peoples around the world, and demanded one and all call them by their slang name, 'armies'?
"No, there must be more to it than simple control of the media. For even complete control could not explain how otherwise sentient beings could utterly fail to note for themselves that it was those people who have thought it good sport to invent and use poison gasses on living flesh, throw babies into ovens, and drop the fires of a thousand suns onto the residences of slumbering masses whose only sin was to have been born in the wrong place at the wrong time.
"It's not as if those people have been quiet about it or otherwise tried to hide their activities. In point of fact, they have gone out of their way to circulate to the far ends of the earth the bizarre rule book in which the most heinous of actions and beliefs are jauntily described in excruciating detail. Anyone who cares to may even discover within its pages those people's smug belief in the eternal torment that awaits the vast majority of souls who have ever dared to draw a breath on this planet. I myself am too weak in the heart to say anything more about such things.
"In the end, one conclusion is inescapable: There must be something intrinsically wrong with those people. Such heartlessness and such blindness simply cannot be learned, much less faked.
"Those who were lucky enough to have avoided birth are well-advised to continue to stay away from those people by every means available to them. Those who were unlucky enough to have been born are hereby advised to... to....
"Alas, words fail me.
"Fortunately, it is tea time and my guests have arrived. Further thought is not only not expected but would be considered downright impolite."So, there you have it. Although obviously dated in some ways, Swift seems all-too-modern for comfort if you happen to be a fellow member of my still-unrevealed race, doesn't he?
If he hadn't utterly embarrassed himself in the next chapter by going on and on about the failings of the "jive-talking" Dukakis administration, maybe this work would be taken as seriously as it deserves to be....
Back To A Simpler Past
(©1999 by Dan Birtcher)
