Tag: Hate

I Grew Up A Child Of The Holocaust

~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

I was born in 1959, 14 years after the Nazi concentration camps were liberated. 

You might think such an awful memory — so close in our rear view mirror — would have made my community so horrified that they couldn’t bear to discuss it. We went completely in the opposite direction. I wouldn’t say we “embraced” the Holocaust so much as we “owned it”. As my community tends to do, we made it a teachable moment.

There’s a famous photo of a group of Jews being rounded up in the Warsaw Ghetto by the occupying Nazis –

From the first time I saw the photo, I became that boy in the lower right. I bet a lot of Jews my age did.  We saw and felt that boy’s terror, his helplessness.  His confusion: how can they be doing this to you just because you were born Jewish?  You’ve done nothing wrong to anyone on the planet – yet the planet wants you dead. 

“Never Again” became as integral a part of my “religious education” as chanting the ‘Shema’.  The past hurt.  That was not going to be our future. 

In our guts, my community has always known this was lurking somewhere in the American Character. You can’t cram peoples’ heads with that much bullshit and expect the bullshit not to screw them up. Bullshit always screws people up – cos it’s bullshit. When you cram a nonsense, hateful mythology into peoples’ heads that actually runs counter to your religion’s core message (and its core messenger) — don’t be surprised when the nonsense becomes the message.

It sucks being despised because of a total fiction. It sucks worse being killed over it.

If Bullshit Had A ‘Hall Of Fame’…

~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

Bullshit comes with being Human.  We don’t know yet if Bullshit comes with being sentient; do other animals capable of conscious thought LIE to each other when necessary?  Why would we assume they didn’t?

I’m just saying — Lying and Bullshit seem so natural to us that it could be an organic outgrown of having a ‘sense of self’, an imperative to protect that ‘self’ from harm, and an impulse to alter the Truth in order to protect from harm.

Lie to a dog — about whether or not you’ll give it a treat — and you’ll see a mind grappling with bullshit.  Ever watch a Nature Program where a pack of wild dogs hunt?  It’s all about deception — that’s the nature of setting a trap:  the trapped think safety lies in one direction when it doesn’t.  It’s the creation of a legitimate fear for a bullshit reason (‘Run THIS way not THAT or you’ll get eaten).  Next thing you know — you’re eaten.

Bullshit is powerful stuff used on the fly.

It’s even MORE powerful when given time to ‘cure’ like concrete.  Just like concrete, as BULLSHIT hardens, it becomes more difficult to destroy.  After a while — if it continues to stand, it becomes foundational — a thing that’s always been so it must be true…

Today’s Featured Player – “THE PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF ZION”…

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First published in Russia in 1903, the ‘Protocols’ want you to believe that a bunch of Jews got together and — having already planned World Domination — decided to get it all down in writing (bad writing).  It ain’t even a good story.

If you really want to hate another group of people, please, Anti-Semites, have a little self-respect.  Just go and hate.  Don’t try to embellish with nonsense like this — it’s ‘unbecoming’…

C’mon, Jew-Haters — if you’re really THAT into hating Jews, why would you need an excuse?  Isn’t your capacity to hate good enough for you?  You need Bullshit Reasons for hating?

Chrissakes — don’t tell me even Bigotry has been wrecked by the Age of Trump…