Ever see My Big Fat Greek Wedding? Charming story about a homely aging waitress with a large, fairly well off Greek family, who finds a nice, though dull, young man, and the two marry, living happily ever after (though I gather there are sequels, so who knows).
In one scene, the colorful Greek waitress and her beau meet the man’s parents, who are painted in flat gray, who speak in flat gray sentences. The man’s family, we are told, is sparse. And gray.
The man’s story is the standard comedic fish-out-of-water as he learns the amusing quirks and rambunctious ways of his new people. The man even converts formally to their religion. We cheer him on. At the wedding, the man’s flat gray parents come to life and learn to dance.
IMDB does a nice job summarizing the movie, though perhaps they didn’t grasp how nice: “A young Greek woman falls in love with a non-Greek and struggles to get her family to accept him while she comes to terms with her heritage and cultural identity.”
Well now. Who doesn’t want to belong to a people? The man in the movie even gives a little speech about how dull and pointless his life was until he met and joined his new people. So joining a new people is possible, at least by marriage. His family was part of no real people at all. Or not allowed to think so. For, of course, the man didn’t only marry the woman, but married the family. He joined a people. The woman realized that what she wanted was not “independence”, but to be part of her people after all.
As is natural. After all, each of us come from our parents, and they from theirs, and the whole forms some kind of people. Sure, there is fuzz around the edge, there’s lots of overlap, and things change, but everybody knows what peoples are. Wanting to be with those who are like ourselves is rooted deep within us. It feels right. The drive is powerful, biological, and cannot be eradicated.
Though it has been tried. You’ve heard it said anybody can be an American if only they hold this certain list of propositions. Which makes the country a “proposition nation.”
But not really. Because do you remember the time when those who did not hold to that list of propositions, but held their own, tried to go their own separate way? The peoples from the North, colonizers who were stronger, forced the people of the South to change their propositions.
Which some did, though not all did so wholeheartedly, and some never did.
The people holding the Northern propositions decided that everybody who wanted to come to the States could, as long as they converted and swore to new propositions, forswearing the old ones. But with a twist. Because the new people only really had to hold to one self-contradictory proposition, which is that certain peoples are “racist” for thinking they belong to a people, but that everybody else should believe they belong to a people.
Confusing?
Anyway, it’s too late now, because now the States are flooded with lots of different peoples, who still, to varying degrees, hold with their own people’s propositions.
So what? So this. Because so many different peoples are here, it means every time wars and other incidents occur in far off lands, the folks who live here who still see themselves as part of the people in those far off lands demand the States, demand I and my people, and all other peoples, “do something.”
Which, again, is entirely natural. There is no conspiracy here. But it is all so tiresome.
Here is one fellow (and there are many like him), who holds great power here in States, who is in tears over “family members, cousins, brothers” and others who are suffering in some far off land.
He asks us to care for his people. Which is natural.
But his people are not my people. And neither are his people’s enemies my people. Those other people are also holding demonstrations around the country hoping to get folks to care about their people.
Which is natural.
Again, none of those peoples are my people. Their fight is not my fight. It is not my business, and I want nothing to do with it. Why should I be forced to pick a side? Why am I and my people responsible for the whole world?
Yet neither do I hold it against anybody for trying to get folks to care. Because that is natural. If my cooperation is voluntary, like the man in the movie, then fine. But I should not be made to pay, or to fight, in a war that is not my concern. It affects my people not at all, except to the extent those in power say it must.
The insanity that arises out of forcing people to pretend out loud there are no peoples, because all people are the same, while all their actions confirm there certainly are peoples, and that not all peoples are equal, and that certain peoples must be allowed greater privileges (see any job announcement for which peoples I mean), accounts for much of what is wrong in the world.
Take blacks, who see themselves as a people. Which is natural. Many would like to be left on their own, as a people, which is natural. But no one is allowed to say this is a fine idea, because it violates the Central Proposition that all people are “really” the same. But they say that because no one has any idea how to affect any kind of separation. Me neither. So we all go on pretending we’re all the same in all things. Which we aren’t. (E.g.: “California’s newly enacted ‘Ebony Alert’ law is the first of its kind in the nation to prioritize the search for Black youth gone missing.”)
We say we’re all the same except when bad things happen to peoples over the seas, when those who hold or can gather power decide we all must care for one people over another. As with Ukraine and Russia, another fight that is not my fight, or my people’s fight. But we are made to care because the peoples who hold power decide we must.
Or take the long-running bloody awful civil war in the Central African Republic. Which side are you on?
None, of course, because their peoples do not live here in any great number, and have no power, so we hear nothing of it. We are not made to care because we all (or most) recognize these are not our people.
Indeed, there are many wars and conflicts all over the world. We know of the ones in which peoples here are in sufficient number or power to make us care. And, except for a small numbers of scholars, diplomats and the like, we know nothing about most of them because the peoples in these conflicts are few in number or weak in power here.
Yes, there are all kinds of considerations about empire, prestige, Expert theory, oligarchs and money that account for a great deal of meddling. But a lot of that is also tied, at base, to biology.
The real lesson here is this: diversity is our weakness.
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Henry Kissinger agrees:
https://twitter.com/FrDesouche/status/1712398517799428106
Never saw it. Ever see, My Big Fat Clown Country? Funny movie. There’s this normal country, people just tending their farms, taking care of family, going to church… super boring. One day a caravan of tiny cars shows up and out tumbles a company of crazy clowns leaping, laughing, jesting, then rolling out barrels of free money, opium, porn, war, and lies. People go nuts and soon their country is a diverse and vibrant smoking ruin. Great comedy.
colonialism and diversity are like the two Möbius strips of Klein’s bottle, easy to make and difficult to escape or decide (control) what is what.
I don’t exactly know it’s complex. Other countries can be like extended family, it’s why I care deeply about the Anglosphere, even though I’m not English, Canadian, etc., they are nonetheless often literally my extended family where we share culture to an extreme degree.
When it comes to Israel theres a two fold connection. First, their borderline Anglosphere, Britons and Americans played absolutely pivotal roles in the founding of the state of Israel, I think of that country as one we helped create.
Next and no one’s going to like this I think, even before the mosaic code I think those who bless the Jewish people will be blessed and those who curse them will be cursed. I believe the case can be made biblically and I for sure believe it can be proven historically, they may suffer but boy howdy are their enemies smitten hard in time. What happens to the Jews matters, in spite of their rebellion, they still have a unique role to play and status.
They quit talking about America as the ‘melting pot’ awhile ago, right?
(And yes, when I was a kid America was synonymous the United States of America).
Even when I learned about the ‘melting pot’, it was almost like in an historical context rather than anything anyone really believed.
Hoyos
Yes, Genesis 12 – God’s promise to Abraham to leave his country and his culture; before Ishmael or Isaac were born. Two brothers Ishmael and Isaac. (Islamic tradition has Abraham taking Ishmael to Sacrifice.)
Before that Genesis 4 – “What have you done?” replied the LORD. “The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground.”
“What happens to the Jews matters, in spite of their rebellion, they still have a unique role to play and status.”
Perhaps this is the watershed moment where the Jews, especially in Israel will finally understand that trying to destabilized and steal the hosts’ nation wealth has caught up to them, and one hell of a lot of reconciliation and reparations are in order.
A quote from Bernard Lazare(1865-1903),early Zionist:
“If the hostility and aversion to the Jews had existed only in one country and in a certain time, it would be easy to fathom the cause of this rage. But, on the contrary, this race has always been the object of the hatred of all the peoples in whose midst it lived. Since the enemies of the Jews belonged to the most diverse races, living in widely separated regions, having different laws, being governed by opposite principles,and being animated by a dissimilar spirit, the general causes of anti-Semitism must always have existed in Israel itself, and not in those who oppose it.”
Just think. All this decades of brouhajihad and Oy-Veying about would never have happened if the Crusades had succeeded and the Holy Land was brought under Papal control. Then as Pope St. Pius X declared, any Jew or Muslim who so much as set foot there in between the river and the sea would be confronted by churches and priests ready to baptize them.
Instead today, in the now all-too-common era of 2023, it would be just like any other peaceful western post-Christian democracy, where there’d be people of the rainbow twerking on the streets of Bethlehem, demanding reparations for hundreds of years of Roman colonialism, hersteria over what Climate Change would do to Galilee whike slaughtering and holocausting herds of local sheep to prevent CO2 emissions, and the Jews would still be in charge of everything!
But best of all, abortion Expurts would be there to show us a thing or two about how to really rip a baby’s head off! They have accomplished well over 6 million by now! That’s a woman’s right for you!
We might think this particular conflict doesn’t affect our people, but wait until gasoline is $10.00 a gallon, and we have to wait in line for hours to get it. I went through that nightmare in 1973 and believe me when I tell you that you don’t want it to come back.
“Ebony Alert”? Weren’t black yutes already covered by Amber Alerts? Reminds me of the people who get mad about “All Lives Matter” because apparently they don’t know what “all” means.
You’d be grateful if $10/gallon was all we have to worry about! Because the Koranic Brotherhood looks like it is going all-in this time, and the conflagration will spread worldwide, because the borders have been porous for a long while, and these guys enjoy total lefty support on the ground who are very good at looting and burning things down, and they know that if they intend to suceed in Israel, it means jamming up North America and Europe with similar problems before they mobilize in the Middle East. And you know what that means… Government Solutions!
We should consider ourselves lucky if they’ll even let us drive! Because the only way to prevent jihadi car attacks is to mandate that everyone stay home! Forget the groceries. Also put on a mask, it’ll provide a very low and entirely pointless decimal percentage of protection against potential chemical weapons. And if it only prolongs one life for 1 second, then it was all worth it.
The “chosen” people is anybody that can use the business class lounge at the airport.
Thanks for that truly outstanding explication. I have never seen these matters set forth as clearly. As Robert Louis Stevenson wrote (in a letter to his cousin):
“There is but one art, to omit! O if I knew how to omit I would ask no other knowledge. A man who knew how to omit would make an Iliad of a daily paper”.
By omitting everything but the essentials, you have made the issue perfectly clear to us all.
When I was a young child, I had a deep fear of Indians (as in cowboys and Indians). I know where this fear came from – we had one TV and my father loved old westerns, and the common depiction of a cowboy on his horse with an arrow shot through his heart left a deep impression on me. I can still remember vivid dreams of my father protecting the house from marauding Indians at our front door.
By the time I got to high school, a wave of guilt for the treatment of the Indians had started to wash over the country. Teenage anguish absorbs and amplifies these sorts of things, and some of my classmates had apparently heavily internalized this guilt. In history class, the teacher decided to be provocative one day, and essentially asked “why all he guilt”. This was something new to us, as the guilt message was pervasive, treated as obvious and certainly not requiring justification. The teacher never took a side or revealed any opinion, but was persistent in asking the most vocal students to support their opinion by asking follow-up questions, not letting them off the hook. Of course, all the reasons boiled down to some version of “the Indians were here first”, a justification they were unable to support in any non-circular manner.
In response to the “they were here first” justification, the teacher pointed out that throughout history, territory is conquered and retained by people who make the most efficient use of resources. In the US, the Indians were conquered by people who knew how to support a vastly higher population density with the available resources. Whether this is good or bad is beside the point, historically speaking. A territory with inefficiently-used resources will inevitably be conquered by more efficient humans. (Btw, this has obvious implications for inefficient “green energy”.)
My goal in writing the above was to lay some groundwork for my profound thoughts on the situation in Israel. But now I’m tired and I just don’t wanna. Or maybe I just realized my thoughts weren’t that profound. Whatever.
Well Milton, that was indeed insightful.
I, on the other hand, grew up watching Robotech and G.I. Joe and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Tom and Jerry and assortments of Disney and Looney Tunes.
The only real people involved as antagonists were Cobra, and Shredder, and some alien giants and a bunch of talking animals. I never came away from that with any antagonism though as those things were never realistic. But there was plenty of violence. Today’s children’s programming features very little. Little wonder Japanese stuff with the ninjas and muscleheads is popular, while American studios want boys in princess dresses.
Anyway, what were we on about? Israel? See, what they shoulda done was broadcast Indians vs cowboys and cartoons to Palestinian kids for free, as opposed to pornography as a psy-op. Billions of dollars spent of weaponry, when for a fraction of that they could’ve placated a couple generations of Palestinian children with media and videogames. That would’ve been a better pacification strategy than anything they’ve done up to now. The Jews that ran Hollywood should’ve given it away for free. Broadcast 24/7 throughout all of Gaza.
American aggressors are doomed, to here with the free ride.
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excellent post