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One Sided?

by mymicz Saturday, Jan. 03, 2004 at 8:03 PM

How can we ensure that our perspective is not skewed?

I'm no communist, although many journalism teachers have called me one.

I'm no conservative, although I believe in fiscal responsability.

We use words, like Marxist, Lefty, Neo-Con, to define concepts that group large amounts of people together.

And for many of us, the pigeon hole is warm and soft.

For many of us, one book by someone we admire rings true in our hearts, and all of a sudden every other book we read has to be the same or it is false.

For many of us, one side of a story is read and correlates with our own experience, and suddenly it must be the ultimate truth.

What this website's followers are often guilty of is wearing blinders.

And blinders on a liberal are much more confusing than on a conservative.

You expect a conservative to feed from one news source, laud their own race, and play patriotism.

But when the defenders of unity, multiculturalism, and free speech, begin to defend racism on the grounds that it is justified "pay back," what have we become?

When we stop recognising the flaws within our own viewpoint, like the flaws in Marx that enabled people like Stalin to corrupt the system, then we cease to grow.

We cease to exist as a counterbalance when our own views no longer seek to satisfy the whole nation, but rather, our generalised view.

And, we lose support.

Many intelligent arguments are made here only to be overshadowed by people who just don't want to admit that we are all human, and that the government is not responsible for apathy.

Many of us, in choosing the liberal side, give up our conscience and consciousness of the greater cause for smaller revolutions.

We side with people based on half truths that are just as indecent as the WMD scandal.

What I am saying is that in order to provide a counterbalance to the dishonesty of the right, we need to be more accurate, ultra p.c., and well thought out so as not to seem as if we are just another side of the same coin. The Democrats are finding this out in what is playing out as a disaster for the left.

It's time we stopped saying revenge is o.k. here on I.M.C.. It's time we truly follow Ghandi, forgive the jerks that run this country, unite in massive community organizations that make them less powerful by sheer virtue of less controll over our lives.

This is not intended to say they should not be able to restrain us from hurting ourselves, at least to the extent of protecting the planet.

But this is to say that we must be careful to avoid fascism of the left, spraying blood on fake fur, saying that white people are the only evil, Jews are taking over the world, and that the government is responsible for every damn thing wrong in our lives.

If we focus on collective sustainance, eco-tourism, eco-electricity, eco-sound durable goods, if we propogate this trend and make it fashionable to the stupid, no one, not Bush almightly himself can stop us. If we focus on culture, rather than race, exploring diversity as an asset, rather than manipulating the past for personal racial gain, even the Middle East could find peace and religious harmony.

In all of the years since the Holocaust, while Jews eventually, (thirty years later) recieved their own money back and some reparations, the Jewish people relied on thier own assets as a community, their strength together, and thier cultural traditions, to rise above poverty and exemplify educational standards. They marched with MLK, co-wrote the "I had a Dream," speech. They swung from branches with other Africans. They made movies like "Angels in America," to benefit the rights of trans gender and homosexual humans. They also were capable of wrongdoing, as you see in Angels though the depiction of Roy Cohn.

But most importantly, they didn't look for handouts, they took back the society and culture that was theirs all over the world, not just in Israel.

This is my experience of cultural success. This is my experience of unity, despite the diversity of Jews being from all over he world with many languages and colors.

So while we can all sit here and cry, "pity me," perhaps we should take the example of community and make it work for the whole of us.

Perhaps we should recognise that if the Jews in the rest of the world, who survived pogroms, and holocausts, can overcome, without government help, and without opressing others (Israel to be debated), then we can all do so. And we can be happy and proud of our ancestry without belittling those who opressed us, without revenge, and with dignity. Latinos, Africans, Asians, and even those classified as "White," are still diverse within thier own ranks. And we can use these common classifications to the advantage of knowing who to help. Charity begins in the home. Your culture is the home of your ancestry. Your ancestry is your splash of color for the world. Your ancestry is a link to a community, a tribe. Being proud of this, and creating new communities based upon these themes is the ultimate sollution.

Taking care of your own is taking care of others, because others will be less burdened, and others will have the benefit of diverse points of view. Uniting the resource of our time to make our cultures stronger in arts and sciences alike will put us on an even playing field much faster than simply uniting to put down an opressor. For opressors are much the the mythical hydra, and will spring up only when there is disharmony and lack of culture and knowledge.

Our strength is in the fact that we all do come from somewhere, and can offer multiple points of view.

Our weakness is that we all come from somewhere where we were the underdog, and we all look for the upper dog to blame. But every dog has his day. What are you doing with yours? Are you making your culture strong, or are you simply trying to weaken the big dog hoping there will be something left of your culture when he falls along side of you?

Please consentrate this year on building diversity, buiding something good, instead of breaking down machines. The machines tend to rust on their own once a new, better way is found. We are all equally innocent for the past and guilty of the present and some of the future.

Let us begin today on the even playing field, and begin by making us all equally happy and proud of the good things in all of us, and conscious of the things we can do wrong if we are not vigilant. Racism means that you are saying you are better than someone else because of your race. Even to the extent of saying that your race was never racist because they had justification to hate(hogwash).

The opposite would be saying that all races have gifts and flaws, while working to make more gifts for all, and honoring diversity.

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