Avoid stereotype of 'Old World Jews'

Dear Joe,

Loved your article Pissing in the Liberal Punchbowl Again published in the Progressive Calendar in Minnesota. Wished I didn't. Wished I could just believe. Encouraged by some of the kinds of people elected, grassroots, and by the responses across race and class lines. Disgusted by the immediate removal from the table of impeachment. We know. And it's not pretty.

One thing, as a daughter of immigrant Old World Jews, from the Brooklyn housing projects, years of homelessness and poverty, finally a "professional" but still not well-heeled, not even close, I wish that you would not have put in that stereotype, since you mentioned only two ethnic groups in that paragraph. As I lose teeth from lack of healthcare, I am tired of that one. There are other kinds of Jews, for real, as I am sure not all Scots-Irish are rednecks. I read the powerful and phenomenal book All God's Children, about the first juvenile tried as adult in New York, which traces his violent background to the slave-owning culture in South Carolina, and then back to Scots-Irish under feudalism, so it is clear to me what you are saying.

Thanks for listening, thanks for your potent article, and for the sad truth. Trying to hope anyhow, looking for signs.

All the best

Anya

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Dear Anya,

Well, I don't don't care much for hope these days -- at least in the sense that so many use the term -- because the powers that be have learned to lead the public around with the nose-ring of hope. Like bullfighters, our leaders rustle the cape of hope here, then there, and we plunge around like blind bulls at their will. We just had the latest cape flashed before us in the form of Democratic election victories, which give people "hope" that "things" will change with the addition of a few new Democrats. The things that need to change in order to save the nation are so massive, especially such things as peak oil and global warming, no one is going to address them at all except in symbolic ways or with artificial solutions such as running the world on fast food fryer fats, etc. It all constitutes a desperate joke on the people perpetrated by the people themselves for choosing "hope" over rational thought, self-discipline and honest observation instead of amusements.

Personally I find that the abandonment of hope somehow frees me from clinging to unlikely scenarios and plunging at the capes of the political and corporate matadores. Yet I believe change will come. But only after a series of catastrophic, culture changing events. "After the flood," I call it.

I'm sorry about the use of "Old World Jews". It was the only example I could come up with that all readers would grasp in a brief, tight ending to the essay. By referring to Old World Jews, I was simply referring to the people over there who can remember the rise of the Nazis.

And like you say, not all Scots-Irish are rednecks. But I can assure you that down here, nearly all rednecks are Scots-Irish.

I absolutely must read All God's Children!

In fact, I will order it online the minute I sign off here.

Your friend in these uncertain times,

Joe