You know how you get stuck in a huge traffic jam expecting a big accident ahead and when you get to it you find a little fender bender and feel disappointed? It’s not that you wanted anyone to get hurt but you feel that something minor should not have created this mess. That’s what this edition of Wise Madness is. I have not updated for days. It takes something major for me to not write, so I must be dying, right? Nope. I had a double health problem, the residual cough from a cold and painful palate. The two conspired to stop me from sleeping for many nights and that meant I slept fitfully all day which kept me from writing.
The palate concerned me; it hurt and it was swollen. Feel it, your palate not mine, with your tongue. There’s a central ridge with troughs on either side. The trough on my left side isn’t there. Instead it’s higher than the central ridge. You can’t see your palate, not even in a mirror, so all I had to judge by was my tongue. I was pretty sure it was an abscess. I pictured it as a white lump on the roof of my mouth. I did some research and discovered that can be dangerous as it’s caused by an infection draining into it. I also had pain in my sinuses, that’s where I figured it was coming from. I hoped it wasn’t from my teeth as that might mean root canal. I’ve had similar things before and they went away so I gave it a few days. Yesterday I decided something must be done. The only question was do I go to the hospital ER or to a dental ER. I talked it over with my therapist, I had therapy yesterday, and decided on the hospital as it’s right in the neighborhood and even if I needed root canal they could give me antibiotics to treat the infection and something for the pain.
I went straight from therapy. Part of me was worried that they’d say, “what are you doing here? Go to a dentist!” but they didn’t. Montefiore has a great emergency room. They treat you like a human being. Triage sent me to the “Green Zone.” I had no idea that terrorists were a problem in the hospital and like Baghdad and Kabul, it has a highly protected Green Zone. I saw a wonderful physician’s assistant who told me that it wasn’t an abscess. It wasn’t white and looked swollen but otherwise normal. She called in her attending he concurred. I was nothing but two small cankers aka ulcers. The pain was not proportional to its severity. She prescribed benzocaine. It wasn’t even prescription strength, which I think might have been a mistake. No matter, it worked. Last night I could sleep for the first time in days. Unfortunately the sleep apnea was bad so I still wasn’t rested in the morning. As my mother used to say, Roseanne Roseannadanna, it’s always something.
Having health insurance is a wonderful thing. If this had been an abscess it could have severe consequences, the infection can spread to the brain. This way I can rest easy. I hate pain but I can live with it. The benzocaine works so the pain is treatable. I just took a break to apply some. For some reason it only gets bad at night.
Enough of the canker in my mouth and on to a canker on the palate of civilization, racism. I can hear you oohing and ahhing at the smooth segue. I saw a Facebook post defending Trump and purposing to show that he isn’t a racist. Lots to unpack there. First you can’t show that someone is not a bigot by listing times he didn’t act bigoted. One example given was that Trump dated black women. By that logic slave owners that kept slave mistresses were not racists. It doesn’t have to be that extreme. One of my heroes, H.P. Lovecraft was a virulent xenophobe that included anti-Semitism. Despite that both is wife and best friend were Jewish. How can I call him an anti-Semite? He said to his wife that his best friend would be perfect if he weren’t Jewish. That marriage did not last. Lovecraft’s xenophobia infused his horror fiction. His horror of southern Europeans and Jews was one with his horror Cthulhu and the old ones. He was a great writer, but a horrible bigot. He’s a hero of mine but I can’t make believe his sins don’t exist.
Some Trump supporters, I will not hazard to guess what fraction, can’t admit to themselves that Trump is a racist, as to do so would be to admit that they themselves are racists. In the current world that’s accepted to be a bad thing. It’s not like in the 60s when Wallace supporters viewed it as a virtue. If you doubt that Trump is a bigot go back to his announcement that he was running.
When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.
Imagine the reaction if a Black Lives Matter activist said;
The people that want to become cops are not the best. They have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing lynchings, they’re rapists. And some I assume are good are good people.
What do you think the reaction would be by those that accept what Trump said? They’d be outraged, yet the only way to justify that is if you believe that Mexicans really are horrible people and cops aren’t. How can you deny that’s racism? Easy, you lie to yourself.
How should we deal with these people? I didn’t comment on the post as all it would do is make the poster and friends circle the wagons and defend him and themselves. This is where I usually put in that you should avoid these kinds of errors yourself. And you shouldn’t rationalize your prejudices. But that’s not enough. How do we get people to not just say that racism is bad, but to see that it’s doing racists acts and saying racists things that are bad, not just the label?
My purpose in writing this is that I hope you make the same points. That if the racists see this from their friends in their desire to be “good people” will slowly modify their behavior, and then their thinking. It happened with gay marriage. We’ve even made a huge amount of progress in racism. No one can run on Wallace’s platform of segregation now, segregation forever” anymore. It’s not satisfying. There’s no moment of victory. People fooled themselves into thinking Obama’s election was victory, but it was winning a battle, not the war. I’m not expecting anyone to have a Road to Damascus moment. But the only hope is that the little victories add up and things get better, not perfect, just better.
A lot more people will read this if I post it. I’m an idiot. Not news, just wanted to remind you.
Wise Madness 