printWhat happens when a “community” is no longer a community, but “a conglomeration of competing ethnic groups and social classes” like New York City, New Haven or the United States? The peerless Thomas Fleming breaks it down for us in “New Haven’s Poor Little Lambs.” We disagree only slightly in that although the backdrop to the case of the New Haven firefighters warrants cynicism, it doesn’t change the fact that men such as Ricci have been wronged, and that women like me think—as any right-thinking individual would—that Ricci et al should not “go gentle into that good night,” but put up one hell of a fight.
Over to Dr. Fleming:
“[If] blacks and Mexicans owned and operated New Haven, we should expect them to act on their own behalf. But, in fact, they transparently do not own and operate New Haven, which is actually controlled by a white elite, some of whose power is based on the ability to manipulate minorities and thus to suppress the upwardly mobile European ethnics. Some of the elite is a residue of the old Yankee WASP elite; some are Jews, and some are converts from the European ethnics, children of parents stupid enough to send them to Ivy League schools that destroyed their minds and characters. Like other members of the American Elite, the people who run Connecticut are anti-Christian leftists who despise all our country’s traditions. Instinctively, they aim at power through the shortest route possible—today, that is minority politicking and Marxism—but most of them appear genuine in their leftism. They really do think that black firemen fail intelligence tests because of the history of racism and discrimination.”
They might believe the Big Lies about “the history of racism and discrimination,” but they won’t live around blacks and Mexicans. Rest assured the elites of New Haven live in elite neighborhoods. In other words, they self-segregate.
This is no different than George Bush. Jorge has a Mexican fetish. He even went as far as celebrating Cinco de Mayo in the White House and “flying” the Mexican flag on the White House’s official website. But Jorge is resolute about living around his fellow white elites. His immediate neighbor is billionaire Tom Hicks. Hicks is the owner of the NHL franchise and the Texas Rangers. http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2008/1204082bush2.html
And what do Jorge and the folks in New Haven have in common?
Why, he is just as far to the left as them.
Roger makes a good point about the difference between power and authentic help for a neighbor; or perhaps I should say between manipulative politics and real charity.
Dr. Fleming doesn’t make this mistake because he knows the difference. He reminds me of an old gunfighter who doesn’t want his friends and loved ones looking over their shoulders all their lives like he has to do. They say Wild Bill Hickok lost his thirst of fighting for justice when he accidentally shot one of his friends and deputies out in Abilene, Kansas during a bar room throw down when he was attempting to restore some civil order and sobriety to a drunken cowboy’s wild belligerence and gun firing recklessness. Hickok got his man in that shoot out but killed his buddy in the process. Wild Bill was later killed up in Deadwood, South Dakota when he forgot to use the eyes in the back of his head he had spent a lifetime cultivating during a poker game.
Years ago I think most of the paleos would have gone quietly into the night of diminishing numbers and lack of supply lines during the great siege, if it were not for the arrogance of their triumphant enemy, the neo-cons, who stirred the diminishing hive into a swarm by calling them unpatriotic names and assassinating their characters in public.
Dr. Fleming may say he is tired of fighting, having lost some dear friends over the years in what an older and wiser man could see were less than essential struggles, but make no mistake, that old man still has the fastest draw, the keenest eyes and the largest heart for valor than most of us will see in a long life. In fact, the biggest mistake the power brokers in the Republican party ever made recently was to call him out in the street again, when all he wanted to do was get some rest, drink some whiskey and spend time on his own ranch with his own cowboys up there in Rockford, Illinois.
We see the same thing with the same groups of people in my beloved Cape Town: we are all encouraged to interbreed physically and culturally, while the residents of Constantia, Newlands and Bishopscourt et al won’t give you the time of day if you aren’t white and have a British accent.
[Gives us a few hyperlinks of those places and palaces. You don’t see anything like it even here. I miss scones and coffee in Constantia gardens.]
here you go:
http://www.greeff.co.za/listing/area/bishopscourt
http://www.sothebyswesterncape.co.za/search_results.asp?suburb=1035
http://www.propertygenie.co.za/portal/page/portal/propertygenie/south-africa/residential-property/results?areaCode=2403&minPrice=0&suburbSelections=2673&fromPage=suburb
America’s authoritarian Welfare-Warfare Gilded Cage is managed by a coalition of “elites” (McNamara, Rubin, “Ellsworth Toohey”) and assisted by a large cadre of compliant but ambitious mediocrities (“Peter Keating”) who suck up and stomp down. The mediocrities may be those with family ties or money or affirmative action cases – say, some black woman with 1000 SAT’s who gets some random Masters Degree with B-‘s and works their way up the Federal Bureaucracy to being the manager of the Denver HUD office. The elites (70% democratic except in the defense and anti-drug parts) float in-and-out of the Goldman Sachs / Haliburton / SAIC / Rand / Yale military-industry-financial-academic-government complex and are in it for the power and money. The mediocrities have no ideas but would rather “manage” a HUD office than a bowling alley and are loyal cogs (“little Eichmanns”!?) in the system. Justice Sonia – someone in-between.
The term “Friendly Fascism” was coined by elitist “social scientist” Professor Bertram MYRON Gross, a New Dealer who authored the 1978 Humphrey-Hawkins Act (where the Fed “guarantees” 3% unemployment and zero inflation). His son David won the Nobel Prize and considers nuclear physicists a lower order of primate!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertram_Myron_Gross