It's the World's Fault

If my "finely crafted ideology" doesn't affect the world, it's the world's own fault for not listening to me. All kidding aside, I didn't invent any of this ideology, it was planted in my brain by people who had been entrusted to teach it to me. Then they turned around and made a mockery of the whole thing. This was not the ideology's fault, it was their fault. If there was something wrong with the ideology, they should have fixed it before they presented it to me. It was their ideology after all, but once I internalized it, it became my ideology and I felt compelled to defend it, even, no especially against those who imparted it to me in the first place. No ideology will work if people don't do it right. A wise old philosopher once said, "Communism did not fail in Russia, Russia failed at communism and, if democracy and/or capitalism fails in this country, it will be for the same reason."

I think this collective guilt over the actions of other people must be a liberal thing. It's kind of like Original Sin, but not exactly. Some of my ilk go to the other extreme, kind of a "blame the victim" thing. I try not to do that either. I never felt guilt while traveling through the ghetto. I could see that those people had problems, but I didn't cause them, and I couldn't fix them. The only thing I felt was caution. I had been told that those neighborhoods were dangerous, so I didn't go through there without a good reason, and then I made it a point to not do anything that might put me in jeopardy unnecessarily. Whenever I have dealt with colored people in my life, I tried to relate to them the same way I would relate to anybody else. If they didn't want to do that, I tried to avoid them, the same as I avoided anybody with whom I didn't get along. It's like one of my old army buddies, who happened to be Black, used to say, "Don't start no shit and there won't be none!"

You're right that slavery in North America began with the Spaniards, but I was talking about the more familiar scenario on the cotton plantations of the Old South. Actually, I think the sugar plantations were even worse. They were in the really deep South, which led to the expression "sold down the river", which was something that nobody wanted to happen to them. At any rate, all those slaves came from Africa. At first they were prisoners of wars that were fought between the African tribes. Some of them were enslaved by their conquerors, and the surplus was sold to Islamic types who brokered them to Yankee ship captains. As the demand for slaves increased, the ship captains often went on capture raids themselves, with the assistance of other Islamic types they hired for the purpose. I remember seeing a movie once about Stanley Livingston, of "Doctor Livingston, I presume." fame. He was exploring the Congo River in the late 19th Century accompanied by some Islamic security guards. I couldn't figure out why the natives were so hostile to him, he had to fight his way past every village he encountered. Then it dawned on me that, here are some White guys, accompanied by some Islamic guys, sailing through Black territory only a few decades after the slave trade had been abolished. No wonder everybody was chucking spears at them! Livingston would have been well advised to take some lessons in Chicago street smarts before setting out on his journey of exploration.