Smile on your brother, Red Beagles

Maybe leader was not the term I wanted to use.  What I was referring to was when you said a few posts ago that you followed the good authority figures and not the bad, and I wondered how, at that tender age you could distinguish who was a good authority and who was a bad authority.  I didn't think so much of their methods as I did what direction they were taking you in.  Now I remember.  You were remarking about how I resented all authority figures (which is true enough), whereas you followed only the good authorities and I wondered how you could tell the difference between the good and the bad.

It is a natural inclination to favor We vs Others.  I wanted to say Us vs Them, but we've been using Them to refer to the secret cabal that runs the country behind the scenes.  But it's not right.  I believe it says so right in the constitution.  Oops, the constitution has that unpleasant thing about slavery.  Well I just wanted to prop up the idea that the world would be a better place if we all treated each other decently, if We treated the Others as if they were We.  What if we could wave a wand, and all of us looked like we were in the same race?  There would be no more looking at Others with disgust and fear, there would be no more resenting Others because they looked at you with disgust and fear.  The world would be a better place. 

Rather than going along with the old bad system, you should be fighting for the new better system.  In the words of that stirring anthem of the sixties, "C'mon people smile on your brother/Everybody get together and love one another/Right now/Right now."

I see where you are claiming that all this oppression happened before your time and thus you Beagles, are, as always, blameless.  When Jesus was making that little speech about casting the first stone, He had to look around to make sure Beagles was not in the crowd.  But I don't think we can deny that we have had the benefits of white skin.  I'm sure my rebellious years would have gone a lot worse for me if I was black, and I can't see you knocking around Alaska the way you did if you were black.

Of course the red hockey players didn't haul rifles around.  Back in the cold war we used to complain about their hypocrisy in calling these guys amateurs, but our amateurs were all backed by corporations and government agencies so that they could spend all their time practicing their sport also.  I think they don't even bother with trying to distinguish who is an amateur and who is not in the olympics. 

Well the olympics, like hockey, who gives a fuck?  But like I said hockey was just a metaphor for um, life.  I was wondering earlier what Beagles would be like if he were born in Russia, and it strikes me that he would be a lot like Ivan.  He loved his country and its ideals, but then when he found the politburo really didn't follow those ideals he became disillusioned with them.

I thought there was also an interesting thing when he was talking about the four families living in one apartment and waiting in lines all the time, and how we pointed fingers at that as a failure of the soviet system.  But you know they were a poor country.  At least they bothered to try and house their poor unlike well, us.