This is not a post about social media, but it is about social networks and the dangers of closed networks that have lurked in diverse culturs ever since there were diverse cultures. it is the outgrowth of an incident that took place a few years back in Austin, Texas. I was sitting at a bar discussing politics with an old friend. I was telling him that one of the few places I respected George Bush was on his humane approach to the immigration problem, that was, at the time, just emerging into a national and hotly debated issue.
There was a guy a couple of stools down who heard something I said. probably it expressed the sympathy to Mexican who risk lives and suffer humiliation to cross borders so that they can feed their families. That's when he jumped in. The following is a paraphrase of what he had to say. I chose more polite words than he used to describe ethnic groups, and I use the rhythms of my writing. His terms and rhythms are much harder than my own. The remainder is less exagerated than you may think.
"It's them. It's the crawly, grimy dirty bastards that are coming into Texas in the dark of night. They are spreading their filth and their seed from here into all states. We ought to build machine gun turrets, you know, like the ones they have at prisons, and when we see those suckers coming, we ought stop 'em in their tracks. Right there and let the flies and the buzzards get 'em. That'll stop the rest from coming. They don't speakex de English so good, but they will understand bullets. We don't need expensive walls, that they'll figure ways around. We need bullets.
You guys, you bleeding heart pansies, you just don't see it. They are the biggest problem we have. Health care. These people don't even belong here, but they are filling up our hosiptals. Soe them jump in fron of cars just so the can get a nice clean hospital bed. Overcrowded schools, who the fuck do you think is over crowding them. These people breed like rats. Before we send these people back, we should have them fixed, just like I did my bitch dog.
Its not just the Mexies either. It may be them today. But it's always someone, those blacks, those Jews, those Chinese. There's always someone who wants to sneak in here and enjoy all the benefits of the USA. They want to milk the freedom we have. But it's our freedom, not theirs. And we need to defend it against them."
I'm writing about this today because I may have had a Middle-Age moment. I thought I had already written thi. I thought I had posted it years ago and was proud of it. I referred a friend to it, and was surprised when his search did not turn it up. Did it get lost in cyberspace? Perhaps I just thought I had written it and four years ago, decided not to post it because it would be too controversial, too off-subject.
That's not my view today. Closed communities, who trust only people like themselves exist everywhere. They hate our culture enough to raise children to explode themselves if it will hurt us. They pray to their god to consume the rest of us in fire and brimstone because we are them, those nonbelievers, those infidels, those devil worshippers, those goyum or Hebes. They want to make a democracy into a Christian democract where those of us who may not be Christian will some how be reduced to lesser citizens, perhaps relegated not to sit at lunch counters in respectable neighborhoods. People cluster in secrurity near people like themselves and fear those others, those people who speak in different tongues or even accents, who dress differently, whose food does not smell like our food, whose children's games are played differently, whose prayers are chanted at different time, whose music has a different rhythm.
Much if my life is centered on social media's impact on culture. I look at how technology breaks down barriers such as language and I hope so very much that people will see that the Dalai Lama's observation is true:
"We are all alike."
Sometime, listen to the cry of a baby from another culture. Watch school kids playing a game. Listen to fans cheering. Watch people from another place as they leave work. Look at face different from your own, stuck in traffic or waiting to check out in a supermarket lane.
I believe social media helps us see a very fundamental point. "Them" very much is "us."
