As is the case every Sunday, I am sitting down to plan out my week. This is going to be a significant week due to “Passing the Gavel” from me to the new president of the Rotary Club of East Louisville Sunrise. Rarely have I prepared as well for a presentation that was not work related. I’m not hide-bound into the program but will approach the affair with calm equanimity. It would not be productive to be too controlling.
There were other things planned for the week, such as a trip to Virginia but we have the problem of mom being down at the moment. I am staying loose on all other commitments and can see that this is the wisest thing to do. I’ve added a daily to my list, “Guarding against stupid mistakes, I am vigilant.” And I added this one after I noticed mom with a black eye because her spectacle nose piece pressed in on her when I helped her off the pot; but this goes further than that, it requires me to be circumspect about everything that is happening around me. It is in the same vein as being awake, being aware, and now being vigilant. I suppose they are all birds of a feather.
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We watched The Reader last night and once I got beyond it being Kate Winslet and realizing her character, the story took on a whole different dimension. She isn’t the dear sweet movie star but rather a brutish, illiterate, myopic character who sees everything from the immediate effect on her. This included seducing the young Michael, allowing 300 women to burn to death in a locked barn when she had the key, and refusing to admit that she couldn’t read or write. She would have been in her very early twenties at the time of her employment as a guard at the concentration camp. At her trial in 1960 something, she gave clues to her lack of discernment beyond instructions given to her by superiors or by the system.
Then there was the male character, Michael, who was a self-pitying sort who couldn’t get over his guilt at being seduced by a woman about twenty years his senior. Her tombstone said born 1922 and the seduction occurred in 1958, she would have been 36 and he sixteen. Personally I think he over reacted to what could have been a celebratory occurrence in a young man’s life. There was a sexual interlude and they didn’t get caught. So, I suppose it could have occurred as it was written. But the character flaw of his being unable/unwilling to help her when he could have is hard to understand except to realize that he represented the youth of Germany after the war, and found that they were of a nation that had killed 6 million people and unable to deal with it.
Had the roles been reversed, an older man seducing a young woman, I could see the possibility of guilt carrying forward as it did in this character. But then there are many young women who would likewise have seen it as a nice enough experience as long as there was no pregnancy involved.
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There is a mood among people these days that black Americans deserve/ should get/ need/ must have/ an apology on the part of the government that their American forefathers were enslaved. Then there are those who take it further and say they deserve some compensation for their lost wages during the time of enslavement.
It all seems ridiculous to me. Those that profited are dead. Those that suffered are dead. The abuses of the carpet baggers and scoundrels after the Civil war evoked repressive atrocities on the blacks in order to preserve the influence of the educated, which is not a euphemism for white but at that time the whites were educated and the blacks not. These disempowering devices were put in place and remained so until the 1960’s. I think it is this that the blacks are justifiably mad about. There are many alive today who suffered at the hands of the white power structure in the south; for them I say, go get ‘em but I don’t think the United States government is liable now for slavery.
Wouldn’t it be something if there was a constitutional amendment about life as it refers to fetuses? Then all the aborted fetuses could band together and sue the government for their being killed. Only there are no survivors in this. Perhaps the brothers and sisters of those killed could sue for damages. A law changes and then all who are/were/could have been affected by the circumstances that became unlawful go back and sue for damages? Is this how it works? There is the ex post facto limitation but I honestly don’t know if it applies in civil cases.
To require the American government to pay people for their predecessors being enslaved is stretching the point quite a bit. The law changed and slavery was abolished. The families of the vast majority of Americans today, who pay taxes and whose taxes would be used to pay such repatriations, weren’t even here when at the time of slavery. None of the blacks for whom compensation is sought are alive and besides that, many blacks come from forefathers who came to this country after that time.
I see it as another attention getting device to call attention to what happened over 100 years ago. Like some people who dwell on the holocaust and cant’ get past it, so too do these bleeding hearts either feel guilty, or want the pity that they feel they deserve, and then there's the possibility of getting some money. In this litigious society everyone seems to be looking for the gotcha on someone else. I say you can’t go back and get damages for something that happened to someone else.
There are those who profited from extorting the Jews in Germany during the Third Reich. I have my suspicions about some people who started with less than nothing, were intelligent, and worked hard but this alone can’t explain their apparent wealth; but there is no recovery for the families of those extorted.
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