Saturday, July 28, 2007

My Personal Testimony


I am not a Jew, but prior to meeting my wife, all three of my significant others (long-time girlfriends, not marriages) were with Jewish chicks. I wish I had pics of the women I spent my time with before I met my wife (who is not Jewish). You guys would love it.

First one was named ---. Her mom was not Jewish but her father was. He owned a retail outlet for fat ladies. He fucking hated me. He was a very intense man. (His family had lost members in the Holocaust.) With age, I must admit, I don't blame him for hating me. After all, I was a skinny-assed, long-haired rock n' roll singer.

My second major girlfriend was named ---. She was a beauty (voted Best Body in High School) with hair almost like wires. In other words, her hair was almost like a black person's hair, but it was straight. (Her grandparents had fled the Holocaust. They lost many members of their family.) Her uncle was a famous comedian. She's was nuts, but in that particular way that drives a young man to his knees. She was a femme fatale.

She was a learning experience for me when I was a young man.

I never made the same mistake again.

My third major girlfriend was named ---. She was an actress. (You can see the thread here; actress and comedian? Yes, these are parts of my personality.) Her father was a German Jew whose family escaped the Holocaust by fleeing to Mexico when he was a child. He thought of himself as Mexican, or told people so anyway.

He liked me, but found me to be a pain in the ass.

He was a man full of subtle wisdom. He would say things that sounded like they were off the cuff, but I believe they meant a lot to him. (You had to hear the inflection in his voice to understand.) And, it will sound funny, but here are some of the things he told me:

(I asked him how he made the salsa) "It isn't what you do to the salsa, it's what the salsa does to you."

I really loved that one. I think about it all the time.

(He was a top engineer in the weapons and aerospace industry during the Reagan era) "When there is a problem, it is almost always in the conductors."

Think about that one for awhile. You can apply it to almost all problems in life.

And, here was the most important thing he ever said to me. He went to the Soviet Union as part of the Glasnost partnership with Gorbachev. He came back and I asked him what it was like. He told me,

"The Soviet engineers came up to me and told me America was less free than the Soviet Union. I asked them what they meant, and they said, 'Well, you guys have to have a government license to travel from town to town, and you have absolutely no opportunity to change social classes through education or hard work."

I couldn't believe my ears. They were being taught that there was no hope anywhere in the world, other than the disgusting, ugly dictatorship under which they lived. I had heard about Pravda, and I had read Kafka and Kundera, but I didn't believe what I had heard and read. I thought it was literary and exaggerated.

When he told me what it was really like, I realized that the Soviet people were truly being lied to, and I realized that what Ronald Reagan had been saying (which the Liberals had been denying) was true.

My comment to my girlfriend's father was, "My God, that's a psychological Holocaust."

To my mind, to live without hope is almost the equivalent of death. I think most of you would agree.

My girlfriend's father liked me more and more after that, but his daughter like me less and less.

:)

Anyway, point is, that was the beginning of my long descent from the liberal misty mountains into the valley of reality. It took a very long time. And, most of the stops (learning experiences) along the way were inititated by Jewish people whom I got to know.

I remember, very clearly, and with not a bit of sadness and embarrassment, when an employer of mine (shortly after the Oslo Agreement) called me into his office and told me that one day, in our lifetimes, we would see another attempt at a Holocaust of the Jewish people. I laughed at him outright. I told him we were past all that. He assured me that we were not.

Now, we stand on the brink of that reality as the Iranian President threatens to wipe Israel off the map. That's about 5.5 million Jews for those keeping score at home.

(It is very hard to deny reality when you have known multiple families who have been halved by the Holocaust, but somehow I maintained that ability even after all these warnings signs.)

I've also met, and personally worked with Vietnamese people who fought alongside American soldiers during the Viet Nam War. They told me the true story of our abandonment of them in 73. Once again, it was the world turned upside down for me. The American media had told me a completely different story.

One man's story - a man who had been involved in the war alongside our troops (his name was ---) on a daily basis - really shook me. He was a very giving and together man. He was a Buddhist, and he was always involved in various projects to help out in the community.

When he told me his story, he got that "thousand-mile stare" about his eyes, and his voice shook and he looked like he was going to cry. It was very tough to watch.

That was 1999/2000. That was pretty much the last straw for me as a Chomsky reader.

When Sept. 11th hit, my British relatives called me to "say how sorry" they were, and then proceeded to tell me why America deserved it.

That was the end.

I couldn't help but hate all such people, no matter how hard I tried. Slowly, but surely, I learned the opposite lesson of Natan Sharansky (who is a very sadly mistaken man, in my opinion, and it is too bad George Bush listens to him) that some people love the smell of their own prison, and will not let go no matter what you do for them.

The reality, sadly, is they have to find their own way out of it, and some are up to the task, and some are not. And, unfortunately, some of it has to do with how culture has effected national character. In other words, there are whole nations filled with people who hate the very idea of freedom. They like being told what to do and when to do it, and we aren't going to win them over by being nice.

We are only going to win them over by being very, very mean, to the point of leaving them in despair.

That's how we did it in Germany, and Japan, and the American South.

And, that's how it will be again whether we like it or not.

12 comments:

Wild Bill said...

With Freedom comes RESPONSIBILITY, and too many countries have made it too easy to avoid it..

When all you gotta worry bout is where to sign that gubmint issued check at and what businesses accept that gubmint issued Entitlement Card and who gonna be your nex baby daddy, who wants to be responsible and have to worry bout keepin a job or business and house and car payments and taxes and insurance and etc. ..

Ifn it wadnt for all this War and Foreign Policy For Freedom bullshit, they could all have new housin projects to start destroyin and a bigger check to buy more crack with and free bus passes and more hospitals for free medical care !!

WATCHER71 said...

So you read Chomsky...interesting...it seems our idealogical evolution follows a similar path.....

Pastorius said...

Yeah, I was quite the liberal. And, I am a lifelong registered Democrat. First Republican I voted for was Bush in 2004.

WATCHER71 said...

I like a lot of what he has to say, in that I still feel there is a lot of truth in what he has to say....in fact part of my Hawkishness re Islampfacism is in defence of what i view to be some of the 'higher' ideals/aspirations of western Judeo/Christian civilisation. In short people like Chomsky are part of the my reason to fight. I guess a lot of you won't see that, merely despising the guy.....because he is at heart a peacenik...when a realist can see that at least 3 global wars back to back or possibly together, are looming on the horizon. I feel that a responsible person is the soldier and ultimately is the protector of the Faith (freedom, religious, cultural etc) and we allow the free thinkers who DO contribute towards pushing the intellectual and cultural envelope of our civilisation. For me this very retisance to war, to question our selves and our motivations are part of what makes us a higher evolution of life to Islamic thought. Where is the Islamic Chomsky/Peacenik? The White man enslaved my ancestors and yet from a position of power recognised the sin and emancipated my forefathers. Where is that compassion and honesty or shall we say truth to the faith (Christianity) in the Islamic tradition? When the jihadi's blow a bus full of civilians up in Tel Aviv, where are the Muslims falling over themselves to protest this act of horror. Here in the Free world in every country, Christian or Jewish, good people whose conscience is uncomfortable march and protest and campaign to end war. Now as a realist I disagree with them, yet at the same time they symbolise Why We MUST FIGHT. I don't want to be of a conscienceless people who flippantly call for slaughter, yet as a responsible defender of my liberal creed I recognise their is the need to forcefully and pro-actively defend our selves, as Wild bill once referenced the Alamo to me so does it apply. One thing that I am firm on is that the troops at all times should be supported, and the troops should at all times honour the creed they represent. It's realy really easy to be evil. Being good is so fucking hard.....yet good we must remain... Oh PS my blog is up in it's infancy I'd love you guys to look it over and give me advice re linking up etc...

WATCHER71 said...

'Islampfacism' ?? typo ISLAMOFACISM

WATCHER71 said...

and I guess a link would also be handy...(stupid boy!! Doh)

JerkDoveHawk

http://jerkdovehawk.blogspot.com/

as you can see I'm still stumbling through this!!DOH!!

WATCHER71 said...

Just a thought...here in the UK Militia's are illegal.....They are not in US.....I wonder if they are in Israel...?

Pastorius said...

Watcher71,
I understand what you are saying completely. I'm proud that our civilization has Chomsky's and Zinn's, and I think they do play an important role in the debate which is fundamental to our ability to keep ourselves in check.

HOWEVER, I have come to have a profound hatred for the siren song of absolutist political pacifism.

Pacifism was orignally a personal philosophy. It is a challenge which one may choose to set before oneself. Can I turn the other cheek? Can I live in peace, even when the world causes me to want to kill?

Great!

I am down with that.

However, this kind of totalitarian dictatorship of the decadent anarchic pacifist is completely fucking disgusting. They would enforce pacifism, right up until time when they gained power, and then they would become a bunch of Joe Stalin's themselves, and you know it.

AND, I'm afraid this is probably true of Chomsky as well.

Truth is, Chomsky seems never to have met a fascist/leftist dictatorship he didn't outright root for. He rooted for Pol Pot. He rooted for the Soviet Union. He rooted for North Vietnam. He rooted for the communists in South America, and in each case, he rooted AGAINST America.

And, when he was proven wrong, when the truth began to come out about Stalin, about Pol Pot, about the psychological Holocaust that was the Soviet Union, he never apologized.

What's more, and you may not have any awareness of this, Mr. Chomsky wrote the forward for a book by Richard Faurisson, a French anti-Semite loon. And, Chomsky has never renounced, nor apologized for that act either.

While Chomsky may have contributed to the political debate, I believe the truth is, the evil of Noam Chomsky far outweighs the benefit of his contributions.

Howard Zinn, on the other hand, strikes me as a exceptionally intellectually honest man.

Here's a link for you to read a little bit about the real Chomsky:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faurisson_affair

Understand that that article from Wikipedia was written from the perspective of a person who respects Chomsky. The truth is, when you really think about it, he knew this man was a known Holocaust Denier, and he knew of the man's involvement with neo-Nazi's, and still he leapt to his defense.

Also, please peruse this blog, especially the articles from several years back:

http://www.antichomsky.blogspot.com/

And damn it all, I wrote some great stuff on Chomsky on my blog CUANAS several years back, but it's not in Google anymore, so I can't fucking find it.

Pastorius said...

Watcher71,
Here's a piece I wrote on Christan Pacifism:

http://cuanas.blogspot.com/2005/03/on-necessity-of-pacifism-last-night-i.html

Pastorius said...

Watcher71,
Ah, I finally found the article I really wanted you to read. It took me a friggin' hour. Here it is:

http://wernercohn.com/Chomsky.html

Epaminondas said...

HERE's some GOOD rip on Noam

RECENT and fun

WATCHER71 said...

Thanks for all those links guys...going to follow them up and get back to you all...remember the time difference!...so check back on this post....best regards!