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Ssu-ma Niu appeared worried, saying, 'All men have brothers. I alone have none.' Tzu-hsia said, 'I have heard it said: life and death are a matter of Destiny; wealth and honour depend on Heaven. The gentleman is reverent and does nothing amiss, is respectful towards others and observant of the rites, and all within the Four Seas are his brothers. What need is there for the gentleman to worry about not having any brothers?'  http://www.confucius.name/analects/book-12/page-01.html 

I'm watching Crash (2005) again, for the fifth time in a week. It's a film about race and it's a film about class and it's a film about immigration and it's a film about human failings and it's a film about community.  There are so many stories in this film, so many morals, and finally so many contextual issues that the viewer could walk away with a sense of philosophical determinism or just plain chaos. The future has already been written and we just have to play our roles according to script or we are screwed; or everything is an accident.

This kind of menagerie of super stars and familiar actors really works for me.  Since there are seven or eight different plots presented in this movie, there really is no leading role. The top money stars are Brendan Frazer and Sandra Bullock who represent the elites. Two actors that I have rarely seen are at the bottom of our class structure; their primary occupation being the heisting of expensive cars and taking them to a chop shop.  Don Cheadle and Matt Dillon, the two other recognizeable and successful stars (to me anyway) are cops.

One of the plots involves the evil racist Dillon stopping a black couple (for the top Hollywood echelon) for the sole reason of harassing them. He even feels up the woman while feigning a check for weapons.

He is a prick because he is a prick. And yet he is doing all he can for his aging father who has real internal organ problems and cannot get good medical treatment through is health insurance. And Dillon's character is simply out of sorts.

Later, there is a bad accident, and Dillon ends up saving the same woman, at first, against her will.

Another plot involves an Hispanic American who is called to an Iranian American's shop to fix the lock on a door. He fixes the lock but cannot fix the door and the Iranian goes berserk. Later the Iranian American is robbed and his shop trashed because he was too cheap to get the door fixed. He discovers he cannot recover on his insurance policy because he violated the terms of the policy by having a faulty door.

The Iranian decides all his problems arise from the bastard Hispanic and he goes after the locksmith with a gun. The end to this scenario just makes me weep. But it's a happy weep.

Bullock and Frazer lose their huge expensive van when they are held up at gun point by the scum heisters. Bullock is really good in this by the way. She hates everybody; kind of an equal opportunity racist bitch.

The moral of the story for me is that although there is no such thing as an innocent man; there are very few men who lack potential merit. Everybody has it in him/her to help someone else; given the proper context or opportunity. But every 'good man' is capable of doing evil things.

There is a kind of contextual redemption for some of the characters; tragedy and loss for others.

Some people even accomplish great deeds by accident. And some people just hurt people  grievously and for no real reason.

Everyone in this film is a racist. Everyone in this film is biased.

Just like the real world.

Like Dylan put it:

Nothing is revealed.

I am not fond of the Muslim Religion. I'm not. I see Mohammed as a warrior priest.

And I am not fond of Christian Fundamentalist Soldiers. Whatever messages from the Christ I gathered from the New Testament seem so far removed from any of the messages coming out of the Christian Community; that I would never call myself a Christian. At least the messages I witness on MSM every goddamnable day.

And Jewish Zealots cause a great deal of harm, in my view.  That seems clear to me from the foreign news reports I receive right here at TPM.

I could go on and on.  I have to deal with my racist bias and my religious bias. I cannot ignore it and pretend that I am somehow above such things. We all have to deal with bias, every day.

Well, my understanding is that there are over a billion Muslims world-wide. And I know there are fine Muslims. Millions of them, I suppose. I know of a man of the Muslim Faith representing a district in my own state; serving in the House of Representatives. And he appears to be a good, hard working Democrat.

There are Christian Fundamentalists who dedicate their lives to help the poor and suffering, whether Christopher Hitchens likes them or not.

There are hundreds of thousands of Jews who work for peace every day of their lives.

I see the Dalai Lama skewered in certain quarters in the cyber world and I am dumbfounded. I mean he seems to be a very peaceful god loving man; a Gandhi of sorts.

You know, for all their blather, the Christians are a minority in the world population. So are the Muslims. So are members of all religions grand or small.

You know I would like to talk out of turn here for a second.

I cannot tell whether or not someone is Jewish unless they tell me. I cannot tell who is Iranian or Hispanic or any number of 'races' with only a chance to see that person. For instance, there is a Semitic Race according to 'experts'  and a Semitic language group and the Palestinians are as much Semitic as the Jews.

I cannot tell if someone is from the Subcontinent of India or from Pakistan or from a number of different tribes in that area of the world unless I given more information than just their picture.

Oh you say, but anyone can tell if someone is Black. Is that really true? I think VJ Singh has darker skin than Tiger Woods or a number of people whom I have seen who declare themselves as members of the Black Race.  And look at the different 'races' that seem apparent in places like North Africa.

You know that old baseball coach from the late 19th century and early 20th century, John McGraw, had a great player he wanted on his team. But the player was of African-American descent. So he depicted the player as a Native American. The other managers nixed that idea.

This country is and always has been a theatre of the absurd.

There are White gangsters, Black gangsters, Asian gangsters and Hispanic gangsters in just about every major American City. And they all hate each other. No second amendment problems for them gangsters.

Race is to me, primarily, a construct of the mind.

I always think of Anthony Quinn. He played just about every racial type you can imagine. Quinn the Eskimo for Chrissakes; I mean he looked like an Eskimo to me.

When Gallop or the Census asks the individual his or her race, would the interviewer always agree with the response if the interview were held in person?

Is Juan Hispanic or Black?

It is primarily in America, where an entire population was enslaved that this issue of 'color' really arises. If you are ten percent African-American, well you are African-American.  There were laws on the books of many states that actually said this.

But some would sing: This is My Country

Fuck the world, for this is my country. This is my Christian Country. This is my Heterosexual Country. This is my Anti-evil-ution Country.  This is My European-Traced Country. This is my Gun Country. This is My White Country.

There is a delightful new group of patriots with a NEW AGENDA.  Hoping to reestablish MY COUNTRY:

THE 'TENTHER' AGENDA: In a nutshell, tenthers believe that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt led an illegal coup against the U.S. Constitution, exploiting the passions of the Depression Era to expand federal power to unconstitutional levels. Killing health reform is only the beginning of their agenda. Under the tenther constitution, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, federal education funding, the Veterans Affairs health system and the G.I. Bill are all illegal. The minimum wage, the requirement that employers pay overtime wages, and the ban on child labor are all beyond Congress' power to enact, and the federal ban on whites-only lunch counters is an unlawful encroachment on local business. Indeed, nearly every single law that Americans cherish -- from laws protecting workers' right to organize to laws forbidding race and gender discrimination -- could be eliminated overnight if the tenther constitution ever became law. One prominent tenther, a Texas official charged with rewriting that state's public school textbooks, even declared the federal highway system to be unconstitutional.

A LEGACY OF RADICALISM: Sadly, tentherism's assault on democracy is nothing new; indeed, retreat to outlandish constitutional theories is a favorite tactic of the right during times of historic upheaval. Tenther "state sovereignty resolutions" are little more than new names for the "interposition resolutions" enacted by southern states in the immediate wake of Brown v. Board of Education, which claimed that the federal government exceeded its constitutional authority when it extended the Constitution's promise of "equal protection of the laws" to the American South. Tenther claims that health reform is unconstitutional -- because the Constitution does not specifically use the words "health care" -- echo the infamous Southern Manifesto's argument that Brown was wrong because the "Constitution does not mention education." Much of the intellectual framework for tenther assaults on economic regulation comes from discredited Depression-era Supreme Court decisions that struck down essential provisions of the New Deal on the grounds that they exceeded Congress' lawful authority. Indeed, conservatives even justified the greatest act of treason in American history, the Civil War, by claiming that that the Constitution permits each state to leave the union at will. Now that America is slowly emerging from its most recent crisis, tenthers once again hope to exploit the nation's fears to fuel a radical constitutional agenda. http://pr.thinkprogress.org/2009/09/pr20090901

SO LET US PARTY ON!!!

In Georgia, where the Tenth Amendment Center is hosting its convention today, the resolution passed the conservative state senate on April Fool's Day 2009, by a vote of 43 to one. It was not a joke. The resolution was co-sponsored by some of the most senior members of the state legislature, including the senate majority leader and president pro tem.

Among the areas enumerated in the Georgia resolution were "Further infringements on the right to keep and bear arms including prohibitions of type or quantity of arms or ammunition"--in other words, a reinstatement of the federal assault-weapons ban could trigger Georgia to secede from the union.

It also reserved to Georgia the right to judge "how far the licentiousness of speech and of the press may be abridged without lessening their useful freedom." The Taliban might have approved.

The Gone with the Wind state wasn't the only one to sign up. Similar resolutions passed in Oklahoma, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, Idaho, Louisiana, and Alaska--all states won by McCain-Palin in 2008. And Sarah Palin, whose husband was a member of the secessionist Alaska Independence Party for 10 years, was one of the few governors to put her signature on the bill, before resigning in the summer of 2009.

The Tenthers represent the newest incarnation of an old constitutional debate about the powers of the federal government. There is separate neo-secessionist movement in the United States, which I'll be writing about in the future--and there is some overlap--but most Tenthers see themselves as rebellious defenders of what they see as the Founding Fathers' first intentions. Nonetheless, they should question the perspective and intentions of those on the fright wing they find common cause with. Populist conservative appeals, anti-federal government impulses and threats of secession are nothing new, but they take on special resonance with a black president in a bad economy.

Fuck the Birthers and the Baggers. These Tenthers really scare me.

They openly wish to secede.

They openly wish to erase all the Civil Rights Legislation passed over the last fifty years.

They openly wish to erase the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the United States Constitution.

They openly wish to erase the rights contained in the Bill of Rights, at least the first 8 or so.

And I count eight state legislatures joining in on this movement. 

And as much as I despise Fox News, it is a full fledged member of the MSM with more viewers than all the other cable news networks and it is sending a reporter to this convention, thereby giving the convention a type of recognition and respect. I can hear that fascist Napolitano now, reporting about the important issues discussed at this  convention. 

The Confederate Flags will fly, the desecration of Lincoln's memory will be abominable, the praising of Jefferson Davis will continue throughout the day and night, placards depicting my President with racial stereotypes....

I just hope that every goddamn one of these attendees brings their own gun to the festivities. I hope there is a lot of drinking and I hope they all end up arguing and shooting at each other.

Read the damn article. I am not making this up.

If the European Courts can place sanctions on Israel, why cannot we take away every goddamn defense contract we have in those states who threaten secession.

Fuck them. And let the bastards secede.