The perils of designer tribalism- [Excerpt] Part of what makes The Tears of the White Man such an important book is Bruckner's sensitivity to the aerodynamics of liberal guilt. He understands what launches it, what keeps it aloft, and how we might lure it safely back to earth. He understands that the entire phenomenon of Third Worldism is fueled by the moral ecstasy of overbred guilt. Bruckner is an articulate anatomist of such guilt and its attendant deceptions and mystifications. "An overblown conscience," he points out, "is an empty conscience."
-- Compassion ceases if there is nothing but compassion, and revulsion turns to insensitivity. Our "soft pity," as Stefan Zweig calls it, is stimulated, because guilt is a convenient substitute for action where action is impossible. Without the power to do anything, sensitivity becomes our main aim, the aim is not so much to do anything, as to be judged. Salvation lies in the verdict that declares us to be wrong.
The universalization-which is to say the utter trivialization-of compassion is one side of Third Worldism. Another side is the inversion of traditional moral and intellectual values. Europe once sought to bring enlightenment-literacy, civil society, modern technology-to benighted parts of the world. It did so in the name of progress and civilization. The ethic of Third Worldism dictates that yesterday's enlightenment be rebaptized as today's imperialistic oppression. For the committed Third Worldist, Bruckner points out,
-- salvation consists not only in a futile exchange of influences, but in the recognition of the superiority of foreign thought, in the study of their doctrines, and in conversion to their dogma. We must take on our former slaves as our models. . . . It is the duty and in the interest of the West to be made prisoner by its own barbarians.
Whatever the current object of adulation- the wisdom of the East, tribal Africa, Aboriginal Australia, pre-Columbian America -the message is the same: the absolute superiority of Otherness. The Third Worldist looks to the orient, to the tribal, to the primitive not for what they really are but for their evocative distance from the reality of modern European society and values.
It is all part of what Bruckner calls "the enchanting music of departure." Its siren call is seductive but also supremely mendacious. Indeed, the messy reality of the primitive world-its squalor and poverty, its penchant for cannibalism, slavery, gratuitous cruelty, and superstition-are carefully edited out of the picture. In their place we find a species of Rousseauvian sentimentality. Rousseau is the patron saint of Third Worldism. "Ignoring the real human race entirely," Rousseau wrote in a passage Bruckner quotes from the Confessions, "I imagined perfect beings, with heavenly virtue and beauty, so sure in their friendship, so tender and faithful, that I could never find anyone like them in the real world." The beings with whom Rousseau populated his fantasy life are exported to exotic lands by the Third Worldist. As Rousseau discovered, the unreality of the scenario, far from being an impediment to moral smugness, was an invaluable asset. Reality, after all, has a way of impinging upon fantasy, clipping its wings, limiting its exuberance. So much the worse, then, for reality. As Bruckner notes, in this romance adepts "were not looking for a real world but the negation of their own. . . . An eternal vision is projected on these nations that has nothing to do with their real history." [End Excerpt]
Uhhh. There wasn't any at the time. The wealth was created by the invaders, admittedly using the labor and land of the original inhabitants. But had the invasion never occurred, there would stil be no wealth there.
To do so, Ms Slaughter has to ignore or excuse the thuggery, murder and mayhem occurring today in Zimbabwe, and she uses the excesses and offences of the past so to do.
Today, teenage girls are being raped in Zimbabwe by Zanu PF and "war veteran" thugs.
Today men, women and children are being beaten and tortured for the crime of supporting an opposition party in Zimbabwe.
Today people are going hungry in Zimbabwe, a nation that was once the breadbasket of southern Africa.
Today, food is being used as a weapon of opression in Zimbabwe.
Today, people are being murdered in Zimbabwe
Today, people are disappearing in Zimbabwe.
Today, 200,000 blacks, the people for whom Ms Slaughter's heart bleeds, are displaced within Zimbabwe.
And who is doing all this? Neo-colonialists? White farmers? City dwellers?
No, it is Zanu PF thugs and so-called "war veterans", most of whom were infants or unborn at the time of the chimurenga, sanctioned by Mugabe and his government.
A small percentage of Mugabe's victims are white.
Those whites had prepared to surrender their farms and leave when the Second Chimurenga was won by Mugabe in 1980.
They stayed only because Mugabe himself eloquently persuaded them to stay and help build a new heterogenous Zimbabwe.
They employed hundreds of thousands of black workers and made Zimbabwe a net agrarian exporting nation until Mugabe kicked over the cart.
But most of Mugabe's victims, now and in the past (remember the Matabeleland Massacres) are blacks.
Whites are less than one percent of the population.
It is blacks who are being displaced from the farm villages
It is blacks who who are living hard in the bush instead of being gainfully employed on the farms.
It is blacks who are being driven into the cities to swell the ranks of the unemployed.
It is blacks who are risking crocodile attacks to cross the river into South Africa as refugees.
It is blacks who have to stand in line for days to buy maize meal and who then have to travel to the rural areas to share the maize with their parents who are being denied meal by government thugs. Meal which was promised to them to win an election.
It is blacks who are being beaten, raped, killed, starved and displaced.
And who benefits by the farm invasions? Landless rural blacks? No way.
It is Zanu PF cadre and urban civil servants with no knowledge whatsoever of farming who are taking ownership of the dismantled farms and who are busily destroying Zim agriculture with their incompetence and short-sightedness.
It is also a much smaller number of people moving onto the seized farms than were displaced by the invasions.
There comes a time when an adult must stop blaming his parents for their abuses during his dependency and to take responsibility for his own life. An adult who fails to do so is a psychopath.
PAMWE CHETE
In Memory of the Best
There is the most realistic hope for Africa-- the willingness of some powers to extend protection over tracts of territory.
The establishment of self-financing protectorates would be the single most decent act America and other Western powers could perform.
At some point in the future, self-determination may be possible; it is a cruel hoax today.