Thomas Wictor

Words are supposed to have definitions. One way in which those with nefarious agendas control the steaming masses is by flinging accusations in all directions, hoping to cow dissenters into silence. For years now, there’s been racism behind every tree and under every rock. It took a Twitter user to drive home the point that the word has completely lost its meaning.

A few days ago, I made militant atheists fill their diapers because I insisted on adhering to the correct definitions of words. This led to a tsunami of responses, the final ones (I hope!) delivered to me yesterday by a world-famous actor.

Not a single militant atheist reacted to what I actually said. All went nuts based on what they thought I said. We’re in an era in which people don’t listen even when they’re reading.

The best example of this was a message I got from an atheist demanding that I remove him from the conversation I was having with someone else.

So now atheism is a race! By being a theist and disagreeing with atheists, I’m a racist.

This is how fall we’ve fallen as a culture. Look at the guy’s user name: “Andy the Anti-theist.” Monomania is extremely attractive, isn’t it? Can you imagine being so bereft that you make an unprovable theoretical the central focus of your very identity?

Someone asked me what I’d said to make Andy the Anti-theist accuse me of racism.

Absolutely nothing. It’s just that everything in the United States is now racist. My neighbors had five dogs at one point, which is illegal. All five dogs barked constantly. One of them made this ghastly noise that sounded like a goat crossed with a human. There are tons of videos on Youtube that aren’t at all funny when it’s happening next door to you all day and all night.

My elderly parents were afraid of the neighbors and refused to let Tim and me confront them. We thus contacted the city and set up an arbitration meeting. The neighbors speak only Spanish; during the meeting they said that we were causing trouble for them because we’re racists.

At that point Tim said in fluent Spanish, “I understand every word you’ve said. I was born in Venezuela, and my mother is Mexican. This has nothing to do with racism. You’re trying to gain sympathy from the arbitrator because he’s also Latino. Well guess what? I’m Latino too, even though I have red hair.”

And then my father put a tape recorder on the table and played the sound of the nightmarish cacophony to which our neighbors constantly subjected us. The arbitrator actually got quite angry at our neighbors. He told them that accusing us of racism when they were clearly in the wrong was immoral.

They ended up getting rid of four of their dogs.

People tell me that the only reason I disagree with President Obama’s foreign policy is because I’m racist. Actually, this is why I disagree with it.

And they believe, and some US members of Congress believe, that the reason Saudi Arabia and other states didn’t tell the US that it was going to launch this war against Shi’ite backed, or Iranian-backed rebels in Yemen, is because Saudi Arabia and other countries simply don’t trust the United States anymore, don’t trust this administration—think the administration is working to befriend Iran to try and make a deal in Switzerland, and therefore didn’t feel that the intelligence frankly would be secure.

Our allies didn’t tell us that they were going to attack our mutual enemies. This is utter madness. Ever heard of the Medusa? She was a French frigate whose captain was a well-connected, arrogant, universally incompetent buffoon. He refused to listen to his underlings when they told him that the route he’d chosen to Senegal was infamous for its reefs and sandbars. When evidence of the sandbars appeared in the form of breakers and mud in the water, the captain told everyone to shut up and asked a philosopher to help him navigate. They ran the ship aground on July 2, 1816.

In desperation the crewmen built a raft to hold 150 of the 400 on board the Medusa. The raft achieved its buoyancy point underwater, at about chest level to the average man. It was so unstable that the Medusa’s lifeboats—assigned the job of towing the raft—cut the ropes and abandoned the 150 people thirty miles (forty-eight kilometers) out to sea.

Théodore Géricault’s painting The Raft of the Medusa always horrified me.

From July 5 to July 17, the 150 people on board the raft committed suicide, murdered each other, drowned, starved, died of thirst, or were cannibalized. Only fifteen men survived.

The United States is the Medusa. Saying so doesn’t make me a racist. We’d all better hope that we don’t have to build a raft within the next two years. If we do, I’m not getting on it. My brother Tim and I will stay behind on the sandbar, which brings me to another hideously gorgeous painting, John Singleton Copley’s Watson and the Shark.

If my two choices were to murder people or be eaten by a shark, I’d very angrily let the fish have a go at me. But I’d fight. Neither Tim nor I are afraid of death; still, it’s important to not be passive in the face of predation. Make the predator pay a price.

As for the notion that I’m a racist for disagreeing with the president, or with atheists, or with neighbors who have human-goat dogs, guess what? I can’t be racist. You guys laid down the rules, so we have to play by them. My mother was Mexican. Here she is with me.

We have black ancestors.

Nobody wanted to talk about them, and now everyone who knows the real story is dead. I’ll never find out who these people were. My guess is that they were runaway slaves.

But!

Yesterday I discovered that I’m one-eighth Santee Sioux.

It’s another family secret, so don’t tell anyone. I’d love to post the evidence, but it would cause a huge ruckus. See, I’m not supposed to know.

My ethnic and racial configuration is beyond my control. I’m therefore neither proud nor ashamed of it. On the other hand, my genes allow me to say anything I want. If you disagree with me, you’re a racist.

“Pie is the best food in the world.”

Go ahead, punks. Make my day.

Update

Insulting murderous terrorists is racist.

The ethnicity of the murderer trumps all.

“How dare you call that person of color a scumbag just because he commits murder?”

This man sneered at me to “read books.” When I said later that thinking for yourself is “double-plus ungood,” he asked, “What does that mean?”

That’s funny-horrible on so many levels. The Orwellian dystopia is here.