Re: Condemnation

Nobody asked but …

I am not ready to condemn Donald Sterling myself.  I have severe reservations about depriving a man of the use of his property without due process.  Although I have no personal curiosity about the situation of why the taping of his remarks happened, I do have questions about the use of those remarks.  My major concern is not what I think of Donald Sterling or of the generic blacks he may have slurred, but I am concerned about what appears to me to be a new form of McCarthyism — the no-holds-barred witch hunt  for the politically incorrect.  Politicians have always sought totally helpless adversarial, albeit fictional, opponents.  Thus we have historical villainy represented by ethnic groups, ideological groups, religious groups, etc.  The most important feature of any of these groups is that politicians can convince the majority of the mob that the humans who find themselves in those groups may be opposed, for their pure evil, according to intellectual and individual decision making — although the animus itself is a no-brainer.  In other words, the enemy class doesn’t have a leg on which to stand — they’re commies, or rebellious slaves, or child molesters, or drug abusers, or members of a destructive religion, or more recently bigots and racists.  As a man in the street, it is very easy to adopt your own opinions and attitudes that easily fit in with a ground swell of popular sentiment.  But you must be alert as to whether you are being manipulated by opinion doctors.  It is easy to hate, and to feel justified in that hatred, but it is easier to be taken advantage of by the cool calculators out there.

Kilgore