I wish to begin this article by telling an old personal
story that will let the readers know how I acquired the frame of mind that has
shaped my views on the subject I am about to discuss. It was the late Nineteen
Sixties and I was in my mid-twenties. I attended university on a part time
basis, and had saved enough money to go full time, something I intended to do
till I graduated or depleted my savings.
It was early Summer when I quit the job I did not like doing,
and looked for another job that would allow me to last till the Fall, and
perhaps give me a chance to add a little more to my saving account. I found a
job that sounded intriguing; it was a big hotel by the airport that was getting
bigger and wanted a purchaser who will work with the various chefs to keep the
hotel supplied at all time. They did say I would also have to respond to
emergencies when planeloads of guests arrived who made requests that were not
on the menu. I still remember how much I used to panic over the fresh cumquats
and the fresh seafood of one kind or another that the chefs wanted right away
but the suppliers never seemed to carry enough of.
Actually, the hotel already had a well established
purchasing office with a seasoned purchaser and a staff that was running the
operation reasonably well. But having built another wing, the management of the
hotel added a storeroom closer to it. This was the place I had the
responsibility to maintain stocked with supplies. Well, these were the non-perishable
supplies such as the canned and bottled goods as well as the grains. But when
it came to fresh fruits and vegetables, dairies, meat and seafood of any kind –
well, these items had to go immediately to the coolers and the refrigerators of
the various kitchens upstairs.
And this is where the story starts to get complicated
because on the same day that I was hired to run the storeroom, someone else was
hired. He was a muscular seventeen year old on his first Summer job. His duty
was to receive the goods at the loading dock, bring the non-perishables to the
storeroom where I had my desk, and take the perishables to the various kitchens
upstairs. He was a happy jolly kid for about two weeks but then started to show
signs of stress. Believing that he was working too hard, I told him not to
exert himself too much because after the usual rush of the morning, we spent
the rest of the day doing very little unless and until a planeload of guests
with unusual requests arrived.
No, he said, he was not tired or anything, but it was the
people upstairs who bothered him. How is that? I asked. He said that when he
did not know what he was doing and made mistakes, people were always talking to
him nicely and showing him what to do. But now that he knows where everything
goes, and he makes no mistakes, people treat him with contempt, even accuse him
of doing the wrong thing when he does it correctly just to pull his leg or push
him around for no reason. It was worse than being in high school, he said.
By then, I had been in Canada four years or so working
mostly in factories where games of this kind were not the norm. Thus, what the
kid was telling me turned out to be my first hard lesson concerning the culture
that used to prevail then and still does in this part of the world. It is the
high school mentality outside the high school yard. Looking at North America through this prism and working in various
professions, I learned over the decades that the mentality is pronounced more
or less depending on the profession where you find yourself. But the
unmistakable truth is that politics and the media are the places where you
encounter the most childish people.
Which brings me to the real subject I wish to discuss.
Actually, I was provoked many times before to want to discuss it, but the
articles that provoked me were of such low quality; I thought that no matter
what I said, I would raise these articles and their authors to a level they did
not deserve to go. But now, an article has come that sounds serious enough to merit
a response. It has the title: “Persecution of Christians, Then and Now” and the
subtitle: “Murders, church bombings, and pogroms: Today's record does not
compare well with antiquity's.” It was authored by John O'Sullivan and
published on April 4, 2013 in National Review Online.
Given the seriousness of the subject, I shall not attempt to
respond to John O'Sullivan in two or three hours. Instead, I shall take a day
or two to do so. Thus, I shall finish with some personal business I have been
neglecting for some time, then get on with that response and have it ready for
posting in a few days.
In the meantime, I wish to leave the readers with one
thought for the moment. Some people kill or kidnap tourists, why? Because they
hate tourists? No. Because they are losers who want the attention they would
not otherwise get. Also, some people blow up statues that sat embedded in
mountains for centuries. Why would someone hate these statues? No, it is not
hate that motivates these people; they are simply losers who want the attention
they believe they deserve but are not getting.
On another level, some idiot uses his position as pastor to
advertise that he wants to burn the Koran, while another idiot promulgates a
jaw dropping fatwa he has no authority promulgating – why? Because they want
the attention of the other sort of idiots; those with a high school mentality
who will jump on every bandwagon and try to sound more interesting than what they write about. These people too are big losers.
One more thing. Sometime, two decades or so ago, I wrote an
article that was way, way, way – and I mean way, way, way milder than anything
I write now. And guess what happened. The Jewish organizations arranged for a
radio interview with me, and they wrote an article in one of their publications
in which they insidiously accused me of harboring antisemitic Nazi sentiments.
This is when I got correspondence from people all over, telling me that if what
I represent is Nazi, they all want to be Nazis, and they wish the whole world
would become Nazi. So much for protecting the Jews from people like me.
My point is this: don't be such a fool as to call pogrom an
act which – if committed in America
– would send people dancing in the street, seeing the act as proof that America
is healing itself.
Keep being such a fool, and everyone will wish to have a
pogrom in their neighborhood so as to replace the mass killings they live with
day in and day out.
Maintaining the correct perspective is everything; losing it
makes you a nothing.