Defending White Supremacy

The Sacred and Profane:
Class Assignment for the Fourth of July Weekend for my American History classes.

Robert E. Lee believed that Virginia was the nearest thing to a Godly kingdom that could be found on earth. Certainly, Northern society had lost it’s organic connection to God. It was a materialist culture. The South was a spiritual culture. It was wisely governed by a nobility of white men, just as God had ordained that it should be. The negro, cursed by God as the descendants of Cain and cursed again by Noah as the descendants of Canaan, were at the bottom of this Godly society - as they ought to be. God certainly could not want the negro raised to an equal level with the white man. It was unthinkable. The fabric of reality made up of all the facts made it unthinkable, but only for whites. For blacks it was more than thinkable, it was dreamable, but for most only as a reward in the world to come - swing low sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home! Even slaves are caught up in the fabric of reality in which they are glued. Slaves internalize the values of the dominate society, just as everyone else does. From the King on top to the slave at the bottom, everyone internalizes the values of the society.

More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette. They could have claimed, more lawyers smoked camels or more truck drivers... the fact, the real fact, was that for decades, Camels was the favorite cigarette of Americans, this American included. Yes, I will say it even now that the “facts” have all been changed thanks to our paternalist overloads who control thought - I will say it even now, I smoked Camels because it was a high quality, no bull shit, smoke. Fuck filters. Did I know then what I know now, that smoking is bad for your health? What kind of idiot do you think I am, of course I knew. I was an athlete. I trained hard and I knew exactly what cigarettes did - they crippled you. Yet, I smoked. Why? Because I wanted an A on the exam and I was staying up all night smoking and drinking coffee. And here I am professor Mehler. You see my point. Smoke Camels and you too can become a Jewish professor of history. I am not sorry I smoked Camels. You won’t be either. Take the Camels challenge today. Smoke Camels for 30 days and see if your throat doesn’t feel better!

Last season, I asked audience members to defend slavery and many of them simply refused. It was like I asked them to do something that they knew was wrong. You don’t want to think about things that you shouldn’t think about because you know before you start thinking where you are supposed to end up. And since you already know the answer, there is no longer any reason to think about the question. Might as well turn out the lights and go back to Facebook - somebody might have noticed me.

Remember this: You are unique, just like everybody else. You are just like everybody else. You don’t need to think. Just follow instructions and take notes. So, take note: Slavery is good. The negro is the descendant of Cain and Canaan, twice cursed by God. Don’t blame me for these propositions. I am one of those chosen by God to rule as your Emergency Manager sent here by Gov. Snyder to fire you’re Mayor. You don’t need a Mayor or a City Council. The best way to solve these fiscal problems is to bring in someone who has no stake in the community and is not accountable to anyone in the community. The EM’s job is to cut the budget and fleece you of millions before he disappears into the sunset with no liability.

George Washington asked, “Shall we become slaves, like the negro, over whom we rule with such arbitrary sway?” So, what are you, man or mouse? white man or negro? Get your head out of the mud and start thinking like a slaveholder. Sit back with a Camel and a shot of Jack and let your mind wander across the historical horizon. Despite everything you ever were taught - IT IS OK TO THINK. Don’t tell me slavery is bad and therefore I can’t imagine how to defend it. You are an attorney and I am your client. It doesn’t matter what you think. You have to defend me. And to do that you have to suspend your judgment. I know that is hard to do. Do it anyway. Do it because I’m telling you to do it and I’m your teacher. This is your homework assignment: Suspend your god-damn judgment... and come with me to the world outside your head. You will discover what a very small world you live in and you will begin a journey that will make your little world bigger. If you work hard at it, you too could someday become a old Jewish Professor of History teaching in a cesspool of intolerance for thought or provocation.

Managers Excepted

“Der Jude Kann nur judisch denken. Screibt er Deutsch… aber judisch denkt, is ein Verrater” - Heidegger, 1938 Recktorship Address cited from Emmanuel Faye, p. 332. “Emmanuel Faye incontestably shows that Heidegger’s Nazism was not fleeting, casual, or accidental but central to his philosophical enterprise. Faye’s book challenges us to recognize the ethical consequences of this fact.” - Robert Norton, Notre Dame.

I wonder about Heidegger’s teacher, the Jewish phenomenologist, Edmund Husserl. Was he, like my Lutheran, to discover that he was a Jew and that this fact was far more important than he had ever imagined? And what possible value could that have had to him sitting in his study at home, watching Germany being transformed by Nazis antisemitism and denied the use of the university library by his own prize student.

We, like the moon, are caught in the gravitational field of something much larger than we are. The moon might like to travel in a straight line, but the fabric of space-time is warped and it cannot escape. Antisemitism is a huge gravitational force. It is like a black hole that we would rather not think about. Yet we see all around us evidence of it’s power to influence minds, great and small. There is already a global coalition of groups representing the widest and most irreconcilable contradictions of ideology, theology and philosophy from the politically progressive evolutionary biologist, Steve Rose to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. From Russia, Eastern Europe, the European Union countries, the progressive left and reactionary right. One thing only they can all agree on - Israel is a racist apartheid state that has no right to exist. Fundamentalist Christians love us so much they want to save us from our Judaism, not realizing that most Jews have nothing to do with “Judaism.” Yes, there are still Jews, like myself who get up each morning and put on tefillin but the majority of Jews do not pray. Most Jews in the United States are assiduously working to shed themselves of their Jewish identity.

I do not see myself as an American. It just doesn’t mean anything to me. I study American history, the way I study Holocaust history. What is there to be proud of, the Tower of Babel? Walter Benjamin noted that as historians we must never identify with the oppressors of the past. “Empathy with the victor invariably benefits the rulers” and do we want to be a benefit to the emergency manager? The ruler who can dismiss the will of the people, usually, by the way, black people. The emergency manager system is as racist as the Drug War, which has also disenfranchised black voters. We have always known they weren’t smart enough for democracy. They need managers to handle their financial affairs, to steal what still can be stolen with impunity. No impoverished ghetto is too poor to steal from. Everyone has to pay their fair share for global war, managers excepted, of course.

Catching a glimpse of history

Walter Benjamin wrote that the “past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again.” I imagine a Lutheran who was arrested by the Nazis and put into a holding cell with a bunch of Jews headed for Auschwitz. The man protested that he was not a Jew, he hated Jews, in fact. He was a Lutheran. He was born a Lutheran. The Nazis replied that his mother was a Jew and so he was a Jew. No, he replied with passion, my mother converted to Christianity long before I was born and she married a Lutheran and she raised me a Lutheran and she was a Lutheran. No, the Nazis replied, she was a Jew. And so the man found himself in a chamber load of Jews as the gas was being dropped. As he drew his last breath it finally dawned on him, "oh, my God, I'm a Jew!" All his life he thought that he knew who he was. He was a German and a Lutheran and he hated Jews. At the very last moment of his life he discovers that he is a Jew. He realizes that on some level this fact was fundamental to who he was and what his destiny was to be, but what purpose does his final insight serve?

Philosophy of History

I have no philosophy of history. I have only the tattered remnants of an ancient theology and a guardian angel - the Angel of Death - who protects me from illusions. At the age of three, I was diagnosed with Bright’s disease. My kidneys were going to fail and when that happened, I was going to die. From the age of three to the age of thirteen, the Angel of Death pursued me. Waking in the middle of the night in intense pain, going down the hall to my parent’s bedroom, I would wake my mother. The terror on her face left me with little hope and protected me from illusions.
- Quoted from "Dead Last," Dr. Mehler's 2010 Merit Promotion Essay.

Guilt and Shame

Sometimes the guilt and shame over what we have done, what I have done, is overwhelming. They did not do this to us. We did it to ourselves.

My Job as Professor of History

Dr. Mehler, the host of the Barry Mehler Show, never tells the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth because there is no truth to tell any longer. Simply put, the problem is that in the modern world political, technological and scientific jargons, inaccessible to the non-specialist, have created a situation in which language is receding exponentially from the grasp of ordinary people. Worse still, propaganda, advertising and mass communications are making truthful speech impossible. Modern speech is nothing more than an eroded jargon. Even when we talk to ourselves it is nothing more than a string of clichés.

We are engaged in historical analysis. Nothing is understood outside of the tightly woven fabric of what we “know” as facts, for example, that cigarette smoking relaxes the throat. Don’t believe me, take the Camels challenge - smoke Camels for thirty days and see for yourself if your throat doesn’t feel more relaxed. Remember, more doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette.

We once knew the earth was flat, we were the center of the universe and the apple of God’s eye. Then we knew that matter and energy and time were all separate things. Now we know that everything we knew was mistaken, ergo, everything we now know is probably also mistaken. Where does that leave us?

An object, like a pack of cigarettes, is understood by how it fits into our tightly woven fabric of reality. We, like the moon, are caught in the gravitational field of something much larger than we are. The moon might like to travel in a straight line, but the fabric of space-time is warped and it cannot escape. Our thoughts are like that. We see a pack of Camels and our thoughts are filled with all the cliché’s we have heard over and over. All around us adults smoke. From the movies we learn of the pleasures of mixing tobacco and sex. After a fine dinner we light up a cigar. Everyone knows that tobacco is good for the digestion.

I am not interested in historical chronology or “wie es eigentlich gewesen war.” My focus is on the metaphysical contours of history. For example, democracy was an unintended consequence of the American Revolution. Furthermore, unintended consequences are the rule, not the exception in history. We never know what will come from our efforts, individual or communal.

So, what is the shape of history? Are we moving forward, making progress, going in circles? Or, are we, like everything else in the universe subject to entropy?

This is a radically new way of thinking about historical reality. Clearly, understanding reality is more difficult than at first imagined. You have to make a conscious effort to focus on the hocus pocus. And that is my job as professor of history, to provide the hocus pocus. Your job is to figure it out. I don’t have the answer.

The Holocaust

I once had a nightmare about the Holocaust and when I woke I realised the Holocaust was still going on. It was after my family was threatened with death that I realised, I think for the first time, that they really do want me dead. They want to kill me and my family.

The Holocaust gave us a glimpse into what awaits us. It was a taste of olam haba'ah - the world to come.