Thursday, September 02, 2004

Quote d’jour

[One cannot compete and his very bread is in peril] "... to human beings, this is a much more hate-inspiring thing than is any detail connected with religion. With most people, of a necessity, bread and meat take first rank, religion second."
— Mark Twain, from the essay "On the Jews", originally published in 1899; reprinted in Mark Twain on the Damned Human Race, op cit.
This is not a comfortable essay to read, if one admires Twain. He perpetuates the common Shylockian sterotypes concerning Jews — money-grubbing, secretive, etc; the only thing he leaves out is the hook nose. The essay is also full of admiration for Jews, but many of the positive qualities he lists are much a part of the stereotype as the negative.

He claims to know over 480 Jews. I suspect this is typical Twain hyperbole, but if he did, and he shared any of these prejudices with them, I doubt many of them counted him as friend.

To which this fan can only say that Sam Clemens was a human being, and was susceptible to the prejudices of his time.

What strikes me about this quote is how it anticipates Maslow's hierarchy. And it makes me wonder about our current "War on Terrorism".

The chickenhawk in chief would have us believe that the terrorists hate our freedom. Many who have promoted the conflict in Iran see it as a clash between Christian and Moslem; a new Crusade, if you will. But what if it's really the poorest of the poor striking out at rich nations in the belief that these nations are also their oppressors?

Certainly, many on the terrorist side (e.g. Osama bin Ladin) talk about the corruption and decadence of the West. These are the people with money; they can afford to worry about stuff like that. The man or woman who straps a cluster bomb across their chest and sets it off in a crowd is a person who perceives themselves as being already dead. Their choices have run out, they cannot feed themselves or their families. They know they will die as penniless as the day they were born.

In this situation, it makes a sort of perverted sense to take as many of your oppressors down with you as possible.

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