At the grocery store Mel Gibson's face stared out from the cover of PEOPLE magazine. Mel's "Meltdown" as the magazine headline called it reminded me I want to set everybody straight -- including poor multiple personality Mel and his bigot self. So here goes:
When Mel Gibson drunkenly blathered his anti-Semitism charge that the Jews are responsible for all the wars or whatever the exact words were, Mel wasn't spewing an original scapegoat charge but merely repeating one that has been floating about for as long as I've had the misfortune of listening to bigots. Now where I want to correct Mel and all who've repeated this over the years is that it isn't the bigot's scapegoat-of-choice that is responsible for weaving the fabric of fear and hatred leading to unrest and war, but rather the prejudice and bigotry that serve as the loom and weaver of the endless cloth of resentment and distrust that continues and builds over generations.
Get it straight! It isn't the victims of prejudice but prejudice itself that is responsible!
This understanding came to me when I recently watched the silent film "Broken Blossoms" (1919, with Lillian Gish, Richard Barthelmess directed by D.W. Griffith) wherein the only story solutions for the characters of the abused little girl and the "yellow man" immigrant who tried to help her in a western slum of prejudice and brutality was death and suicide. As I tried to emotionaly digest the tragic end of the sympathetic lead characters, at first I felt upset that the author of the story for not being more creative to avoid a tragic ending. Then I realized that only turning the tale into science fiction or fantasy would lead to any other conclusion. That is because there were other major characters in the story in addition to the brute of a father who beat the child to death and hated foreigners. The other characters were Xenophobia, Brutality, Religious Malevolence, and Society's Tolerance of Racism and Brutality and Denial of Human Rights. When those other characters are in a story, any story, the only story line that can exist is TRAGEDY!
And that is what is going on in the Middle East now. Only tragedy can result when the social and governmental powers allow Prejudice and Brutality and Unfairness of All Sorts to be players in the affairs of men. It is time to say, "no more" to those in positions of power who have neither skill nor interest in stopping these horrible hates and fears, or worse, express them personally and USE them as Bush and his renegade cabal do.
See "Broken Blossoms", and perhaps you'll come to the same conclusion.
