I had quite an interesting MLK day, yesterday. I didn't realize that it was MLK day until I arrived at the post office with a dozen books to ship to customers and found that it was closed. Now, this is a mistake that I've made before several times on federal holidays and on MLK day two years ago. I suppose that I'm not as accustomed to the dysfunction of American society as some others because I don't associate with people outside my social circle and I don't watch broadcast television, but finding that the P.O. wasn't open due to this silly holiday and then remembering Hussein's inauguration gave me an awful feeling of disgust.

The trio that I play in performed at a birthday party yesterday, which was thrown by our wealthiest client in a suburb north of Milwaukee for his son, who is in his early twenties. This was quite a drive for the three of us, but the money was great, the catering was excellent, the requested music was hardly challenging and the whole affair was quite pleasant, so I had no objections.

I don't pay attention to anything other than the music when I'm performing; if I'm not sight reading and the piece is something that I've performed a thousand times before, I usually just daydream. While we were taking advantage of the food between performances, I couldn't help but notice that not only was the Obama inauguration the dominant topic of discussion, but it had inspired quite a lot of nasty argument. Most of the people attending were middle- and upper-middle-class whites, with a few Indians and a Korean couple among them. This was the type who you'd expect to be Obama mavens, but I saw a couple of college kids almost get into a fistfight over the topic of Hussein. I overheard another young woman make a great racist joke about him to two friends ("I don't know how they expect one of them to run the White House, when ten of them can't run a White Castle"). I realized just then that what I was seeing was no different than what I saw in the northeast: pack a city full of darkies, and you'll generate plenty of racist white people.

The party was nice enough and we were well-received, even though I made a couple of glaring errors while performing a transcription of Franck's sonata with our pianist that really bothered me later. We carpool together and it was our cellist's turn to contribute. After we dropped off our pianist, we drove to his house to eat dinner before he dropped me off at my house. His wife was busy about the kitchen when we arrived, and she had a roast in the stove that smelled great. They currently have a carpenter doing work in their basement, and she informed us that he'd be eating with us. He seemed like a nice enough guy, and I said hello briefly before going into the living room to challenge his youngest son to a video game.

When I came back into the kitchen about fifteen minutes later, my cellist friend was in the midst of a heated debate with the carpenter, who had apparently told him that he wouldn't be able to work tomorrow because he was going to watch the election. I asked his wife if there was anything I could help her with and she gave me some string beans to truncate while we both listened to the argument.

Now, my partner is a great guy. He's racially and politically aware, a good father and husband, the best musician of us three by far and a man of considerable generosity. But like so many overbearing Italians, he absolutely cannot let a point go if it's irked him sufficiently. On the other hand, I can understand his frustration: he had to explain to this fully-grown adult what AIPAC was, how lobbyists function, how the federal government has been thoroughly corrupted by corporate and foreign interests, and to counter this guy's Obama-worship, the fact that he's kowtowed quite publicly to Zionist organizations, that he's taken an offensive stance toward Iran and Pakistan, that he plans to escalate the war in Afghanistan, that his campaign manager was a lobbyist for some of the biggest defense contractors in the country, that his campaign accepted huge sums from Wall Street via corporate lawyers in lieu of lobby groups, and that, accordingly, he had pushed for the Wall Street bailout harder than anyone...I could go on and on. Emanuel, Foxman, Clinton...he covered all the bases. On one hand, it was an awkward scene; on the other, he was arguing the point very, very well, and I could see uncertainty in the typically vacant blue eyes of this carpenter, a nice guy, a devoted Christian who was way out of his depth.
(It wasn't until today that I realized why he chose to be a carpenter.)

There was a lull in the conversation, and then he finally responded with, "Well, you may be right about all that, but I still think that Obama has inspired so much hope in people, and that even that has some value." People cling to hope, no matter how absurd the pretense.
I hadn't said anything yet, but I couldn't help but express something or another, and what I said was something that I've typed and posted on VNN at least a couple of times: "At the exact same time that Obama was giving speeches about peace and tolerance, the people who he's vocally supported were committing war crimes against helpless Palestinian civilians."

Then there was silence for perhaps twenty seconds. The carpenter seemed to be lost in thought, but then, after some deliberate consideration, he did the unthinkable: he preached to us. Don't ask me to reiterate anything that he said, because it was all hokey, bullshit Christer babble about "birthing love for others" and "the power of acceptance" and "bringing the global community together to enact change"...none of which really had anything at all to do with what we'd been talking about. After trimming the beans, I went to the bathroom and spent about seven or eight minutes there. When I came back, this guy was still on his pulpit, now talking about the power of change, and how important it was that slavery ended, and that women and gays were "liberated," etc. The wife of the house glanced at me with an "oh Christ, when is he going to shut up" expression and then said loudly, "Dinner time!" Not everything was ready, but she was desperate for an excuse to put food in this guy's mouth.

The dinner was civil. We talked about the day's gig and the party, and I told his wife about some of the jokes I'd heard, which made her laugh; the carpenter glanced at me with a mortified look on his face, and I matched his stare. You can't ever let these people drag you down.

After we ate, I helped her with the dishes, and then my friend drove me home. Over the course of the half-hour drive, we discussed nothing else but the carpenter, and we found ourselves reminded of so many things that we hadn't considered for a while: that religious faith often equates to political gullibility, that Christianity in its purest form is functionally similar to humanism and equally suited to the mentality of the ignorant lemming and that TV is for fucking idiots. It felt good to discuss all of this, and by the time we arrived at my house, I was exhausted from a busy day and happy to snuggle up next to my girlfriend in our warm bed.

There may not be a point to all this, but it confirmed a fact that every regular must accept: the kwan is as much your social enemy as any Jew or spade, and bears an even greater responsibility for the decline of the west, if only because gullibility and ignorance are not valid excuses for active culpability. I refuse to befriend or associate with these people in any way; they're intellectually stunted, politically mindless and financially naive. Never forget that these are the people who are all too happy to accept the reality that the Jews Media has manufactured for them, and every spade who's promoted to satisfy their narrow range of sensibilities. They have no place as our friends or in our families, and those in our families can always be replaced by decent, thinking people.