Imagine A World Where Racist Lunkheads Got Everything They Want

Posted on August 25th, 2017 by Adam-Troy Castro

One of the great ironies about racist pieces of shit is that they *can’t* secede.

Oh, they can try. Boy, can they try.

Sometimes under force of arms, sometimes by ballot measures that don’t stand a chance in hell of passing, sometimes by fencing in their compounds so they can huddle in fear and brag about how brave they are, sometimes by idle remarks that this heah Republic of Texas don’t need any of you yankee shitheads nohow.

But let us assume that the formation of the Confederacy had been a highly civilized affair, agreed to by all parties. Let us assume that a country was formed, RacistFuckerLand, and that all constituencies who wanted to get the bejeezus out of there got the bejeezus out of there, and an arrangement was made that even those held in slavery could depart, let’s say because the Northern States were so eager for the divorce that they wrote everybody holding human property a check sufficient to compensate them for no longer having chained people to whip. We can posit these circumstances then or we can update them to current geopolitik, by saying, theoretically, fine, you racist shitheads, you can have your own country occupying half of Idaho and maybe one third of Montana.

Either way, whether you set this thought experiment in 1860 or 2017, the deal is made after intense diplomatic negotiation. Because we are the gods of this hypothetical, we can even say that the transition goes much smoother than the partitioning of any two countries ever does; everybody affected by racism moves out, everybody who wants to live in a racist paradise moves in. RacistFuckerLand even gets to surround itself with a wall, and just to make it delicious, New Mexico pays for it.

So what you have then is a homeland they think of as utopic and we think of as dystopic, where everybody is the kind of person they approve of, and after the parades are over and the citizenry stops firing guns in the air while yelling “yeehaw,” what happens?

Holy crap. Now that they’re homogenous, they have nobody to exploit, nobody to look down on, nobody to steal shit from, nobody to terrorize at whim.

That’s even more intolerable!

Racist pieces of shit need something to be racist pieces of shit *at*.

And so what happens, after less time than you can possibly imagine, is that RacistFuckerLand starts subdividing. Before long, the slightly-less pasty are being hauled off into ghettos. There are violent protests that Particularly Freckly Ofay Lives matter and laws that somebody with sandy hair can’t marry somebody with straw-colored hair. Their streets begin to look like the aftermath of a raging chainsaw tossed into a terrarium filled with weasels.

It doesn’t calm down until their legislature agrees to the secession of EvenMoreRacistFuckerLand and then, not many iterations after that, to the postage-stamp kingdom known as ReallyThisTimeForSureTheMostRacistFuckerLand, with a population of one, otherwise known as Ted.

This is the racist’s true nightmare.

They can’t ever reach the finish line they want. Because the need to oppress is so thoroughly baked into their DNA that if the folks they hate ever went away, they would start writhing with withdrawal symptoms.

Tags: Assholes, Donald Trump, Politics, Race | Category Commentary, Humor, Politics

The Propriety of Firing Nazis and Other Bigots For Their Beliefs

Posted on August 15th, 2017 by Adam-Troy Castro

I have read a number of essays by sorrowful liberals about the propriety of firing Nazis and White Supremacists for their beliefs.

After all, they say, even those people have the right to earn a living.

This is true.

This is true even though that side of the spectrum has no problem with blacklisting liberal writers, telling liberal actors and performers they should just shut up and sing or have their works burned en masse, and campaigning against teachers who don’t abide by Koch cant.

Those are the reasons why I have trouble sympathizing with Nazis and white supremacists who get fired because of their beliefs.

But you know what? I happen to agree that even the worst people on the planet have the right to earn a living.

This is where I think it’s right to draw the line.

If the business you run is an assembly line, where the workers are tasked to screw two widgets together and pack them in a cardboard box, then it doesn’t matter if the fourteenth guy in the row is a goddamned white supremacist. He’s a cog in the machine. His absolutely hateful beliefs do not reflect on your business. Similarly, if he pushes a broom or cleans up the dog shit or puts bricks on top of other bricks. His job performance is judged entirely by how he performs that particular task, and honestly, hateful as it is to admit, a guy who thinks Hitler had the right idea might be just as good a machinist as the guy next to him who would vomit profusely at the thought. As long as the piece of shit in question is not an active irritant or danger to his fellow employees, as long as being able to get along in a diverse group is not a job requirement, then you can shrug and say, “Even human garbage has to eat.”

But if the Nazi or white supremacist works with the public, all bets are off. You don’t want him serving diners at your restaurant, because that will affect his treatment of your clientele. You don’t want him selling appliances in your store, you don’t want him dealing with patients at your hospital, you don’t want him coaching kids at your school.

You run the widget factory and the guy with the Nazi flag on his bedroom wall manifests as just another surly bastard at work, he does not reflect on your company’s relationship with the public. You might as well employ him. He’s a piece of shit, but it really isn’t up to you to make sure all those guys tightening those widgets are not pieces of shit. Nor does the issuance of a paycheck to that piece of shit reflect on you or on your company, unless that piece of shit is in a position of authority and makes decisions about policy, or your company’s public positions. You run a real estate office and the same guy doesn’t want to cooperate with showing a respectable Jewish couple homes in a mostly Christian neighborhood, and especially if he utters anything that reflects upon his attitudes, then all of a sudden, you become the real estate office for Nazis, and if you don’t want that, firing his ass is the only goddamned reasonable response.

You might be perfectly fine with the guy washing dishes in the back being a hateful bastard. If he’s good at his job and doesn’t get on anybody else’s ass, then why not?

But don’t let him be the manager of your restaurant, or the maître ‘d.

Is this job discrimination? You could argue that it is, of a sort. It discriminates against workers who might be total bastards dealing with other human beings. It reflects the fact that you don’t want them being the face of your going concern. I have absolutely no problem with knowing that the Nazi gets the job of sitting in the back of the freezing warehouse making sure raccoons don’t get in overnight. I do have a problem with him having any contact with the public.

I think he should have his ass fired from that hot dog restaurant. He’s underqualified.

And I don’t think you should trust him to be your crossing guard.

Or your neighborhood cop.

Or your goddamned President.

Tags: Assholes, Donald Trump, Life Wisdom, Race | Category Life Wisdom, Politics

The Man Who Adored Big Slushy Puddles In Front Of Bus Stops

Posted on August 4th, 2017 by Adam-Troy Castro

So who else do I tell you about, at the Job from Hell?

Have I mentioned the guy, not a boss but an employee who somehow owned a muscle sports car — not a bad trick, considering that the last I heard of him he was running a hot dog stand outside a Home Depot — and who adored using it for one activity in particular, that they extolled at length every time you gave him any opportunity at all?

No, not THAT activity.

What he loved, what he advocated, what he described in rich sensory detail, was waiting until a really heavy rain, the kind that caused curbsides to flood, and hopping into his car to a certain outdoor mall he knew about, forty minutes from our office, where the street became soup adjacent to a bus shelter, waiting until the bus shelter was stuffed with poor people huddled together (in what was often cold) as they waited for the bus that would take them from one part of their shitty lives to another, and at the moment of maximum population shift his missile into first gear and roar past the bus stop at full speed, drenching them with the wake?

Water was great, he said, but in the wintertime, slush was even better.

He loved that. Simply adored that. Told the story of doing that with a big broad smile on his face.

He especially loved doing that to old black women. He specified this. He thought that was inherently hilarious. I saw no particular OTHER racism in his daily behavior, including his interactions with black employees to whom he was perfectly cordial, but this was enough.

At the time I knew him we worked morning shifts and evening shifts, with afternoons free, and whenever it was torrential downpour in the mornings he was practically hopping up and down in his seat with excitement, over the fun to come. He used to beg me to come along. “Adam! C’mon! I’ll drive you! You’ve got to see this, just once!” It genuinely bothered him that I wasn’t keeping an open mind, that I never went, though a couple of other co-workers succumbed to his blandishments and went along, at one time or another, returning with the report, “No, he wasn’t fucking with us. This is his actual leisure-time activity.”

Forty minutes there. Lying in wait for the bus stop to be sufficiently crowded. Then forty minutes back. This would be his afternoon, and he wanted a companion for this adventure, like the worst episode of DOCTOR WHO ever.

In the list of appalling personalities at the Job From Hell, he would barely crack the top ten, coming in just behind the guy who loved driving down to Hooker Row and offering them insultingly low prices for ridiculously demeaning services.

Tags: Assholes, True Stories | Category True Stories