To the Editor:
I had thought that the powder keg ignited by my recent letter-to-the-editor was just dying down when I noticed that Anthony Perasso and Kwesi Aaron lit it up again in Nov. 5’s Heights. Mr. Perasso and Mr. Aaron try to use humor to their advantage by making the analogy to a NASCAR race. (Get it? “Race-race”? That passes for humor in this post-Jon Stewart era, apparently.) The joke, however, is on them.
I received a plethora of nasty online responses after the LTE was published. One foolish comment warned me that the poster would put the letter on the Internet—never realizing that it was already on the Internet, I guess! The comments would be amusing if they weren’t so hysterical and ludicrous.
In its own way, though, Mr. Perasso and Mr. Aaron’s LTE is even crueler and more uniformed than the comments. The latter, at least, are funny in their obtuseness. The former is purely mocking and insulting. I can give the writers props for a parody of my style—you’re not quite there yet, boys, but read some more of my stuff and you’ll get there eventually. I “summoned up” my “inner Trump,” apparently, whatever that means. In the sense that I was candid and honest? I don’t like Trump, by the way—my candidate’s Rubio—but that’s neither here nor there. Perasso and Aaron decide to call me “ignorant.” Brief question: on what? If all you can muster up is that my opinions differ from your opinions, that’s not ignorance—that’s diversity of opinions. Just a thought. Muse on it, boys, would you?
The joke says that talking about race, skin color, and identity is too complex and divisive. I’m going to assume that’s supposed to be funny. If it’s supposed to be serious, guess what? I don’t mind hurting other people’s feelings if those feelings are nonsense. Actually, you don’t seem to mind hurting feelings either. Life’s tough, guys. Truth is even tougher. We make due. (Does that hurt your feelings?)
What, may I ask, is the point about Martin Luther King? Yes, he talked about police brutality. He also talked about judging based not on the color of someone’s skin (a lesson our left-wing friends have yet to learn). Liberals love “police brutality” because they can beautifully use it to their advantage. Of course there have been brutal, corrupt, and racist policemen. There have also been brutal, corrupt, and racist members of ethnic minorities. So? Should we crucify and demean ethnic minorities because some members of a race are wicked? No, of course not. Should we then crucify and demean the police, who protect us and fight for us? No, of course not. This isn’t ignorance on my part, as you’ll undoubtedly say it is. This isn’t because I just “can’t see racism” because of “white privilege.” Rather, it’s because liberals invent “examples” to prove points. See the facts, not the opinions, behind, say, the Trayvon Martin case. Let’s look at and debate the facts, not the opinions. We cannot tailor facts to ideology; our souls will not abide it.
Two last points. Every one of my critics has stated that there is hypocrisy in this school inasmuch as it proclaims that it is “for others” but fails to condemn its own “institutional racism” (whatever that means). But a school that is really for others will try to teach those others the truth, will it not? Truth—you know, that which is based on wisdom, on prudence, on humility, on honor, on the tradition of our ancestors. Truth does not bow to the whims and wiles of popular fad and fancy. Follies do not become facts because they are fads.
The second point is this: “How the hell did a freshman have the audacity [to] say he feared [that] white people would be [sic] oppressed in the future?” I raise you, boys: How on God’s good earth do a senior and the junior have the gumption to assume their own infallibility and to strike down all dissenters from their absolutist and nonsensical dogma? Yup, I’m a freshman. Go ahead and laugh. You were too, one of you three years ago and one of you just two years. I guess that you were enlightened in that brief time to your own omniscience. Seems to me that you boys could do with some fewer lessons in culture diversity and some more in old-fashioned humility.
Ideology has always been a replacement for religion; and the modern secular progressive, so prevalent on college campuses, has adopted for himself the twin gods of “Equality” and “Progress.” But, to paraphrase you, why should I bother with any of this? You’re so committed to your ideology that you will not pause for reason, or even plain common sense, to break in. Go back and learn some humility, and then we’ll talk, Tony and Kwesi. It’ll do you a world of good. Ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae.
Sincerely,
Karl Salzmann
A&S ’19
Featured Image by Larry Papke / AP Photo