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
This isn’t about you, Salzmann. Go slip on a bunch of banana peels until you develop a sense of humor.
-Mr. Loos
1) Make a very bad argument but try your darndest to sound intelligent while making it, and say that liberals dont listen to other opinions, specifically organizations like the Heights
2) Send the letter to the Heights so they can literally publish your argument that calls them one-sided
3) Have it get torn apart, not because liberal ideologues disregard it, but because it is very poorly argued
4) Disregard comments that do the aforementioned tearing apart as blind liberalism
5) At this point maybe stop and reflect on what you’re doing. Maybe you’re the hypocrite? Nah, onto step 6
6) Continue to say that liberals aren’t receptive to others’ opinions or discussions of fact by sending another letter to the organization that you accused of being guilty of that blind liberalism so that they can publish it again, promoting dialogue
7) Make another bad argument, maybe say “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?”
8) Don’t realize that minority groups ARE demeaned/crucified every day, many times by bad cops who have the law on their side
9) Also refuse to realize that the system in place and the people supporting it not only blindly glorify ALL cops but also protect and promote bad policing and discrimination against and oppression of minority groups (that’s what institutional racism is, you dense pos)
How to ruin any chance of being respected intellectually by your peers by first semester freshman year
At first I was going to make the joke that since Anthony Perasso is a Cishetero Catholic White Male, it is true Christian Whites are being attacked from all angles now and there’s no escape. (I confirmed this all with Perasso and didn’t make assumptions based off of his appearance) But unfortunately, jokes won’t cut it. Salzmann, all I can say is I’m at a loss of fucking words. You are a goddamn blinded individual, and I’d love to witness the world that you perceive (not really, but it’d be an interesting and traumatic experience). How fucking dare you mention the name Trayvon Martin to imply that “liberals” aren’t “looking at facts.” The facts are that a 17 year old black male was shot in the chest by a white latino man on the neighborhood watch after buying Skittles and an Arizona Iced Tea under the grounds from Zimmerman that Martin was behaving “suspiciously” (which is safe to assumed is biased, since recently Zimmerman co opened a gun and ammunitions store which was selling an autographed Confederate Flag (please save me the Heritage, Not Hate bullshit when you eventually reply acting all pompous) that prided itself on “no muslims allowed.” http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/08/18/muslim-free-gun-store-george-zimmerman-confederate-flag-prints-florida/31914299/
You really amaze me, I’m honestly at a loss of words. Anything that involves white men doing morally bankrupt or corrupt things (us white men have done plenty of evil shit), that may or may not even relate to you, you get all up in arms and resort to your thesaurus to drop flowery language like this is a middle school debate forum or you’re trying to get a 9 on your AP Lit essay. My name’s Jack Sullivan, and I live in CLXF (if you want to inquire further, I’ll give you my room number and invite you over for discussion so you can hopefully begin to unlearn some of this toxic shit you’re spewing.) and I’m another privileged white cishetero male who comes from a relatively wealthy family, like most of the kids at BC. Please wake up. This is concerning. You aren’t “fighting the good fight” for white men everywhere. It’s ok to be uncomfortable and to unlearn what you previously thought was ok (you need a Copernican level of unlearning at this point in my opinion). If you do want to keep spewing this shit, continue, because the backlash you are inspiring is at least leading the white moderates (which you’ll recall MLK Jr. (the token black guy you love to name drop, like racism ended after I Have A Dream or something) thought was the most threatening front to human rights for Black Americans) of BC to pick a side and create discussion. I have a feeling that the net gain for us ‘dirty damn PC liberals’ will be positive as the ignorant conservatives of BC slowly yet surely unlearn the problematic things they may believe or represent – and I hope you’re one of them.
Am I the only one who finds it odd that you put such a high value on humility, yet you clearly lack it? Perhaps you should sign up for one of those “old-fashioned humility” classes this upcoming registration period. Also, your use of Latin is essentially a string of non sequiters at an attempt to prove your “intelligence.” As someone who took Latin for six years, I can say that your use of it doesn’t impress me – anyone can memorize a bunch of phrases with enough practice. If you want to at least seem intelligent write intelligent thoughts supported by more than your personal beliefs and a priori proofs.
Dear Miss Abelite,
“Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it is thinking of yourself less” (C.S. Lewis). Of course, you can consider me prideful, but I submit that it is only because, as I say, you do not think that I write “intelligent thoughts”–i.e., that you disagree with my politics.
By the way, I didn’t put the Latin in just to prove my own intelligence–I honestly couldn’t care less what others think of my intelligence. I put it in because I think (1) that it has a point and (2) that it crystallizes my argument. Writing the phrase in its own language is no fault, surely? I sincerely congratulate you for having taken Latin for six years: I have not, and I only know a little bit (e.g., the Latin of the Catholic Mass). So I am no Latin scholar, and I certainly did not put it in to impress anyone (not knowing that much myself).
With that said, I can state confidently that the usage here is not “…a string of non sequiters [sic]…” but rather the last lines of the Hail Mary, or “Ave Maria.” See this source: http://www.ewtn.com/library/PRAYER/LATROSAR.htm.
I truly thank you for having written an intelligent and debatable comment as opposed to those of the other posters here. All the best for you and your family.
Cordially,
KJS
“Go back and learn some humility”
ends letter with pretentious Latin quote
alright
Dear Miss Oh,
See below response to Miss Abelite.
Best,
KJS
Hi buddy,
Wouldn’t call anything in your original LTE, this LTE, nor your comments a “response.” More like empty words chosen from a thesaurus. Nice try though.
Since you like quotes so much though, here’s one from Louis CK: “When a person tells you you’ve hurt them, you don’t get to decide that you didn’t.” Maybe the point we’re trying to make will go down better when it’s coming from a white man.
Karl what would your beloved Jesus say about all of the fuckery that you spew, since you love to bring up MLK to people of color? What love for your (non-white, and “liberal”) neighbors have you shown at all throughout all of the things you have said?
Your “perceived” level of persecution is nothing close to what people of color experience on a daily basis. I won’t even get into what is fundamentally wrong with your argument, because if you refuse to see the other side (just like you have accused everyone else of doing), then there is no way JeSusS H ChRISt himself will get through to you.
As my senior drill instructor once stated (screamed): if it looks like a boot, acts like a boot, it’s probably a fuckin boot. You’re a goddamn boot Karl.