I Guess I'm The Bad Guy

The chair of the Democratic National Committee attributes the poor showing of Republicans to the fact that they have become too white and too male.  I have no love for Republicans, but as a white male I find this statement fascinating.  Imagine if a prominent white male had proclaimed in 2004 that the Democrats fared poorly that year because they were too brown and too female.  I doubt he would escape swift and severe condemnation, and rightfully so, yet the indictment of white males has been repeated numerous times since the election and provokes merely laughter or nodding approval.

The other day when I ran down a list of just some of the wonders we have given humanity -- Plato's Republic, the Parthenon, the Code of Justinian, the Magna Carta, the Renaissance, Shakespeare, Goethe, the Enlightenment, Mozart, Beethoven, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, abolition of (chattel) slavery, electricity, telephones, airplanes, space exploration, air conditioning, medicine, computers, and every other life-extending and labor-saving miracle modernity has to offer -- it became very difficult for me to understand why so much hatred is directed at us.

But then it hit me.  I recalled that in my own life the people who treated me the worst were always the ones I had treated the best.  We are hated not in spite of the good we do.  We are hated because of it.  Because that is what truly sets us apart.

Now, I'm sure someone will read this and become incensed even though all I have done is defend myself against calumny.  Between angering people or meekly being whipped like a dog, I must choose the former.  And if that makes me the bad guy, so be it.