The Pondering Absurdist

I really hesitate to use the word “Americans,” because technically Canadians and everyone south of the border of the USA are “Americans” as well (North Americans, Central Americans, and South Americans). However, in this case I’m going to use the word as it is commonly applied, to the bunch of self-important, entitled, ignorant inhabitants of the United States of America.

Last Monday, January 20, I was sitting in the office of my boss, the president of the small civil engineering company I work for. He asked something about the (California) State employees having the day off, observing the holiday that all of the bank workers and government employees do, in remembrance of Martin Luther King Jr. As a private company, we didn’t observe the day as a holiday, but it sparked a brief conversation between him and me. I mentioned that I personally thought that the next Monday was a vastly more important holiday than the one for Martin Luther King. He (as I’m sure would be typical of at least 90% of the American population) didn’t know what I was referring to, and had to ask what I was talking about. I mentioned that next Monday (today), January 27 is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and I said that I thought the murder of over 6 million Jews, two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish people, outweighed the murder of one black man on a motel balcony in Tennessee. He immediately disagreed with me, defending the importance of Martin Luther King. I agreed that sure, he had done quite a bit for the civil rights movement, but did that really compare to the genocide of an entire race of human beings? He hemmed and hawed, and continued to downplay how that wasn’t really as important to Americans as much as MLK. I just shook my head and went back to my desk to continue my work.

It seems that’s how it goes with most residents of the US… they are very self-centric, with a “fuck the rest of the world” mentality. And it’s yet another reason to hang my head in embarrassment and offer my apologies for being a citizen of “the greatest country in the world.” (cough, cough)

I, as a citizen of the world, urge you to please take at least a few minutes of your time this day to remember the horrible atrocities that Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany carried out against the Jewish peoples during World War 2. Stand for what’s right, and don’t ever let it happen again. The day, January 27, 1945, was actually the day that the Soviet Army liberated the last of the prisoners from the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. That makes it a good day in history, but it is now (and has been since 2005) a day of remembrance of the holocaust. A day to say “Never Forget”… and “Never Again.”

Namaste

PA