08/08/2010
From a review by Eric Kaufman in the fine British magazine Prospect of French intellectual Pascal Bruckner’s The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism:
There is more, too, to be said about guilt itself. Could it be that making guilty noises signals sophistication and status, with the high priests of the left earning psychic wages equivalent to bankers’ bonuses? Or, given the collapse of ideology, are we witnessing a new form of spontaneous guilt, where ideas such as socialism give way to knee-jerk impulses like “my comfort makes me guilty.”
Personally, I don’t think we need particularly sophisticated psychological theories about "white guilt." I haven’t noticed many people particularly wracked by personal guilt over race. Instead, it’s more an effective tool for people to get what they want from other people, money, power, admiration, or to reassure themselves that they are better than other people. For lots of people, the mentality of white guilt is simply the substance in which they swim, and they are no more inclined to stop and think about it than a fish thinks about water.
Which brings us to yet another Associated Press article, this one from mid-day Saturday, carefully sifting for evidence for the role of white racism in causing the Manchester Massacre.
The Associated Press delivers to its subscribers plain-vanilla news reporting from its reporters across the country, so these articles represent how plain vanilla journalists perceive how they are supposed to think in 21st Century America. These articles display the conceptual water in which these fish thoughtlessly swim.
Although the evidence dredged up so far appears to have been in the stupid and resentful mind of a thieving mass murderer, he was a black stupid and resentful thieving mass murderer, so attention must be paid.
Beer warehouse shooter long complained of racism
By JOHN CHRISTOFFERSEN (AP) 4 hours ago
NEW HAVEN, Conn. To those closest to him, Omar Thornton was caring, quiet and soft-spoken. He was excited to land a well-paying job at a beer delivery company a few years ago and his longtime girlfriend says they talked of marrying and having children.
But underneath, Thornton seethed with a sense of racial injustice for years that culminated in a shooting rampage Tuesday in which the Connecticut man killed eight and wounded two others at his job at Hartford Distributors in Manchester before killing himself.
"I know what pushed him over the edge was all the racial stuff that was happening at work," said his girlfriend, Kristi Hannah. …
Thornton, who grew up in the Hartford area, complained about racial troubles on the job long before he worked at Hartford Distributors.
"He always felt like he was being discriminated (against) because he was black," said Jessica Anne Brocuglio, his former girlfriend. "Basically they wouldn’t give him pay raises. He never felt like they accepted him as a hard working person."
One time Thornton had a confrontation with a white co-worker who used a racial slur against him, she said. Thornton changed jobs a few times because he was not getting raises, Brocuglio said.
"I’m sick of having to quit jobs and get another job because they can’t accept me," she said he told her.
Brocuglia, who said she dated Thornton until eight years ago, said Thornton helped her become a certified nursing aide. She said he never drank or smoked and remained calm, even when she would yell or grab him.
"He was such a caring person," said Brocuglia, who is white. "He showed me so much love. He was like a teddy bear."
Brocuglio’s sister, Toni, said Thornton would come home and say co-workers called him racial slurs. He was also upset by comments made by passers-by about the interracial couple, she said.
"He just didn’t understand why people had so much hatred in their lives," Toni Brocuglio said.
Brocuglio said Thornton put her family up in a hotel after a fire at her house and was "like a second dad" to her children.
"Omar was the best man I ever met in my life," Brocuglio said.
Thornton ran into his own troubles a decade ago when he filed for bankruptcy protection.
His debts were discharged in 2001 and the case was closed.
Around that time, Thornton was hired as a driver with Chemstation New England, a chemical company in South Windsor. But he was let go after 10 months, unable to master the mechanical skills involved handling the equipment, said Bruce LeFebvre, the owner.
"He was a real nice kid when he was with us," LeFebvre said. "Certainly I would never have expected anything like this from him."
… Thornton and his mother were especially excited when Barack Obama was elected the first African American president, Hannah said. He listed Obama and the gun range among his interests on his Facebook page.
But Hannah said he showed her cell phone photos of racist graffiti in the bathroom at the beer company and overheard a company official using a racial epithet in reference to him, but a union representative did not return his phone calls. Police said they recovered the phone and forensics experts would examine it.
"Nothing else bothered him except these comments he would make about them doing the racial things to him," Hannah said.
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