The White Man's Burden....a conversation

Some goddesses are puzzled by this...like me...okay, this was a phrase I had heard all of my life and kind of glossed over, "The White Man's Burden." I didn't even know where it came from. Then I had a conversation with my immensely intelligent daughter who is majoring in history and discovered it was from a Rudyard Kipling poem, written to defend Eugenics and the Euro-centric beliefs spreading at the time that the "white man" or read "western man" were somehow superior to everyone else in the world and it was our duty through imperialism to guide and shepherd other races to civilization (in our image of Industrialism and Christianity). The poem was written in the era of 1897-99, originally for Queen Victoria's Jubilee, but then replaced and reworked and written to support the U.S. conquest of the Philippine Archipelago from Spain.

I couldn't help injecting a whole load of irony, satire and sarcasm in every word of it when I read it. The plain text of it was just that strange to my modern, indoctrinated, and PC, way of thought. Plus the ignorance of disregarding civilizations that had far outstripped the complexity and sophistication of Victorian England in Ur, Central Africa, Egypt, and Middle and South America in previous centuries just because they weren't "industrialized" or "Christian" necessarily and polluting our planet to the point of unlivability for the rest of the world's inhabitants to thrive seems specious.

Reading this made me draw some very unhappy parallels with some of our extreme politicians over the last 8 years like Michele Bachmann and others who can't seem to keep their race hatred out of their comments about politics. I hate negative campaigns. Discuss the issues. Discuss inflammatory statements or stupid statements or dumb things the person or official has said or done as AN OFFICIAL or that are ILLEGAL. I don't like hate on religion. I don't care about consensual sex. CONSENSUAL being the word. If you are paying an aid, not consensual in my book. You are pandering. But I don't care what color your skin is, or what team you bat for, or how many people you are married to. if you are the President you have my respect. I took an oath and I never rescinded it. Sometimes that kind of worries me when I look at the people running...what ever happened to the Greek Golden Mean in Western thought, and Do Unto Your Neighbor? The Bible sure never said neighbors were all white. The Queen of Sheba certainly wasn't. None of the tribes of Isreal were. JESUS CHRIST wasn't! He was Middle Eastern, Duh! So was Allah. Gee! What happened to harm none? That's a good one to follow.

from a goddess who remains a very puzzled and a determined TRUE moderate on most issues...