THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

TO KNOW WHERE WE ARE, THE FIRST QUESTION IS: WHO ARE "WE?" | 2002-04-20

In order to understand real history in time, we must first face real history in space. When all the Politically Correct horsehockey has been put to bed and the talk gets serious, all mention of the Democratic Republic of the Congo disappears like mist and we begin to discuss real places.

Even when serious discussions go into the possible effect of the non-white world on real history, the analysis is of non-human factors. The third world may be important because of "ITS numbers." The Moslem world may be important because its population happens to be sitting on top of oil. When we get serious about Rwanda, its human population and history are less relevant to us than that of the handful of gorillas who live there.

In other words, when you stop talking horsehockey and your time gets valuable, you get down to priorities. And as we all know, real world priorities can be enormously insulting. Truth is seldom kind and reality is NEVER Politically Correct.