Angry Enough to Write

by Susan Cameron

I was going to write something new specifically for Tasty Sauce, but once again I got caught up in Inspector Gadget's blog. This time the topic was a 6-year-old gypsy girl named Dawn being repeatedly raped by her father. Dawn's mother had been given to Dawn's father by HER father as payment for a debt. The police had removed Dawn and turned her over to Social Services; the Crown Prosecution Service said there wasn't enough evidence to convict her father; Social Services put her back in the house. More cops with more horror stories chimed in. Bear with me:

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163 said on July 31 @2:43: "A long time ago, it would have been 1994 or 1995, I found a kid, about two years old, at a house where a drug dealer had been in a fight with another drug dealer. With an axe. There was claret and syringes everywhere. Mum, who was a tom with an epic crack habit, was wandering around in a main road with the baby.

I took the kid into police protection. The world went mad. Like I was some sort of lunatic. I was in my twenties and gave a shit. The social worker, who released the kid back into the mum’s custody sharpish, told me “not to project my middle class values” onto the family. First time I’d been told I was middle class, funnily enough, because my avowedly working class parents would have done exactly the same thing."

(my response)

This got me thinking about a man long ago who projected his supposedly "middle class values" and didn't feel the least bit ashamed of it.

General William Napier, an administrator during the Raj, had this to say to the Indians about the practice of suttee, according to Wikipedia:

"This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs."

My understanding is that suttee pretty much disappeared on Napier's watch.

Hanging has gone out of fashion, but wouldn't it be nice if the Prime Minister and Members of Parliament collectively said:

"The raping of children is your custom, as is trading and selling female relatives as property, and robbery, and burglary, and mayhem. But our nation has also a custom. We arrest, try, convict and sentence to prison anyone caught doing any of those things. We shall therefore begin a prison-building project, and keep you in those prisons until you are long past breeding age. Let us all act according to our customs. And, by the way, you might want to leave while you still can."

But, no. If anything, our leaders have spent the last few decades apologizing for western civilization's rules, laws, customs and expectations, not defending them. You know what I'd really like to hear, just once?

"Listen up. I'm supposed to respect your cultural differences, but you don't actually have anything resembling a culture. I could find a superior culture growing in the tank of a portajohn in the Mojave desert in August. You have the human compassion and morality of a rabid wolverine. I don't care about your thoughts and opinions any more -- I ate a bowl of corn flakes this morning that was smarter than you. Here's the deal. We have a pile of laws, most of which are variations on this theme: Do unto others as you would have them do unto to you. This is the one sentence that separates civilization from barbarism. Violate this fundamental principal, and we will remove you from our civilization. Got it? Don't worry. If you don't get it, you will understand SOON."

Okay. I'm stepping away from the keyboard. I believe there is another glass of pinot with my name on it in the kitchen. Apologies for the length of the comment, but I swear, it's either post this, or blow up at random like a badly wired IED. Thanks in advance for your tolerance.

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And now I thank you for yours. It's too bad something has to make me angry enough to write, but if that's the rocket fuel I need, so be it!

copyright Susan Cameron 2011