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DURING THE 46 YEARS THAT APARTHEID HELD SWAY IN SOUTH AFRICA (1948-1994), WHITE SOUTH AFRICANS WERE FOREVER EXPECTED to regard themselves "by Divine Right" as "privileged" and "morally superior" over all others.

Exected to believe that "privileged" whites could not expect to live in the appalling, yet deliberate, conditions of poverty and stupidity which the regime's Great Within, influenced largely by Nazi Germany, forced blacks and "coloureds" (as the apartheid regime referred to such of mixed race) to live through solely because of their "superior racial position" and Divine Will.

But, as it turned out, the end of apartheid and its replacement by multi-racial, multi-cultural government revealed just how absurd the notion was that the "superior" white peoples of South Africa could never live in conditions of poverty and squalor, let alone homelessness, solely because of an ideal about "racial superiority."

In other words, the notion of white South Africans living in poverty and squalor became one of those subjects not worth discussing in the Rainbow Nation, especially among whites of a certain class (as in too race-conscious of themselves and yet to face post-apartheid realities).

Or could it?

Especially considering remarks by African National Congress (ANC) leader Jacob Zuma the other day after he found white residents of the Bethlehem township, outside Pretoria, living in utter squalor and without electricity or running water (as quoted by the BBC):

I am shocked and surprised by what I have seen here.

The vast number of black poverty does not mean that we must ignore white poverty, which is increasingly becoming an embarrassment to talk about.

[***]

This is not about politics, it's about people who are poor, who are in need and want to be helped by government....

(Almost concurrent with Mr. Zuma's remarks was the release of a report by the charity Helping Hand, whose mission is to help poor white communities across South Africa, which found where some 130,000 white South Africans were homeless--an increase of 58% since 2002.)

Now, maybe it was time to imagine how racists and white supremacists seeking to raise funds for "evacuation and resettlement" of especially poor Afrikaner families from South Africa would react to this news--with more strident and emotionally pathetic appeals to "racial honour" crossing into "emergency," perhaps? (And still, we want to know how the funds so raised will actually be deployed.)

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WITH CERTAIN ELMER GANTRYESQUE ELEMENTS MAKING ALL MANNER OF CLAIMS ABOUT SEVERE WEATHER BEING SOME CLASS OF DIVINE WRATH AND JUDGEMENT UPON AMERICA for "abandoning His Divine Will and Prophecy" about America supposedly having an "antient and pecuilar" status among the nations (cf. Imperial China in its death throes, especially so under the Empress Dowager Cixi) ... perhaps it was time Your Correspondent suggested that "two can play @ that game!"

In this instance, perhaps it was time to ponder the likelihood of a major heatwave across central Oklahoma prompting Heat Advisories being issued being Divine Judgement for The Sooner State still subscribing to a hard-wired, latent brand of Divinely-Ordained (or so they think) homophobic sentiment--like this example, courtesy of Right Wing Watch:

From the state that brought us Sally Kern comes yet another elected official who believes gays are conspiring against him. Embattled Oklahoma County Commissioner Brent Rinehart is facing felony campaign finance charges, but his re-election campaign is in full swing, distributing a crudely drawn comic book explaining to voters how he stood up to "the homosexuals, the good ol' boy politicians, and liberals"--not to mention a cartoon Satan:

(Via Reason.)

Still, though, Your Correspondent has to wonder if many of the more blatant specimens of "patriotic" or otherwise "healthy" homophobia are themselves emotionally disturbed, or otherwise have past histories of psychoemotional abuse they refuse to acknowledge or otherwise accept.

And try to hide it by way of Al Cohol.

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TELL ME IF THIS IS ONE FOR RIPLEY:

On the same day that Democratic Presidential candidate Sen. Barak Obama spake to a crowd of some 200,000 @ Berlin's Victory Memorial, his GOP counterpart, for the sake of appealing to the Great Silent Majority of the American Heartland, made a campaign stop @ a German restaurant somewhere in Ohio.

Said Great Silent Majority essentially hardwired in accepting Fox Prolefeed as their one credible source for so-called "news and information" as is, if truth be known, closer to prolefeed--and not to question or challenge the remarks so made under fear of Divine Judgement, or so they believe.

Said Great Silent Majority essentially little more than "white trash" @ its worst--poor, undereducated or homeschooled, easily open to dangerous or questionable suggestion, their minds still weighted with racially arrogant hubris about a Luddite socioeconomic model and paradigm being the once and future socioeconomic foundation of America.

Said Great Silent Majority unlikely to accept Reality except that of a kind which Fox Prolefeed accepts to be Reality--an existentialist sort in the Ayn Rand stylee.

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STAYING WITH FOX FOR THE NONCE, YOU HAVE TO WONDER IF THE RECENT CIRCUIT COURT RULING STRIKING DOWN THE FCC'S PENALTY AGAINST CBS for that distraction otherwise known as Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" could be cited by Fox as a defence against FCC demands for substantial forfeitures in response to a peepshowesque scene in Married by America a few years back as attracted complaints based, methinks, on Religiopolitical Right-manufactured hysteria.

Especially considering the defence Fox invoketh, in the vein of this classic bit of roadside verse:

THE ONE-HOSS SHAY
HAS HAD ITS DAY
SO HAS THE BRUSH
AND LATHER WAY
USE BRUSHLESS
BURMA-SHAVE

(Otherwise known as suggesting that the prevailing FCC regulations against broadcast of "obscene or indecent material" are somehow "outdated" and "irrelevant" when Fox knows all alone that they sought to "rewrite the rules" on FreeVee so as to better appeal to the likes of Kankerdom and what passes for their purchasing power.)