Disbelieving the obvious

 

I don't remember why I was watching Oprah that day; it was in the 1990's, I think, and I must have been bored out of my mind, because that's the only way I could be induced to watch her program at all. But I am still glad I did. The guest that day was the writer and poet Maya Angelou and they were having a discussion about relationships and in the course of that conversation Ms Angelou said something that I have never forgotten because it has applications in so many other fields. They were discussing why women kept returning to toxic relationships with unsuitable men and Ms Angelou said that she didn't understand it, that when someone tells you who they are, believe them. The first time. If a man tells you that he is selfish, or his actions show you that he is selfish, then believe him: he is selfish. And then, as soon as you can, get out of the relationship because nothing good can come of it. He is not going to change.

Her admonition works on so many levels that I don't understand why it isn't taught in every political science class in the country. The French aristocracy couldn't believe that the Jacobins meant to guillotine them all; Northerners could not believe that the slave-holding South would tear the United States apart in order to keep their peculiar institution; Austria-Hungary could not believe that Serbia would fight it out rather than turn their country into an Austrian protectorate; no one, except Winston Churchill, apparently, believed that Adolf Hitler actually meant the crazy stuff he wrote in Mein Kampf. No one in Washington could believe that the Japanese would launch a surprise attack on the United States Navy, despite the fact that a surprise attack on the Imperial Russian Navy is exactly how the Japanese launched the Russo-Japanese War in 1905.  And now there are the charters of Hamas and Fatah, and the decades of terrorism since the founding of Israel. So what is an Israeli to believe? Does he believe the peace crowd that concessions on settlements or the right of return or some other point will finally at long last bring lasting peace, or does he believe what the Palestinians themselves say, which is that Israel is to be destroyed and the Jews there massacred? When a man tells you that he means to kill you and destroy your country, believe him. He knows what he wants far better than you ever will.

Dialogue

Beto: Bibi's a racist!

Bibi: What's a beto?

A beto, for those of you who may not know, is a slang term for an American of Irish descent who thinks he is a Hispanic, usually for reasons that no one can fathom, or to run for office in an area with a large number of Hispanics, which a reason everyone can fathom. (Full disclosure here: I am a person of Irish descent, although I do not think I am Hispanic, nor do I think I am Russian or even a Ukrainian pretending to Russian pretending to be Hispanic. I do, however, pretend to weigh much less than I do, a pretense I maintain by not looking at mirrors very often and avoiding weight scales as much as possible.)

Hispanic, for those of you who may not know about the minutiae of American racial classification, is an all purpose term first used in the early 1970's as a replacement term for Latino. The Census Bureau wanted a new term for persons whose ancestors came from the Spanish-speaking countries of Central and South America in order to keep their phony baloney jobs, to quote the distinguished American statesman, William Le Petomane, and I am sure that much thought and millions of man-hours went into the search for such a word. Hispanic comes from the Latin word Hispania, the Roman province that encompasses most of modern Spain, and has the benefit of meaning only those people who speak or whose ancestors spoke Spanish. Latino, you see, comes from Latinium, the province that surrounds Rome and that still exists today, I'll have you know, although with the transition from Latin to Italian the area is now called Lazio. This, of course, causes a problem with the racial spoils system as it exists in here in this our Great Republic: the authorities did not want to deal with white people named Lazio, diLazio, Romano, or DiRoma claiming social welfare benefits meant for Spanish speakers just because the word Latino makes it clear that Italians are not only Latinos, they are the original Latinos. No indeed, the word Hispanic makes it clear that what we are talking about here are honest to God Spanish-speaking people, which in the US of A usually means Mexicans, unless you are in Miami, where it means Cubans, or in New York, where it means Dominicans and Puerto Ricans. Under no circumstances, however, do either of these terms apply to a Irish-American.  An Irishman, to the Romans, would be a Scotii or a Hibernian, and never a Latino, a Hispanic, or a Beto.

So why a beto and not a duck, you might ask. Beats me, guys, I'm a stranger here myself, although being a Beto is better than being a Bobby when one is running for office. Beto, when combined with an Irish last name, sounds vaguely exotic, like Bernardo O'Higgins or Santiago O'Leary, whereas combining Bobby with an Irish last name sounds like the name of a bartender in south Boston. When one is aiming at the former, the latter is something of a let-down. And that, Bibi, is what a beto is and why it's not a bobby.

PS. There's really so much one can say here about Betos, but I am trying to get myself back into the habit of writing here, so I will just ease on in with this little bit and try to go longer at some other time. I trust everyone is doing well and that all is well with the family. See you later.