I guess it's not good for me to be using the word "self-defense" in describing certain actions I take. I think it's probably true, in a technical sense. I am afraid, most pressingly, of blinding myself to the danger. Of quiet acceptance. I am a white man. I belong, by some vague trick of ancestry, to the tribal mob one can see screaming for people's heads with great regularity on television. I am afraid of blinding myself because most white men have done exactly this. They have convinced themselves somehow that a violent demagogue with no self-control and no understanding of or respect for the political institutions of our country would be the most fit leader of what was once quaintly called the "free world".
That could be me. Ethnic majorities everywhere have contracted, why and how we still can't for certain say, a sickness, a sickness of the spirit. It is somewhat like what it must have been living in the world in the time of the plague. People you have known for all your life, people you thought were perfectly healthy, are suddenly violently ill. We can't even begin to understand why. Were they possessed by demons? Were we cursed by God for our wickedness? We mock those poor sufferers for their superstition, for their ignorance, but when you're living through it, it seems as good a guess as any.
