Blog Jones

Bill Whittle’s Tribes

There’s a post over at Bill Whittle’s site that I’ve been meaning to blog for some time called Tribes. This essay came soon after hurricane Katrina hit; unlike most of Bill’s posts, this one is angry and contains strong language. So, fair warning, if strong language offends you, don’t click on the link. Frankly, I think it’s worth wading through it, because I think Bill Whittle is one of the best writers of our time, and he says important stuff in here. I’ll quote and sanitize a small portion of the essay here (his emphasis throughout):

Only a few minutes ago, I had the delightful opportunity to read the comment of a fellow who said he wished that white, middle-class, racist, conservative **** like myself could have been herded into the Superdome Concentration Camp to see how much we like it. Absent, of course, was the fundamental truth of what he plainly does not have the eyes or the imagination to see, namely, that if the Superdome had been filled with white, middle-class, racist, conservative **** like myself, it would not have been a refinery of horror, but rather a citadel of hope and order and restraint and compassion.

That has nothing to do with me being white. If the blacks and Hispanics and Jews and gays that I work with and associate with were there with me, it would have been that much better. That�s because the people I associate with � my Tribe � consists not of blacks and whites and gays and Hispanics and Asians, but of individuals who do not rape, murder, or steal. My Tribe consists of people who know that sometimes bad things happen, and that these are an opportunity to show ourselves what we are made of. My people go into burning buildings. My Tribe consists of organizers and self-starters, proud and self-reliant people who do not need to be told what to do in a crisis. My Tribe is not fearless; they are something better. They are courageous. My Tribe is honorable, and decent, and kind, and inventive. My Tribe knows how to give orders, and how to follow them. My Tribe knows enough about how the world works to figure out ways to boil water, ration food, repair structures, build and maintain makeshift latrines, and care for the wounded and the dead with respect and compassion.

There are some things my Tribe is not good at at all. My Tribe doesn�t make excuses. My Tribe will analyze failure and assign blame, but that is to make sure that we do better next time, and we never, ever waste valuable energy and time doing so while people are still in danger. My Tribe says, and in their heart completely believes that it�s the other guy that�s the hero. My Tribe does not believe that a single Man can cause, prevent or steer Hurricanes, and my Tribe does not and has never made someone else responsible for their own safety, and that of their loved ones.

My Tribe doesn�t fire on people risking their lives, coming to help us. My Tribe doesn�t curse such people because they arrived on Day Four, when we felt they should have been here before breakfast on Day One. We are grateful, not to say indebted, that they have come at all. My Tribe can�t eat Nike�s and we don�t know how to feed seven by boiling a wide-screen TV. My Tribe doesn�t give a sweet **** about what color the looters are, or what color the rescuers are, because we can plainly see before our very eyes that both those Tribes have colors enough to cover everyone in glory or in shame. My Tribe doesn�t see black and white skins. My Tribe only sees black and white hats, and the hat we choose to wear is the most personal decision we can make.

That�s the other thing, too � the most important thing. My Tribe thinks that while you are born into a Tribe, you do not have to stay there. Good people can join bad Tribes, and bad people can choose good ones. My Tribe thinks you choose your Tribe. That, more than anything, is what makes my Tribe unique.

I am so utterly and unabashedly proud of my Tribe, that my words haunt and mock me for their pale weakness and shameful inadequacy.

There’s a lot more, and almost all of it is good. Such as:

In New York, we had a governor who got every available resource on the ground as fast as it could get there, and in Louisiana we have a governor who…cried. Governor, your job is to not cry. Your job is to be strong. We have plenty of civilians crying. You want to cry, cry in the car on the way home like everybody else did four years ago. Crying Governors, race-baiting mayors and looting police do not a Finest Hour make.

Again, if you can overlook the strong language (as students in college-level modern literature courses are expected to, even at BJU), it’s well worth the reading.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 15th, 2005 at 9:51 pm and is filed under Other News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Bill Whittle’s Tribes”

filosofo Says:
September 16th, 2005 at 12:57 am
Whittle has a pretty high estimation of “his tribe,” doesn’t he? I sincerely hope if he ever is in such a desperate situation as the thousands of poor people stranded in New Orleans, that he will find such a band of angels. I just don’t think it’s likely.

My limited experience has been that people can be honorable when times are good, but when the situation starts to sour, they change. And I know myself. Despite a self-estimation that approaches Whittle’s, I know that I’m often selfish and mean-spirited, covetous and greedy. I’ve never gone for five days without food or water, so I’m not sure how I’d be, but I imagine that I’d be feeling pretty cranky. I would hope at that point that Whittle and his crew would swoop in with provisions to save the lives of others and me. Or would they just lecture me from miles away about how much better people they are? Hard to say.

my Tribe does not and has never made someone else responsible for their own safety, and that of their loved ones.

Whittle must live somewhere where there’s no police force or fire department. Self-reliance is great, but when you have hundreds of thousands of people together in a city, you have to have infrastructure, which you pay for through taxes. What are you supposed to do when those in charge of the infrastructure, those you’re paying to protect you flee the city?

Whittle’s answer is that it won’t happen, because he’s surrounded himself with wonderful people. That’s no answer. Everyone is sinful and capable of all sorts of depravity, so we need checks on that depravity. When those we hire to protect us from depraved people leave their posts, then we have reason to be concerned and to blame. That’s partly what happened in New Orleans.
Blog Jones Says:
September 16th, 2005 at 7:30 am
Part of the problem with quoting just a part of the essay is that you lose some of the perspective of the rest of the piece, as the next three paragraphs demonstrate:

Membership in my Tribe is not free.

I have been the first person at four accident scenes. I have crawled into overturned cars on country roads, cars whose wheels were still spinning, and gone on hands and knees through broken glass to comfort strangers while uniformed policemen stood around outside and told jokes. I have put my triple-knit polyester chauffeur�s blazer over an elderly black woman hit by a bus and used my belt as a tourniquet to slow the dark spread of blood widening beneath her badly broken leg, and been amazed, every time, at how the sounds of approaching sirens seems to come almost before I have time to hold her hand and tell her she�s gonna be just fine.

I say this not to glorify myself � on the contrary. I am embarrassed to write such things. I am a pampered and lazy Hollywood TV editor who gets paid insane sums of money to do a cake job while much better people than me do this every day, for peanuts. There is nothing remotely heroic about me. I simply do what millions and millions and millions of my fellow Americans do every day, in ways large and small. They step up to the plate, not because they want to be heroes, but because someone has to do it. These simple people donate their time, their money, their food, their cars and their houses every single day, and ask and expect nothing in return, while a few miles away from me in Brentwood millionaire movie stars throw fabulous parties to remind each other how swell they are, then waltz out into their chauffeured limos with their tens or hundreds of millions of dollars firmly in place, feeling good that they had the chance to really make a difference by raising awareness of whichever cause they feel will most make up for their feelings of inadequacy and guilt by showing both themselves and us just how much better people they really are.

He goes into a lot of detail about the two tribes, the pink and the grey tribes and the differences between them. He doesn’t discount or ignore the police and fire departments; rather, he counts good cops and firemen among the grey tribe, the “sheepdog” tribe, the tribe that actually protects people in danger.

Not long ago, National Geographic ran a really first-rate, 4-hour documentary called INSIDE 9/11, as perfect an example as you could possibly want of the power of a real documentary to enlighten and inform without taking sides.

Watching it was horrible, especially for people like me, because we feel like if we had only known what was going on we could have done something about it.

…
[Whittle quotes another author here]
…

And that is how I felt watching every minute of that 4 hour documentary.

I could have done something.

If I had known, if I had only known, I could have run over
that evil, sick **** Mohammed Atta in the parking lot. I
could have been on one of those airplanes. They only had box cutters,
for the love of God! Those seat cushions have straps on the back for
floatation; they�d make excellent shields against a **** two inch blade. Ladies,
listen carefully�when I say go, you throw your shoes and cell phones
and these little liquor bottles and cushions and whatever you can, just
throw them right in the face of these **** and guys, when we get
up there we need to kill them, fast, just break their **** necks,
just stomp on their heads until they are dead, because I know how to land a **** airplane and�and�

Now of course, right at this moment there are people without honor
or courage who read that and think this is one big **** chickenhawk
fantasy and on some level I guess it is. All I can tell you is that
watching that show, I wished to God I had been on one of those planes,
asking only that we knew what only Flight 93 knew, and that was the
fate that was waiting for us if we did nothing.

Go read the whole thing. Seriously.

Bill Whittle’s Tribes

2 Responses to “Bill Whittle’s Tribes”

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