Zadie Smith & "The Thinking Housewife": "Hidden In Plain Sight" And "Overlooking The Obvious"

"Brain Pickings" Focuses Zadie Smith On Optimism And Despair: The Hidden Meaning Of Racism

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2018/02/brain-pickings-focuses-zadie-smith-on.html

Dear Fred,

The ease with which we "overlook the obvious" is the flip side of how easily things are "hidden in plain sight."

Directly and indirectly Zadie Smith spotlights the colossal brutality of those polities that aspire after racial purity - Nazi Germany and Zionist Israel. (In the case of Zionist Israel, it might be more accurate to refer to a preference for racial purity rather than the active aspiration that prevailed til the 1960s.)

The Thinking Housewife and other white supremacists cannot acknowledge the existence of this stunning brutality because without it, their world view falls apart - their identity dissolves into the same terror Jimmy Stewart experiences in "A Wonderful Life" after wishing he'd never been born. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_CwatXdxUA

From the perspective of those white Christians who despise "the Jews," it is tonic to recall that Jesus was a practicing Jew and that 25 of the 27 books in the New Testament were written by practicing Jews - Jews who came to see themselves as devotees of the unique Jewish prophet, Yeshua the Nazarene, but Jews until their dying day.

Pax - Shalom - سلام

Alan

PS I have long marveled that America's most enduring racial animus coincides geographically with The Confederacy and in that benighted Trump-loving swamp infects people who see neither irony nor significance that their forbears (whether we call them "White Supremacists" or, euphemistically, "White Nationalists") were responsible for importing millions of black slaves whose descendants they now fault for "corruption," "degradation" and "decline."  If they had any intellectual accomplishment or integrity, they would fault themselves and their spiteful lineage for having brought this "evil" on themselves. Have you seen "Mudblood" yet? Not a great film, but a very good film. https://www.vox.com/2017/11/15/16646504/mudbound-review-dee-rees-carey-mulligan-mary-j-blige-netflix

Psychological Projection

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/10/projection-psychology.html

Psychological Shadow

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_(psychology)

The Evangelical Persecution Complex (Projection's Finest Hour?)
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-evangelical-persecution-complex.html

Psychological Projection Indicts "The Good Christians," Not The People They Indict

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/10/projection-psychology.html

Psychological Projection, "The Shadow" And American Conservatism's Hatred Of Islam

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/02/psychological-projection-shadow-and.html

Psychological Projection: Who's The Idiot?

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/02/psychological-projection-whos-idiot.html

Best Pax Posts On Psychological Projection And "The Shadow"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/02/best-pax-posts-on-psychological.html

"Are Republicans Insane?" Best Pax Posts
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/12/are-republicans-insane-best-pax-posts.html

"American Conservatives And Oppositional-Defiant Disorder"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/09/arrested-development-american.html

"The Republican Party Is A Satanic Cult"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-republican-party-is-satanic-cult.html

The Psychiatric Diagnosis Of American Conservatives: Folie à Plusieurs

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-psychiatric-diagnosis-of-american.html

The Civil War: White Christians Slaughtering One Another On A Scale ISIS Can Only Dream Of

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-civil-war-white-christians.html

Alan: Speaking of ISIS, Obama was right.

ISIS was al Qaeda's "JV team."

"Conservatives Scare More Easily Than Liberals"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/07/conservatives-scare-more-easily-than.html

"Bank On It: The South Is Always Wrong"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/07/bank-on-it-south-is-always-wrong.html

"The Reign of Morons Is Here," Charles P. Pierce, The Atlantic

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-reign-of-morons-is-here-atlantic.html

"A Southerner Explains Tea Party Radicalism: The Civil War Is Not Over"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/10/a-southerner-explains-tea-party.html

"People Who Watch Only Fox News 

Know Less Than People Who Watch No News"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/07/watching-only-fox-news-makes-you-less.html

"Thomas Aquinas On American Conservatives' Continual Commission Of Sin"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/12/thomas-aquinas-on-american.html

"Is Perfectionism A Curse? Paul Ryan Tells The Truth"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/09/paul-ryan-tells-truth.html

Teddy Roosevelt: "Malefactors Of Great Wealth... Are Curses To The Country"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/09/teddy-roosevelt-malefactors-of-great.html