January 20, 2019 Leonard Pitts The Miami Herald

January 20, 2019

Leonard Pitts

The Miami Herald

RE: In how your unlinkable column in today’s Miami Herald, the one sub-titled “Their silence is their approval” does great damage to both Rhetoric and Logic, 2/3rds of the Trivium no less, and in 2 languages.

Mr. Pitts

In its original DWEM – That’s Dead White European Male, in case it’s a new term for you – language, try to guess which one, it is Qui tacet consentire. It, silence gives consent, was used, spectacularly unsuccessfully I must add, by Thomas More. Thomas More? Send a SASE.

The damage to Logic, and since Logic is not a parabolic curve, is both minimal and easily ignored and repaired by the Gods of the Copybook Headings who sit by the side of the mountain quietly keeping score, is an error common to partisans of passion over thought, of people who confusingly conflate feelings with ideas. 

The axiom post hoc ergo propter hoc stands like a perpetual Horatius at the gates, protecting us from the “Off with their heads” brigade of which you are the RSM.

Your last sentence, “If you are good, yet silent, you’re not as good as you think”, reeks so much of ideological and racial hubris – “racial hubris?” make that a big SASE –

That you have stretched the envelope marked “non-malodorous fecal matter syndrome” beyond recognition there is no doubt. But it enables me to speed up what usually takes a year. Accordingly, I name you

SMARMY BASTARD OF THE YEAR

Kevin Smith

WARRIORBARDIT@BELLSOUTH.NET

PS – A recently elected Congresswoman, and to state the obvious, not a big fan of DWEMdom, with a name that is as unwritable as it is non-euphonic called the President of the United States a “motherfucker”. Since there is no record of you objecting to her statement can we assume that you believe that the President is a “motherfucker”? Maxine Waters, and let us stipulate that since Congressman Livingstone is no longer in Congress, she is the member most likely to be caught stealing a hot stove, once described a TV scene showing her constituents looting and pillaging a 7-11 as “alternative shopping”. Since the pictures showed only Black people stealing can we assume that, since you said nothing, White looters are bad while Black looters are, at worst, morally neutral and, under certain circumstances; e.g. nasty White people doing shitty things to irenically idyllic Black folk, morally superior? BTB, rape is the logical codicil to looting and pillaging and, since there is no record of you saying Nay, would it not be Logical – there’s that White Privilege

Again – to conclude that you are in favor or rape? And, if rape is a conclusion too far to reach, can I say that you are at least in favor of Bedlam?

PPS – Would you know if Verbum Dei High School is still in South Central Los Angeles? Also, is Holy Angels Grammar School still in Chicago? As a not quite guilt-ridden White guy, a guy I might add with impeccable liberal credentials, including being a civil rights activist who got smacked in the head by a policeman on the steps of the court house in Newark, NJ, a lay missionary, and a Peace Corps Volunteer, a product of my age, I like to keep track of all those checks I wrote a long time ago.

PPS – I am writing this before the sun is up. I am watching Channel 10 report on several hundred Black men riding motorcycles and ATVs in a reckless fashion to celebrate MLK Day. Could you tell me, using declarative sentences, how feral Black youth disobeying the law in a way that MLK, Gandhi, and Mandela probably would not understand, celebrates his life or his work? Also, how does it advance the Kumbaya cause of “We Shall Overcome”, followed by a serene chorus of “Imagine”, accompanying the reading of the collected wit and wisdom of Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Mikey Dukakis, and John Edwards and How I Was Able to Find My non-Rubenesque Ass Using Only One Hand written by Chiquita Octavio Cortez and whether or not Barack Obama has found those elusive 7 or 8 missing states?