I DREAMT OF THE FAMINE.

Last night I was in Ireland in my dreams. It was not today's quaint land of gastropubs and green fields. No. I was in the Ireland of The Great Famine, the Ireland where my paternal great-grandfather was born. 

A witchy woman, devoid of teeth, served me a hollowed slab of old tree containing a brown stew.  I was in the body of a small boy. She was as dessicated as an Egyptian mummy, but she mustered cheer as she placed the stew before me. The smell was vile. It was a dark brown gravy, punctuated with small lumps and the occasional small meatless bone. It tasted of dirt and tree roots. 

I left most of it uneaten and fled to a muddy yard outside the simple one-room cottage. An officious man approached me and asked if I had eaten recently. I nodded and said, "Stew, sir." He entered the cottage. Things were thrown about. The witchy woman, to whom I felt some attachment, was dragged away. I awoke as fear and panic gripped me.

My paternal great-grandfather was brought to the U.S. by his parents as an infant in the 1840's. They came from Bantry in West Cork. And, as far as I know, they were not the worst off of Irish at the time. The family were publicans. Where that too-real memory of famine came from to form my dream is unclear. But my maternal ancestors were serfs in Belarus and Lithuania. Plenty of grist for the congenital nightmare mill.

Do people who rant about White Privilege actually believe their own drivel? 

Human beings of all shapes and colors have subjugated, raped, starved and exploited their own neighbors throughout human history. While African slavery was one of the more egregious forms of atrocity, let us not forget the many instances of outright and intentional genocide throughout human history. 

American Indian tribes and African aboriginal tribes attempted extermination of their rivals throughout history. The pre-colonial Americas were not a Peaceable Kingdom by any means. The White Man did not bring war and genocide to America. It was already here, just on a smaller regional scale. 

The treatment of the Irish, starting with the Normans of the 11th Century, entailed centuries of mass murder, exploitation of natural resources and hard labor. Ireland's largely treeless landscape is testimony to the raping of its forests for fuel and lumber by the English over the centuries: A monument to Privilege and Religion. 

I will be haunted by my Famine dream for a while. It was particularly lucid. It has reminded me of the human suffering everywhere which is out of my individual control. Some of that suffering is imposed by power. Most is imposed on children by parents who did not have the proper resources to reproduce responsibly in the first place. 

What about the human rights of the unborn yet to come into poverty and ignorance? Should their human rights always be less than the reproductive rights of the immature, irresponsible and ignorant? Are petty religious, racial and ethnic conflicts really ethical occupations for an enlightened humanity?