It doesn't matter if it comes from the "right" or the "left," oppression is still oppression

 

For the second time in two weeks I went to a Starbucks location situated in a QFC store on Broadway in order to order a simple cup of drip coffee, and for the second time I walked away angry without one. Apparently there was a new “crew” on board last week, because there appeared to be a white male overseeing the proceedings who I suspected was a district manager or something of that ilk. There were three “baristas” working at this location, two white females and a black male. I hung around long enough to be disturbed with the lack of “personal” service that first occasion and just walked off.

Today, I returned to the location, thinking that maybe it was just my “imagination” that they had been deliberately rude to me. But I didn’t sense any “change”: the white females were just milling around even though I was the only person there waiting, and the black male, who had just finished serving a white man, just turned his back on me without saying anything and started putzing around; I could see that he was fiddling with a machine, but he was clearly taking all the time in the world and deliberately so. I pointed out the fact that there were three people there and they were all ignoring me, but that didn’t seem to have any impact on the level of “service.”

After five minutes the black male finally turned around and rudely asked me what I “wanted.” I told him I didn’t want anything and walked away, reiterating my opinion of the “service.” This person then told me “not to come back,” which was too much for me. Given the fact that this was the second time I had been treated rudely by this same crew, I called them “Nazis,” loudly, which seemed to startle them because there were other people around to hear it—and also because they were so conceited and arrogant that they could not see how others might perceive their behavior. I perceived their rude behavior as due to a bigoted, racist attitude toward Hispanics, and as I say you only have to be racist against one group to be one.

Needless to say, they needn’t worry about me going back there again—or any Starbucks location. These people didn’t know me, and I’m not the kind of person who overlooks deliberate acts of prejudice, discrimination or even mere slights, especially those of which “ethnic” bigotry are strongly suggestive. Not only am I writing this, but I also composed a customer complaint to Starbucks on its website.

I have said many times that I do not regard Seattle as a particularly “liberal” or “progressive” city, because if it is, then we have to redefine our terms. I am reminded of the 70s cult film classic Massacre at Central High, which—for all you committed videophiles who are unaware of this—is currently available in a limited edition Blu-ray/DVD combo set for sale only on Synapse Films’ website. It was originally slated for release in 2015 after the HD film master was completed, but because the studio refused to provide the original audio track, Synapse had to cobble together the director’s own incomplete work print of the audio along with bits and pieces from other sources, but nonetheless sounds acceptable on the final product.

In this film some seemingly quiet kid named David shows-up as a new student at Central High School; he apparently was invited by a former friend named Mark who owed David some favors and thought it would be an opportunity for him to forget the problems he had at another school, and get a fresh start. Unfortunately Mark also calls “friends” a gang of bullies which “controls” the school, and they exert this control by beating up people who “get out of line”—all the while defending their actions by making various fascist-style pronouncements about how people should conduct themselves. The movie isn’t particularly subtle about its social politics; one victim of bullying, Spoony (Robert Carradine), is spotted by the bullies painting a swastika on one their lockers and receives his due punishment, while a group of girls refers to them as “little league Gestapo.”

Unlike everyone else in the school, David is not willing to ignore this behavior, although Mark repeatedly tries to establish a “truce” between him and the bullies to protect him from their predations. But after David thwarts the bullies from raping two female students, they decide to teach him a “lesson” and cripple him after knocking over a jack while he is under a car doing a repair job. After that, David decides to rid the school of this fascist element in his own immutable way.

Once they are out of the way, everything is just peaceful, democratic and equal, right? Wrong. Because the very people who were bullied because they were either “out-of-place” or had the audacity to defy the bullying, now themselves become the bullies, although not by physical force, but out of narcissism, self-righteousness, self-superiority and a brand of social order that must have its own “inferiors” to oppress, because not everyone is as intellectually capable or can belong to the political or social “class” that is now in control. David, seeing that he has only helped replace an oppressive fascist clique with one that claims to be “democratic” but is in fact equally as oppressive, must set things “right” again—although this time, he believes that none of the students at Central High are worth “saving,” save for one girl he has feelings for.

Over a century before the arrival of the Nazis, the German writer Goethe wrote in a letter to a friend that “I have often felt a bitter sorrow at the thought of the German people, which is so estimable in the individuality, yet so wretched in the generality. A comparison of the German people with other peoples arouses a painful feeling, which I try to overcome in every possible way.” What Goethe was saying that the individual German was worthy of high “esteem,” but that collectively they have a “herd” mentality easily swayed by self-destructive and immoral impulses; Goethe’s words proved to be remarkably prescient—although certainly to a far more horrifying extent than he could have imagined.

But I don’t believe that maxim necessarily describes what I see in Seattle. But what I do know is that not everyone here is “estimable,” in fact I would put those who qualify in the minority, because what is “estimable” should include personal qualities such as simple human decency and an absence of prejudice; narcissists and “superstars in their own minds” types “generally” possess neither quality.  Thus for me terms like “individual” and “generality” essentially have the same meaning when it comes to this place.