THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

HALF COKE AND HALF BEER - YUM YUM!! | 2002-03-23

Hundreds of millions of people love beer. Hundreds of millions of people love Cola. So the most popular drink on earth should be a mixture that is half Coca-Cola and half beer. But in the real world nobody bottles this combination for reasons that are obvious to any sane person.

Cola and beer are each the result of a separate evolution. Soft drinks competed for the favor of soft drink lovers and different beers competed for the favor of beer lovers. Throw them together and you have a mess.

You might even call it a melting pot.

But in a multiracial, multicultural society, such an observation is verboten. In the real world, the great beauties are seldom mixed bloods. You are still allowed to say "a beautiful blond," though I believe that remark will get you lynched by Melting Pot conservatives when liberals get around to condemning it. Our language adjusts to the melting pot every day. Every day a new expression is found to be racist or culturally judgmental.

So when I mentioned in a newsgroup that I didn't like the looks of mixed races in the same way I didn't like the taste of Cola and beer mixed, the immediate response was that the British just love Cola and beer mixed. I pointed out that if this were true there would be at least one bottler mixing the two somewhere on earth, and there isn't.

The fellow who made this point backed down and was an obvious fool, but his logic is impeccable to today's conservatives. You simply cannot allow people to get away with expressing an obvious taste or feeling in a multicultural society. What you say about what you see, feel or taste must be Adjusted.

In a multicultural, multiracial society the sociopath has a natural advantage that a person with a conscience simply cannot overcome. A sociopath spends his entire life adjusting what he calls the truth to something besides what he plainly sees or feels. For honest people, the strain becomes enormous, and finally they say something inexcusable.