The Codger, Guy Graybill, is back to Visit Musing About Baikal...

An Explanatory note: Codgers are men of advanced years who are always associated with grumpiness. Of course they're grumpy. Codgers are not codgers because of age; but because they've witnessed too damned much nonsense in life, with most of it repeated ad nauseam...

The Codger Muses...

BAIKAL

This photo of Lake Baikal is courtesy of TripAdvisor

There's a lake in Asia that has garnered a number of impressive superlatives. It is among the most ancient of the world's lakes at more than 25 million years old. It is a great geological rift that continues to widen, almost imperceptibly. Lake Baikal is so immense that it holds about 1/5 of the world's unfrozen fresh water. The lake is surrounded by mountains, the tallest of which surpasses 9,000 feet. Before the migrations into the area in recent centuries, the ethnic population was a mix of Eskimo and Mongol populations. The waters of more than 300 streams pour into this marvelous natural reservoir. Despite all the inflow of waters, there is but one stream carrying water from Lake Baikal. The stream flows from the Baikai rift as the

Anagara River. That river, carrying the waters of more than 300 incoming streams plus huge quantities of natural precipitation, flows west, where is is spanned by the large city of Irkutsk (500,000 plus inhabitants), then flows north and again west, where it gushes into the great Yenisei, itself a world-class river as the sixth-largest stream on the globe, in volume of water pouring from its mouth and into the Arctic Ocean.

A final superlative for Lake Baikai: It is the world's deepest lake. Its water reach a depth of more than 5,300 feet. In fact, its watery depths are so great that Russia's Soviet tyrant, Josef

(Djugashvili) Stalin, once planned to have a rail spur end just above the lake so that he could load train cars with thousands of his unwanted compatriots and run the cars and their hapless passengers directly into the lake, to disappear forever.

Lake Baikai, this unique natural wonder, is the ideal natural feature for contemplating the issue of racial purity. Consider the analogy.

It is impossible to consider all the racial distinctions in the world, because the races have been mixing from ancient times to the present. Was there ever a time when the races weren't being diluted or when the races were not diluting themselves?

It's easier to understand racial mixing if one considers the activities that lead to mixing, as much as to who was doing the mixing. To suggest that ancient races rarely mixed is to suggest that concubines couldn't conceive or that lands which were successfully assaulted didn't also provide women to be assaulted, or that slaves become sterile or that prostitutes never got pregnant. Even the simple act of migration mixed the ethnic groups. Whenever ancient peoples migrated, they came into contact with the local population. Whether through force or flirtation, that contact was often intimate.

Within the Italian peninsula, for example, we know that Etruscans, Greeks and Romans mixed. We can also assume further racial mixing when the Huns came in from the north, when the Vandals arrived from North Africa and the Carthaginian child hostages were absorbed from North Africa. In a more recent example, the Mikado's soldiers may have set historical records for rape as they moved south along Asia's Pacific rim and among the near islands.

Although all modern nations are mixed in their ethnic ties, one of the finest examples of racial mixing has occurred within the United States. Although the races were already mixed on arrival, the atmosphere within the new nation seemed conducive to interracial breeding. The new arrivals lost little time in entering into relationships with the aborigines of America or with the other immigrants. America, a great "melting pot" was also a great breeding farm. That is why Americans witness repeated displays of hypocrisy whenever folks try to isolate specific "races" for deprecation.

What pure folly drives the more "Caucasian" Americans to pervert mathematics to try clinging to some phony racial purity. Only a complete nincompoop can claim that a person who is 10% "white" and 90% "black" is also "black"! Suddenly, one realizes that the bigots who employ such asinine logic are simply trying to enlarge that segment of the population that the bigots hope to keep ever under the political and economic subjugation of a dwindling minority.

To the present day, we hear of concerns for racial purity among the Hebrew descendants; yet the christian Bible, a common source book for Hebrew history, makes clear their willingness to mix with other races. There was the concubinage of women from conquered tribes, the consorting with prostitutes of unknown racial origins and the marriage to members of other tribes. Among many examples, Hebrew marriage to other tribes included the great grandmother of David; the siring of ten tribal leaders by Jacob, four of whom had Syrian mothers; the marriage of Bathsheba to a Hittite and the marriage of the greatest of the tribal patriarchs, Moses, to Zipporah, a Midianite. Obviously, Solomon's vaunted wisdom didn't include a concern for the racial purity resulting from his bedding of 300 wives and 700 concubines.

The most illogical tale of the Old Testament tells us that the curse of a drunken father, Noah, against an innocent son, Ham, set the course of racial prejudice for the rest of History. It allowed the placing of all the world's peoples within three artificial groups, the descendants of the cursed son, Ham, as well as the two brothers, Shem and Japheth. The curse on an inebriate has created undeserved agony for great masses of humankind. Is there Biblical evidence that the Hand of God was in any way involved in this calamitous curse? Seemingly in contradiction to the curse on Ham, we are told that Abraham sired a son, Ishmael, with Hagar, an Egyptian and, we are told, Ishmael was to be the father of all Arabs. If that claim is valid, every Arab has blood diluted by the blood of Abraham. How, one must inquire, can this legacy be reconciled with the roles of Ham, Shem and Japheth and what, then, becomes of the countless peoples who already inhabited Arab lands as well as those numberless groups who had already inhabited the trackless climes of far greater distance?

Overwhelming evidence proves that the concept of "racial purity," is maintained only through self-delusion.  It is something to be bellowed about by all those leaders whose leadership is fed on bigotry. This irrational basis for racial purity is found within races that continue to mingle with other races, while pretending that they are faithful to some special racial exclusiveness.

Do Arabs, some of whom are extremely touchy about their religion, also not concerned about the ethnicity of the 72 virgins that await him after martyrdom. One must admire the snake-oil salesmanship of the Jihadist recruiters of being given 72 virgins in Paradise. Are we missing something? Does the Jihadist willingly accept martyrdom on the promise of living for an eternity in Paradise; but with less than a month's supply of maidenheads?

Clearly, Baikal's lake is analogous to the lack of humankind. Each has been thoroughly mixed and mixed again...and again. Again, we compare with Lake Baikal's immense waters. The great lake of mankind can never unmix. We must pretend to be sightless, not to see that every race is impure. Ever race has been hybridized. The races, hopelessly mixed, can only mix to a greater degree. "Ethnic cleansing" is a sham. No tyrant will ever unmix a race.

As with the waters of Lake Baikal's hundreds of inflowing streams, the human Baikal is now so thoroughly diluted that we can stop the pretense about racial superiority and begin to live as brothers and sisters in the great, deep lade of humankind.

~~~

You know, I must be a Codgeress!

There is not one word that I disagree with in this article...
I wonder why we can't get leaders who don't think of building walls or ignoring immigrants and race relations...but, rather, make sure  bureaucratic nonsense does not limit the capabilities we have to routinely manage helping others...
And instead spend our time getting rid of the drug lords and criminals who cause such turmoil and harm!