CULTURE/SOCIETY: "They" are People Too and The Art of Eating Popovers

This is from an email that an old Peace Corps buddy from Texas who teaches at the university there. He gave me permission to reprint it. - OlderMusicGeek.

Today's quote from Wordsmith (A Word a Day) is one that should get the attention of every thinking person:

The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain
other sets of people are human. -Aldous Huxley, novelist (1894-1963)

How many of the political issues of the day would become altogether more tractable if all sides would take a moment to remember that the other "set of people" are human? Hello!? Immigrants are people. The homeless and the uninsured are humans. Iranians aren't some alien species; they're people, too. Anyone proposing to ostracize, demonize, incarcerate, torture, bomb or otherwise harm another set of people needs to be reminded that the people in question aren't abstractions; they're people. They have parents, children, husbands and wives, wants and needs just like the rest.

One of the former volunteers on our Peace Corps mass emailing said that maybe they should read Horton Hears a Who by Dr Suess. But this actually brings to my mind the commencement speech Dr Suess gave to Lake Forest College in 1977.

My Uncle Terwilliger on
the Art of Eating Popovers

My uncle ordered popovers
from the restaurant’s bill of fare.
And, when they were served,
he regarded them
with a penetrating stare…
Then he spoke great Words of Wisdom
as he sat there on that chair:
“To eat these things,”
said my uncle,
“you must exercise great care.
You may swallow down what’s solid…
BUT…
you must spit out the air!”

And…
as you partake of the world’s bill of fare,
that’s darned good advice to follow.
Do a lot of spitting out the hot air.
And be careful what you swallow.