The concept of “minorities” in a political sense has always bemused me. Following are my somewhat random thoughts on the subject:

How can a political party that depends on a majority for its power be a true friend of a minority? They can’t. They can only be a true friend to a collection of minorities with common interests. And that collection has to be large enough to constitute a majority. But if this collection of minorities has sufficiently common interests and numbers to place a particular party and president in power are they truly a minority? The mathematician in me says no.

Since slavery, the most racist act committed by this country was the inclusion of all citizens of African descent in a single group. That group is the “black minority.” It doesn’t matter how rich or poor you are or how educated or uneducated you are; if your ancestors were African you are in that group. It doesn’t matter if you are among the most poor, uneducated and disadvantaged in the land; if your skin is white you are not in that group. It is a blatant classification of a large segment of our population on their ethnicity alone.  Jeff Foxworthy’s classification of rednecks makes more sense; he specifies hundreds of criteria, each of which can qualify you for membership in the group.

African-Americans are not alone; Hispanics, for example, have their own group. But why should Hispanics be classified separately from blacks? Aren’t their needs similar to those of blacks? I would think that the needs among blacks or among Hispanics taken separately are at least as different as the needs of both taken together. The answer is that combining the minorities might be politically threatening; if they’re all combined they may no longer constitute a minority. But an astute, populist political party can claim that it is their duty now to represent the interests of the new majority.

It seems to me that all this thrashing about over the supposed under-represented minorities is much ado about nothing. What happened to representing all the people all the time? And treating everyone equally?

(Perhaps I shouldn’t raise the question posed in the title of this post; Obama may want to create a new White House Czar for that purpose.)

Can’t find a judge with two heads? How about a dwarf? A dwarf would bring a different perspective to the Court. There are a few mental dwarves on the Court but no physically small person.

If diversity and having faced struggles are now the leading criteria for selecting Supreme Court justices, I think we should have a person with two heads on the Court. There’s the bonus, as everyone knows, that two heads are better than one.

Obama plans to spend $4 billion creating “green” jobs and training the workers. These jobs will be dedicated to renovating public housing. They will replace windows, insulation, appliances and even light bulbs. How many “green” workers does it take to change a light bulb?

Here’s an idea: Let’s stop keeping money in banks in order to remove the incentive for people to rob banks. When asked decades ago why he robbed banks Willie Sutton said, “because that’s where the money is.” So why not just stop keeping money in the banks? Because it’s a stupid idea. We don’t need banks if we can’t put our money there for safe keeping. We need to deter bank robbers by capturing them and dealing with them severely, not by giving in to them.

But that’s exactly what President Obama wants to do in closing Gitmo, give in to elements that want to harm us. He says that it has become a symbol that helps Al Qaeda recruit terrorists to its cause. He provides no evidence to support that claim but so what if it is true? Should we cease to defend our country when doing so encourages our attackers? Should we not punish our attackers when doing so infuriates their supporters? No, the only effective way to deal with them is to punish them hard and often.

Placating the enemy is never an effective strategy; it is only seen as a sign of weakness. Irritating them as often as possible is better; when angry they will make mistakes.

It’s interesting that Obama apparently believes that the radical elements around the world are stupid enough to not notice that he is just moving the detainees from Gitmo to other prisons in the US. That is, he plans to close Gitmo, not release the detainees. Or, he thinks that the radical elements are upset about the symbolism of Gitmo itself rather than the fact that their comrades are incarcerated.

Anyway, I’ve long questioned the idea that there is an endless supply of hothead fanatics ready and willing to give their lives for the cause of destroying the US. If Gitmo has been such an effective recruiting tool where are they and what have they done? To the US homeland, that is. I think it’s more likely that immediately after 9/11 they celebrated a lot and then started to ask themselves what they really accomplished. The US mourned the loss of the victims but hardly skipped a beat on the whole. And they recognized that things were now a lot tougher on them. They all had to leave Afghanistan and go find new digs (literally) in Pakistan.

Perhaps too they came to believe that the 9/11 attack just turned out to be a huge recruiting tool for the Americans.