Joseph R. Garber Quotes (2 Quotes)

I cannot feel good about being a woman unless you feel bad about being a man. I cannot be proud of being black unless you are ashamed of being white. I cannot respect myself for being gay unless you are embarrassed that you are straight. Tolerance has been put by the boards it is a stale and bitter thing and we will have none of it. Equality, likewise is condescending at best and in truth intended to demean. If I am to achieve the inner harmony and self-respect that is my due, it will not suffice for you and I to be equals. No Nothing less than superiority will make me happy. And to ensure that I make my point, I shall commend your libraries to the flames, rewrite your histories, purge your dictionaries, and arm the thought police with power to enforce political correctness in all speech and apprehension.

Such is the stuff of waking nightmares, incipient madness, the sort of now-bewildered but soon-to-be-deranged thoughts that cause once well-balanced people to peek under their beds at night, suspect that their phones are tapped, and, in time, become certain that sinister forces are monitoring their every move. Maybe it's the government, maybe it's the Trilateral Commission, maybe it's the saucer people. You can't trust anyone because anyone and everyone may be one of Them or on of Their Agents. And pretty soon you begin writing long letters to the editor of Scientific American, or maybe you don't because the editors are probably part of the conspiracy too. And you think about lining your room with aluminum foil to keep the radio waves out, and at night you roam the streets spray-painting mystic symbols on the walls to repel strange forces, and all the while you gibber to yourself and what you say makes sense to you if to no one else, and in the end you put your belongings in a shopping bag, better to be mobile, and you look for a dark place you can hide during the daylight hours, because They are out there, and They are searching, and They want you in their crosshairs. . . . The headshrinkers call it paranoia, and when it gets bad they put you away. Because, after all, people who think everyone in the world wants to kill them can be dangerous.