ABSTRACT
The enslaved mind of the white supremacist Southerner is a useful metaphor for the potential enslavement of our beleaguered minds. Rescue involving the re-integration of the mind means facing painful, warded-off truths with openness and humility. Rob Riemen notes the inevitable roots of fascism which plague the modern mind, and he defines fascism as “the political cultivation of our worst irrational sentiments: resentment, hatred, xenophobia, lust for power and fear.” A truly democratic civilization, Riemen notes, relies on the “human capacity to transcend ourselves, to have imagination and empathy, and to live in truth, create beauty, and do justice,” while countering the superficial appearances of culture, including cynicism and resentment. Such a lack of rigorous instruction in exercising thought and valuing difference can lead to resentment at the frustrations encountered by the uneducated mind.
