Black History

 

This post comes courtesy of my friends Dory and Nadine Lerner.

"It's critical to understand our history.  Once you do, I think it's easy to see why we are where we are today, and hopefully obvious why Black Lives Matter has so much support.  The system was very much designed with people of colour in mind - with the sole purpose of keeping them suppressed.  It's well beyond time to break that wheel.

Don’t really get all the Black Lives Matter stuff?

400 years ago white people enslaved Black people.

And sold them.

And treated them as less than human.

For 250 years.

While white men built the country and created its laws and its systems of government.

While 10 to 15 generations of white families got to grow and flourish and make choices that could make their lives better.

150 years ago white people "freed" Black people from slavery.

But then angry white people created laws that made it impossible for them to vote.

Or to own land.

Or to have the same rights as white people. And even erected monuments glorifying people who actively had fought to keep them enslaved.

All while another 5 to 10 generations of white families got to grow and accumulate wealth and gain land and get an education.

60 years ago we made it "legal" for Black people to vote, and to be "free" from discrimination.

But angry white people still fought to keep schools segregated.

And closed off neighborhoods to white people only.

And made it harder for Black people to get bank loans, or get quality education or health care, or to (gasp) marry a white person.

All while another 2-3 generations of white families got to grow and pass their wealth down to their children and their children's children.

Present day...

And then we entered an age where we had the technology to make PUBLIC the things that were already happening in private: the beatings, the stop and frisk laws, the unequal distribution of justice, the police brutality (in the south, police began as slave patrols designed to catch runaway slaves).

And only now, after 400+ years and 20+ generations of a white head start, are we STARTING to truly have a dialogue about what it means to be Black.

White privilege doesn't mean you haven't suffered or fought or worked hard.

It doesn't mean white people are responsible for the sins of our ancestors.

It doesn’t mean you can’t be proud of who you are.

It DOES mean that we need to acknowledge that the system our ancestors created is built FOR white people.

It DOES mean that Black people are treated at a disadvantage because of the colour of their skin

It DOES mean that we owe it to our neighbours - of all colours - to acknowledge that and work to make our world more equitable.

Because Black Lives Matter.

Understanding why we have to say this matters.

Your voice in this movement matters. Recognizing privilege, power and history matters."

Crimes and Misdemeanours

It's getting to the point where the U.S. seems to be descending into anarchy.  A selection from my Twitter feed this evening:

"My daughter, 17, asked a customer at her work to wear a mask. He threatened her by showing her his gun and telling her he has a right to carry a gun and to choose if he wears a mask or not."

"That happened in a store I worked in. I slowly motioned for my co-worker to call security. Within seconds security came running over from all directions. I had no idea how many plain-clothes security we had. Police came and arrested him for inciting violence."

"Someone trespassing in my back yard I asked to leave - nicely - told me he would kill my dog, and pointed a gun with a laser sight on it at my dog's head. They aren't nice people. I own my home."

"In Michigan a security guard was shot when he requested a customer wear a mask before entering the store.  Family went home, came back with guns, and one member shot and killed him."

"My 17 year old was told by a customer that she would have to call the cops if she wanted him to put on a mask."

That's only a small sample of the heinous actions that people are seeing every day.

Trump has brought out the worst in people with his self-centered and divisive rhetoric.  Whether it's deliberate or not is up to debate, but the result is the same.  More and more people are brandishing their guns and claiming the "freedom" to do so.  That makes them no better than terrorists, whose only purpose is to threaten and/or kill those who oppose their ideology.

Some ask: if the gun nuts are so eager to use their guns, why not join the police or military?  The trouble is that many already have.  It's clear that certain elements of the police and military are there solely to take advantage of the ability to hurt and kill people they don't like.  And more often than not, the system is rigged in such a way that they can get away with it.

In the meantime, those people who find themselves facing a gun barrel through no fault of their own will be traumatized for life.  That is, if they survive the encounter at all.  People of colour now have to teach their children how to interact with a police officer, for fear of their lives.

That's not the way for a civilized country to do business.

Refusing to do something simple to help your fellows (like wearing a mask during a pandemic), just because it inconveniences you, is selfish, stupid, and throws dirt on all the sacrifices that our ancestors made so we could all could have a better life.

There are times that I wish we could exile all the stupid people to an island somewhere and rebuild a better society.

Owning the Liberals

 

Original post by "Bev", copied with permission.

The question was posed, "Why do people continue supporting Trump no matter what he does?" A lady named Bev answered it this way:

“You all don't get it. I live in Trump country, in the Ozarks in southern Missouri, one of the last places where the KKK still has a relatively strong established presence.  They don't give a s#*! what he does. He's just something to rally around and hate liberals, that's it, period.

He absolutely realizes that and plays it up. They love it. He knows they love it.  The fact that people act like it's anything other than that proves to them that liberals are idiots, all the more reason for high fives all around.

If you keep getting caught up in "Why do they not realize this problem?" and "How can they still back Trump after this scandal?", then you do not understand what the underlying motivating factor of his support is. It's "f**% liberals", that's pretty much it.

Have you noticed he can do pretty much anything imaginable, and they'll explain some way that rationalizes it that makes zero logical sense?  Because they're not even keeping track of any coherent narrative, it's irrelevant. "F**% liberals" is the only relevant thing.

Trust me; I know firsthand what I'm talking about.

That's why they just laugh at it all because you all don't even realize they truly don't give a f**% about whatever the conversation is about.  It's just a side mission story that doesn't matter anyway.  That's all just trivial details - the economy, health care, whatever.

"F**% liberals."

Look at the issue with not wearing the masks.  I can tell you what that's about. It's about exposing fear. They're playing chicken with nature, and whoever flinches just moved down their internal pecking order, one step closer to being a liberal.

You've got to understand the one core value that they hold above all others, is hatred for what they consider weakness, because that's what they believe strength is: hatred of weakness.

And I mean passionate, sadistic hatred.  And I'm not exaggerating. Believe me.

Sadistic, passionate hatred, and that's what proves they're strong, their passionate hatred for weakness.
Sometimes they will lump vulnerability in with weakness.  They do that because people tend to start humbling themselves when they're in some compromising or overwhelming circumstance, and to them, that's an obvious sign of weakness.

Kindness = weakness.  Honesty = weakness.  Compromise = weakness.

They consider their very existence to be superior in every way to anyone who doesn't hate weakness as much as they do.  They consider liberals to be weak people that are inferior, almost a different species, and the fact that liberals are so weak is why they have to unite in large numbers, which they find disgusting, but it's that disgust that is a true expression of their natural superiority.

Go ahead and try to have a logical, rational conversation with them. Just keep in mind what I said here and be forewarned.”