Tuesday, June 2, 2020

I believe, I believe my time ain't long.

 I'm getting really bad about getting these out before 8 p.m. Part of it's the onset of summer. If me and my buddy Otis, the Jack Russell, are going to take our afternoon constitutionals, it makes sense to wait until around 6 p.m. so it cools off some. That means my nap gets pushed back and supper gets pushed back, so it's past 8 p.m. by the time I get good and sat down.

 I've been kicking around the idea of putting something out in the morning, sort of a "things to know today" type of deal. I'm a night owl by inclination and really don't keep a set schedule. It makes as much sense as doing a daily wrap up, I suppose. It'll all have to wait until I get a little more energy to do anything but read and sleep and occasionally play XCOM, of course.

 I've been curiously detached the last couple of days, at least since the middle of last week. A lot of it is, no doubt, the fallout from the George Floyd protests. I shouldn't be as let down as I am by so many of Our Fellow Americans chomping at the bit to unleash full-metal jacket hell at the untermensch because they've never pretended to be anything other than what they are. Nevertheless, it always depresses me a bit the amount of joy people seem to take out of hate.

 They were fairly quiet in the beginning. I guess the cop's murder of Floyd was so blatant they couldn't pretend it was business as usual like the could with most of the rest. Now, they're screaming for blood and believing every half-ass fake tweet from some limp white nationalist pretending to be AntiFa gearing up to storm the suburbs. They claim they're protecting themselves from rioters, but they're lying. White supremacy is so built into the American consciousness that these people equate being against it as being against America.

 And who knows? Maybe they're right. This is a country built of slavery and Native genocide, on Chinese exclusion acts and Irish need not apply. Hell, we call marijuana "marijuana" because it elicits visions of scary Chicanos in zoot suits and low riders. Even our myth of the cowboy goes out of its way to ignore anyone who wasn't a white guy being a cowboy. As soon as we could make rock & roll white and white only, we did.

 I really don't know what to do. Besides this, I mean, and this seems so... nothing. People have asked me for the past two decades, "Matt, you grew up in one of the most redneck counties in the most redneck region of the most redneck state in the country, a place almost synonymous with 'racial violence'. How did you become such a bleeding heart, left wing type instead of a full-on Republican?"

 The answer is I really honestly don't know. I mean, I'm not perfect and had to learn a helluva lot once I left Mississippi, but even before I wasn't quite as far gone as most of my peers. I remember multiple classmates talking about the Sins of Ham and I always thought that was off. I never did get why I was supposed to hate Jews or homosexuals when I'd never interacted with any. Of course, years later, some folks came out as gay or lesbian, but that's neither here nor there.

 If it's anything, it's one of two things. One, actually believing the stuff my elders told me instead of treating it as pretty words. "How would you think Mrs. Ferguson would feel if she heard you saying that word?" "Treat people with respect no matter what." That sort of thing. The other thing was probably because Momma coached basketball, had black players, and back when Daddy drank too much to be left alone with, I spent a whole lot of time around those girls. People are people, and I've thought that from the beginning.

 It doesn't mean I haven't said things or acted in ways that were racist. I'm a white man in a racist society. Furthermore, I'm a Southerner and this whole "Lost Cause" business is mainly we're pissed off at having to treat black people like humans and/or getting all the grief when the rest of the country is full of ghettos and barrios and sundown towns that White America seems as normal and just.

 Soldiers are being sent to deal with protesters with fixed bayonets. I don't know why that's shaking me so much after everything else that's happened in the past week, but damn, that is unsettling. The DEA has been authorized to conduct secret surveillance on protesters. That ain't right. The military is telling us we're the enemy. That ain't right.

 If people think the military won't fire on them, they are living in dreamland. There's been stories of National Guardsmen having trouble "policing" the protesters because they generally work close to their home. When the actual by-God Army gets sent in to quell the "looters" it will get bloody quick and they won't hesitate. And Middle America will cheer like when Osama bin Laden was killed.

 Trump's base won't be shaken loose by anything he does.They love the idea of protesters, especially black ones, being shot dead in the street by American Might. If he gets re-elected, well... this experiment in government will be shown to be a failure.

 I don't know. It's hard to gauge things way out here in the boonies. The people I trust who are out there in it, I believe them way before I'd believe some knuckle-dragging Trump supporter or even a garden variety conservative, much less the corporate press. Hopefully - hopefully - something positive can come out of all this, if just to put the people that put Trump in the White House on notice that the bullshit is up. It's been a long time coming, but is a change going to come soon?

 Let's hope so. It doesn't have to be this way. There's enough for everyone to live a good life, have a good time, and be nice to each other with plenty left over. We just don't want to. We want there to be a clear delineation between who's worth life and who isn't.

Four decades of asking why and I still don't have anything close to an answer.

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