Well, we now know. You can get a southern US jury to convict white folk for murdering a black If and Only If:
- You have a video showing the conflict
- You have a defendant who contradicts his original statements to police on the witness stand
- You can engage the attention of the entire nation on the case
But unless you have all of these conditions, you may find it difficult to bring miscreants to justice. Before the emergence of the first condition, the existence of the video, there was literally zero desire for the judicial system in the region to even charge those who hunted down Ahmaud Arbery. Literally, it took the publicizing of the video and the outrage it generated to overcome the inertia of the local justice system. But if you combine this verdict with the one in Charlottesville, maybe you can share some optimism about the effect of race on the justice system
At nearly the same moment though, we discovered a right to self-defense for anyone who wants to appoint themselves as a junior lawman, carrying a cool military-style assault weapon. Those individuals (if they are white) can strike out with impunity, causing multiple deaths, and all that is needed is to claim the right to self-defense. One more example of the types of incident we can expect now that we’ve reached supreme saturation in weaponry amongst our citizenry, many of whom believe weapons are necessary to advertise masculinity. If you believe Kyle Rittenhouse is a hero, then you, too, may be suffering from antifa derangement syndrome.
So we stumble into the last month of 2021. Hard to remember that a year ago, the first mentions of a vaccine for COVID made an appearance in the media. And those of us who were gathered around a table at Thanksgiving were thankful that an end to this pandemic appeared in sight, thanks to an advance in biotechnology just ready for implementation. Alas, we should have known things weren’t that easy. Politics got in the way of people reaching for the solution to our pandemic, and soon it was evident a significant portion of the population was gonna be agin’ the vaccine, because it was:
- Scary, new technology
- Something the evil government was in favor of, so we’ve gotta be opposed to it
- Addressing a fake problem brought up by the fake news. All of the deaths attributed to the virus were actually due to other causes, but the hospitals called them COVID-related in order to claim those government payments
- Something Fox news was against, so we’ve gotta be against it to.
So we find ourselves now in a bifurcated country. One half has gotten vaccinated and reached out for a booster shot. One half keeps discounting the vaccine and is positive the vaccine will kill those who take it within a few years due to blood clotting. Besides, the virus is not worse than a normal case of the flu, but if I get it, I’m sure this remedy with zero anti-viral properties will protect me. As I’ve said, it is not normal to see evolution in action, but we are seeing it with so many folks refusing the vaccines, thus exposing themselves preferentially to death from the virus. A few more generations of this, and the surviving populations will consist mainly of science believers, instead of science deniers.
Where we find ourselves on the science continuum is likely where we are on the spectrum of belief around racial justice. What the Republicans are able to do is instill fear into the population, and they do it through pithy statements that gain traction among the portion of the population who is wanting others to do their thinking. It is easier to blame the “others” for all of our ills, when it really is a long series of choices we have made which leads to our fate.
We in the United States are blessed by many things. Primary among them is the ability for us to have evolved independently of the wars of Europe. Especially after WWII, we were able to adapt our undamaged industrial infrastructure to supply the rest of the world. We assumed that these times, when America was Great, were our due for saving the rest of the world from tyranny. And we developed our mythology, especially with the growth of television to spread these myths across America like a knife spreading white mayonnaise. For a substantial portion of the nation, they came to believe this abnormal situation was the norm. So when a politician today claimed to be able to restore this sense of magnificence, this population portion glommed onto it and clung with desperation.
All the while, the rest of the world moved on independent of our desires. A nation in the east grew into a great economic power, eventually taking many of the low-skilled manufacturing jobs Americans viewed as their birthright. Europe settled down into its typical mode of squabbling nations, with the veneer of the European Union (EU) still working to keep active conflict from emerging. Still, squabbles result in separations, and now the first nation has peeled off of the EU, with more waiting to see if the separation is successful before plotting their own secession. And then there’s those southern continents. Whatever are we to do about them, with their teeming hordes wishing to grab onto their own version of success. Many view the US as their destination of destiny, since opportunity is viewed as scanty in their own region.
The America First contingent believes the US can stand on its own, and bring back those days of splendid isolation. If we could just rerun the cold war, without the military entanglements it brought, we could do things right. Thus we see the call for a wall, symbolically separating this nation from the rest of the globe. One administration used the appeal for a wall as its ultimate goal, and the failure of it to be realized during Trump’s term only meant that globalists were able to sabotage the work of true Americans.
When you hear globalists, it is amazing how many times you also hear the name of George Soros. The worn out anti-Semitic tropes have undergone a renaissance under the last administration. By expressing support for supremacists and nationalists, and not decrying statements intended to incite racial violence, the political leaders on the right in the US seek to bring back those days when nations could wall off a section of their population and inflict horrendous punishments on that section. In that desire they are actually joining an internationalist movement, with authoritarians in many countries who try to isolate and destroy minority groups. Seems like the attitudes of the 1930’s are back in vogue.
Even A Broken Clock 