Sunday, August 04, 2019

The Amerikan Disease - White Supremacy



It's a disease as old as the United States itself, probably older - white supremacy.

Georgia Southern University prof, Jared Yates Sexton, writes that it's now a full-blown epidemic.

It is an epidemic aided by the vast and inescapable twisted political propaganda that is aimed at mobilizing an aggrieved based of white voters, but this messaging has particularly struck a murderous cord with disturbed, young white men who are taught, from a very early age, that any encroachment on their wants and in inherent privilege must be answered with violence. 
This is fueled by the Republican Party, stoked by their propaganda wings in cable news, radio airwaves, and in websites both mainstream and on the fringes. It is an epidemic fostered by and triggered by Donald Trump, the president of the United States of America. 
This epidemic is blatant, and yet, the sickness continues undiagnosed. When the next inevitable massacre is committed and a community grieves, the networks will frame it as a singular tragedy and blame the latest lone nut. We’ll say, my god, how could this happen, while our impotent politicians copy and paste their public statements from the last tragedy, from the tragedy before that, from the tragedy before that.

...We don’t want to say the words. We don’t want to admit that America has festered with white supremacy for more than 240 years. We can’t confront the fact that, before it was mass shootings, it was mass lynchings. We don’t want to confront the fact that there is a direct line to be drawn from the murders in El Paso, Texas on Saturday to the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995 by white supremacist Timothy McVeigh, who killed 168 people. We can’t confront that our laws, our customs, and our actions are riddled through with this epidemic and have secured, for generations, a rigid and toxic racial hierarchy. 
But make no mistake, what we face is an epidemic that threaten the very foundation of free society. Every politician and gun salesman who hides behind support of the Second Amendment likes to beat their chest and trumpet the idea of freedom, but what gets lost in the defense is that America is founded on the idea of a free society, a place where Americans should be able to live lives in which they are secure to move about, think any thought they want, say anything they want, and realize the concept of relative safety. Every day that this epidemic goes unaddressed, every day that stepping into a public place amounts to risking your life, another shred of actual freedom, of a free society, slips away, possibly to never return.





10 comments:

  1. Its no longer enough to puppet the same old words about how sad these situations are and then proceed to make up various reasons for another "lone wolf" running amok with high powered arms, legally owned, and spraying their hatred around. These carelessly uttered words by those in power such as "our thoughts and prayers are with the families" again and again are well past their best before date. My message to all of them is "Just bloody well do something".

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  2. I'm afraid, Lulymay, that it's going to take more than demands to move those who profit from this racist chaos.

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  3. How are these incidents "news"? They happen pretty much every day in the states. The fact that it's front-page/24hr news in Canada is pathetic.

    Mound, I believe I've seen you reference Bob Altemeyer's work on right-wing authoritarians. The question is how do you "deal" with that 20-25% of the population? Especially when they are armed to the teeth, prone to violence and crazy conspiracy theories, and incapable of reason?

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  4. Stu, I'm not sure there is a solution. I have read of societies that become steadily more dissolute until some sort of socially seismic event such as a major war becomes a "reset" button for social mores.

    America has reached a degree of intemperance that won't be easily reversed if the will for such a thing even existed.

    Look at our societies today - America's certainly but also our own. Social cohesion is fractured and not due to inadvertance. A profoundly divided society serves certain interests. We regress to a tribal existence akin to Lord of the Flies in which we're capable of many excesses and outrages that would not be tolerated in a coherent society. We've gone beyond philisophical disagreements to a state in which we're alien to each other. Hatred springs naturally from that sort of chasm.

    Look at the FOX network. Stoking fear, grievance, even outright hatred and legitimizing those corrosive emotions has earned FOX its audience as it shelters behind the First Amendment. How is that to be overcome?

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  5. It’s also North of the Border, Mound.

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  6. That's very true, Jay. And, like our American cousins, we're tolerant of it.

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  7. .. I wrestle every day.. with vast concerns for Canada and Canadians. Like many, I see obvious signs that the Canada I grew up in.. is weakening.. fading. I live currently in Canada's largest city, immerse myself daily afoot, by bike, by car, by public transit, sometimes via my roller blades.. so yes I see the hurly burly of commuting, shopping, wandering. I see the mixing bowl of culture and fad, but I also observe the behavior.. the capability of people to walk rationally on sidewalks, or drive on roads, or dine outside.. or drink.. walk their dog, attend the playground or schools.. you name it - I see it.. in living technicolor.

    I see the oddest things with people and their precious cel phones. That's truly odd behaviour.. Its laughable how many drivers break the law and sneakpeek their precious phones.. pedestrians exiting stores, eyes locked on their phones. So that's a big clue re 'ignorance' - walking across a busy street while watching TV or movie, with headphones on.. not aware of traffic sounds, not even looking.. Darwin's Law waiting to happen all over them & ruin their own life. For such folks, Andrew Scheer or Lavscam is a distant nothing burger. Melting Greenland Ice.. ? Not a thought not a concern. Donald Trump ? 'Oh he's an idiot - what should we order in for food honey.. dim sum??' ..

    I can't really speak for the vast United States.. the ignorance or the wickedness or the holier than thou evangelical hordes.. except they have guns.. far more guns, guns everywhere, guns here, guns there.. They also have military boots on the ground & hardware in SEVENTY TWO COUNTRIES.. still can't win in Afghanistan, nuclear powered aircraft carriers, fleet upon fleet of flights of warcraft.. are dropping a whack of dough on F-35's... got frigates, nuclear submarines.. the vaunted 'Boomers', Apache helicopters, giant tanks, and a golfing, whoring, lying old scumbag president.. they could have elected Bill Cosby.. or a dead cat.. same ludicrous result. And look at the cottage industry surrounding Donald Trump.. FOX TV .. Alex Jones, Sean Hannity.. these are not adults.. nor are their audiences.. these are infantiles who never did and never will .. grow up. They are 'the bewildered' - spewing their fear, their hate, their anger, their whiteness, their emotional poverty... oops, I just described bullies and racists.. with guns guns guns .. gotta have guns & be pretend cowboys in make believe land..

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  8. Sure enough, today we have an Ohio state rep blame the shootings on those nasty liberals, you know, the trans, gay married, drag queens, marijuana and gasp, video games. Although to her credit, others are also trotting out the video game excuse. Meanwhile, the gasbag president gets off with his federal-government- will- support-you lie escaping the fact that the blame lies squarely at his feet. True gun reform will never happen, we're on the countdown now to the next mass shooting, not an if, but when. Chances are it will not be a person of colour.

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  9. For Americans, race was the orignal sin. And, like Lady Macbeth, try as they might, Americans can't wash their hands clean.

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