I've been here a lot of years. I’ve written a lot of diaries. Several thousand.
Today I want to take a moment, just a moment and think about this country — to think about what’s truly, honestly wrong with this country and why it’s so hard to get people on the right track.
Right now there are people dying in this nation only and solely because they’ve been strategically and deliberately lied to and disinformed. Worse, they have cultivated and wallowed in these lies. They seek them out and thrive on them. They want to be lied to. They actively reject and disdain the truth, facts, science, history and reality.
It's not an accident, it's quite deliberate.
We have people in this nation demanding that they have an individual “right” to make a personal decision about the state of public health. Think about that. The quality of your public health is dependant on their private personal decision.
It’s about individualism. it’s about me, myself and mine.
Just take this guy as an example. He caught Covid-19, barely survived it, and is now arguing that he still won't take the vaccine because “that’s your agenda.”
According to CBS News, Louisiana resident Scott Roe first got sick with COVID-19 and he subsequently developed severe pneumonia that landed him in the hospital until he was finally sent home this week.
When asked by CBS whether he'd do anything differently if given the chance again, Roe said he wouldn't.
"Don't shove it down my throat!" Roe said of the vaccine. "That's what local, state, and federal administration was trying to do."
"What are they shoving, the science?" asked the reporter.
"No, they're shoving the fact that it's their agenda!" he replied. "Their agenda is to get you vaccinated!"
Roe was then shown a statement by local Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) about the importance of getting the vaccine -- and he again replied that he didn't care.
This guy would rather have a ventilator shoved down his throat than science than facts — or the truth. More importantly, his personal decision exposed health care workers to Covid. Before he was hospitalized it exposed his friends and family — his “individual choice” took the choice and options away from all those other people.
I think that's a problem. I think it’s incredibly fucking selfish, narrow-minded and short-sighted. Y’know what the "agenda” is pal? We don't want you to fucking die, we don’t want your family to die, we don't want your friends to die. That's it. That’s all.
Selfishness. Individualism. This is what you get when you foster the people of a society into having a raging ego and unlimited sense of self-entitlement and manufactured grievance. It's how you get small business owners who commit wage theft against their employees and figure “If you don't like it, go fucking work somewhere else" where you’ll probably also get wage thefted. It’s how we get fat hotshot Captains of Industry who demand massive tax breaks from the city and state and then go spend them buying back their own stock so that they get better dividends, while their company pumps poison out the back door into the surrounding neighborhood. They care only about themselves and absolutely nothing for their fellow man.
Basically: It's my way or the highway and fuck the hell out of everyone else. It’s no mystery why this is a GOP/Red-state attitude and not one so easily adopted by Democrats who actually understand that we are not all islands standing on our own. We don't live in a collection of individuals, we live in a community. We live amongst each other where we have to interact, where we have to both give and also take.
At a really basic level, the Right-wing doesn’t really believe in community. Not unless that community is monolithic. Not unless everyone is identical, has the same particular flavor of Christianity, has the same opinion on same-sex rights, on reproductive rights, on human and civil rights. They don't think you have a right to be different, to come from somewhere else, to speak a different language or worship a different version of God.
They don't want to be challenged. They don’t want to be told “No, you’re behavior is offensive — it's rude — it's toxic.” They don't want to be lectured by someone “woke”, someone who cares about minority rights, or simply the existence of minorities.
This is not just about Covid. It's about a way of thinking. A dangerous way of thinking that puts your rights over and above the rights of others.
Think for a second, back to last year when we were all watching clips from the George Floyd tape on the air. Just realize, that was a snuff film. We were being shown, slowly, gradually, the LIFE being literally squeezed out of a human being as if he was a big tube of toothpaste. Bit by bit, little by little. He called for his mommy, he begged for his life, his voice trailed off, he lost consciousness, he died -- and the cops stayed on his neck and back for another four minutes.
Imagine watching that and thinking this is all George’s fault. If he had only “complied.” If he didn't have fentanyl in his system [even though death from fentanyl first puts you into a coma]. If he didn't have a heart condition [although h didn't have a heart attack] if he wasn't such a huge guy..... if only he'd made different individual choices.
If only he wasn't black.
I've been a black guy my whole entire life. Every second of it. I was a black guy when Leonard Deadwyler was shot by a cop after being pulled over trying to get his pregnant wife to the hospital. That was in 1965. Shootings like this sparked Watts Riots.
The inquiry found that the officer did nothing wrong. He wasn't trying to shoot Deadwyler, he just happened to have his gun in his hand he stuck it inside Leonard’s window and it just “went off.” Like in Pulp Fiction. That's not negligent homicide or anything is it?
There have been a lot of bodies since then. Ron Settles. Yulia Love. Latisha Harlins. Jonny Gammage. Ronald Greene. Trayvon Martin. Laquan McDonald. John Crawford III, Renisha McBride, Philando Castile. Too many. Too fucking many.
Just imagine thinking: All of that is "normal business" for police. That’s their job.. keeping the former Slaves in constant check.
When one thinks about policing in early America, there are a few images that may come to mind: A county sheriff enforcing a debt between neighbors, a constable serving an arrest warrant on horseback, or a lone night watchman carrying a lantern through his sleeping town. These organized practices were adapted to the colonies from England and formed the foundations of American law enforcement. However, there is another significant origin of American policing that we cannot forget—and that is slave patrols.
The American South relied almost exclusively on slave labor and white Southerners lived in near constant fear of slave rebellions disrupting this economic status quo. As a result, these patrols were one of the earliest and most prolific forms of early policing in the South. The responsibility of patrols was straightforward—to control the movements and behaviors of enslaved populations. According to historian Gary Potter, slave patrols served three main functions.
“(1) to chase down, apprehend, and return to their owners, runaway slaves; (2) to provide a form of organized terror to deter slave revolts; and, (3) to maintain a form of discipline for slave-workers who were subject to summary justice, outside the law.”[i]
Organized policing was one of the many types of social controls imposed on enslaved African Americans in the South. Physical and psychological violence took many forms, including an overseer’s brutal whip, the intentional breakup of families, deprivation of food and other necessities, and the private employment of slave catchers to track down runaways.
We've been repeatedly told “Things today aren’t as bad as they were then...”
Really?
Is that why there is a bill in the Texas Senate that is currently arguing not to teach that the “Klu Klux Klan was morally wrong?”
Just in case you were dense enough to believe that this wasn’t overt racism, Texas senators took it a step further. On Wednesday, July 21, they voted to pass a bill that would remove a requirement for public school teachers to teach that the Ku Klux Klan is "morally wrong." So if a teacher wants to have a group of fifth graders justify the Klan’s treatment of Black people—now they can have at it. (BTW, that’s not a hypothetical. That actually happened in South Carolina.)
This legislation would block the teaching of MLK's "I have a dream" speech.
In Tennesee, the Lt. Governor wants to protect the legacy of Nathan Bedford Forest, the founder of the KKK.
Republican Tennessee Lt. Gov. Randy McNally on Thursday sparked an uproar by defending the legacy of former Ku Klux Klan leader and Confederate Army general Nathan Bedford Forrest, whose bust is being removed from the Tennessee state capitol.
McNally's statement on Forrest's legacy came after Tennessee's State Building Commission voted to remove the former Klan leader's bust in a 5-to-2 vote.
The Tennessee Republican argued that he did not want to see Forrest removed even though he admittedly left a "problematic" legacy.
"His life eventually followed a redemptive arc which I hope is outlined in detail in our state museum," argued Forrest. "No figure honored on the capitol grounds or across the state could stand up to modern scrutiny.”
Yeah, sure — terrorist mass murderer Osama Bin Laden had a “redemptive arc” — he loved his children and all of his various wives. Hitler had a “redemptive arc” too — he loved his cat. Assuming he had a cat. [He had a dog named “Blondi.” Somehow that fits and I guess all is forgiven for the Holocaust now...] Also Charles Manson was a real nice guy, once he was done with all the mass murder and what not.
While it's true that cultural norms have changed since the years following the American Civil War, the Klan has been treated by the United States federal government as a violent criminal organization.
The Enforcement Acts of the 1870s, for example, were passed as a way to prosecute Klan members who were using violence and intimidation to stop Black Americans from exercising their right to vote.
Yeah, well it seems like we need that act yet again.
On the basis of the fact that tens of thousands of black people in large cities voted against Donald Trump who wanted to send the military out to put down George Floyd protests — Joe Biden was elected President.
And because of that, there were dozens of lies generated that claimed the “election was stolen.” What else would you expect from those nasty angry black people?
Unfortunately, again, all of those were lies.
While there were isolated reports of voter fraud, many of those cases actually involved Republican voters casting illegal votes for Trump. Now, a new report reveals how sparse claims of voter fraud have been, undercutting the conservative outcry alleging election rigging.
According to Bloomberg Government:
Prosecutors across the country found evidence of voter fraud compelling enough to take to court about 200 times since the November 2018 elections, according to a 50-state Bloomberg canvass of state officials. Republican and Democratic election and law enforcement officials contacted in 23 of the states were unable to point to any criminal voting fraud prosecutions since the November 2018 midterm elections.
Despite the escalating claims from former President Donald Trump of rampant misdeeds, nearly all of the instances found by state officials were insignificant infractions during a timeframe when hundreds of millions of people participated in thousands of elections around the country. Yet, misinformation about the topic has become a driving force of political debate.
The publication warns that falsehoods about voter fraud make members of the losing political party more emboldened to resort to extreme measures.
For example, one incident of voter fraud in Seminole County, Fla., led police to one voter fraud victim's own father. At the time, a criminal complaint indicated that the man "allegedly told the police he requested and sent in the ballot in his son's name."
"It was stupid. I was pissed off the way things are going in the country," the man said, according to the complaint. "I voted but it didn't make a difference."
Nelson Bunn, Jr., the executive director of the National District Attorneys Association, noted how expensive litigation can be for voter fraud cases.
"The investigation of claims of voter fraud are extremely time-intensive and expensive to conduct with most not resulting in any case to be brought forward," Bunn Jr., said in an email. "While an important issue, prosecutors and law enforcement agencies have very limited resources in good times and the impact of COVID and the resulting case backlogs are now straining these offices and broader criminal justice system even further."
Thousands of people all gathered together and stormed the Capitol in order to stop Joe Biden from assuming the Presidency, based on these lies.
They believe these lies.
They want to believe them. They want to believe that this nation was founded for “liberty and freedom” but it wasn't. That's yet another lie.
When this nation was formed only White landowners were allowed to vote. Only they had liberty, only they had freedom.
When this nation was formed, several states allowed for the “ownership" of their fellow human beings as permanent servants and allowed for their children to be born into bondage as well.
Your race determined whether freedom and liberty applied to you.
Frankly, in 1619, when the first African servants were brought to America — it wasn't like that. It was better than that, although still not perfect. Indentured Servitude didn't start out being racial. It was a temporary condition, it was an exchange — for a debt, or a crime, or passage to the new world — it was a contract that anyone could enter into for a number of years and then exit and gain “Freedom Dues.”
One of the places we have the clearest views of that "terrible transformation" is the colony of Virginia. In the early years of the colony, many Africans and poor whites -- most of the laborers came from the English working class -- stood on the same ground. Black and white women worked side-by-side in the fields. Black and white men who broke their servant contract were equally punished.
All were indentured servants. During their time as servants, they were fed and housed. Afterwards, they would be given what were known as "freedom dues," which usually included a piece of land and supplies, including a gun. Black-skinned or white-skinned, they became free.
Historically, the English only enslaved non-Christians, and not, in particular, Africans. And the status of slave (Europeans had African slaves prior to the colonization of the Americas) was not one that was life-long. A slave could become free by converting to Christianity. The first Virginia colonists did not even think of themselves as "white" or use that word to describe themselves. They saw themselves as Christians or Englishmen, or in terms of their social class. They were nobility, gentry, artisans, or servants.
Originally white people and Black people were servants together, originally they were punished for violating the servant contact equally - the very idea of white people didn't even exist until the servant's rules were changed to make all those who were born African into permanent slaves.
In 1641, Massachusetts became the first colony to legally recognize slavery. Other states, such as Virginia, followed. In 1662, Virginia decided all children born in the colony to a slave mother would be enslaved. Slavery was not only a life-long condition; now it could be passed, like skin color, from generation to generation.
No more would freedom dues be paid. No more were former servants given their freedom, with their own land and their own stable of servants. Those days were over. Now, it was the Individual right -- of a free white land-owning man -- to control the lives of others. To OWN THEM. Their rights, as people, as humans, didn't matter. They weren't even considered "fully” human.
“Racism” as we know it was a lie created to excuse and justify this raw, naked, vicious greed. "Racism” is a power grab by the entitled, used to control and manipulate the disenfranchised, it’s about so much more than "I don't like your shade of skin-tone." Much much more.
America created this broken system, where the rights of one individual can be elevated over the rights of the community. That is the true American legacy.
That is the rot at the heart of our soul.
The rights of any individual are not greater than the rights of another. Your rights end at the tip of your nose, as soon as you come into contact with someone else - you must respect their rights.
That means their right to freely vote. That means their rights not to be killed by a preventable virus. And their rights not to be intimidated, harassed and indiscriminately killed by overzealous agents of the state, the modern-day form of the "Slave Patrols.”
Human rights. If we want those rights, we're going to have to fight for them.
Now more than ever.
Please join my new Activist Facebook Group Army for Truth where we are gathering and sharing the true facts about Covid, the Insurrection, Election 2020 and Critical Race Theory. If Facebook is the problem, perhaps it can also be the solution.