Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Not Surprised.

I had this conversation last night with a friend.  The unrest and anger in Missouri were inevitable.  In the past few years. . . starting with 9/11 and continuing with Obama's election, open racism seems to be the norm.  Horrifyingly scary, threatening, and racist stuff gets posted from total nobodies and we all see it, hear it and react.  All too often, the racists find more than enough support from the imaginary peer group.  And, heaven help anyone who tries to point out that perhaps more polite discourse is called for? For calling out the racism, people are often treated to screams about 1st amendment rights and accusations of bullying.

Then, you have the talking heads on tv and radio who spew racist, vicious, classist, and threatening crap morning, noon, and night.  They just fuel the fire.  And, they give the nobodies a platform to both spew more hate and claim victimhood.

And, there are the 2nd amendment nuts.  The open carry wackos.  They are egged on by the talking heads and the powerful gun lobby.  They aren't victims because we don't want to look over in the baby section of mega-mart to see someone toting a weapon capable of killing everyone in the store.

Lastly, there are the elected officials who seem to chase the 24-hour news cycle with stupid statement followed by misinformed statement only to be compounded by hatefulness.

So, I'm not surprised that people have finally had enough.  I'm not surprised that people are standing up and demanding their rights be honored just as the wing nuts have been doing.

I am horrified that a whole section of our society seems to think that "public safety" waging warfare on American citizens is okay . . . so long as they are of color or poor.

I am surprised we haven't seen more uprisings.  The next civil war will be one over race and class.  And, I'm afraid there will be many more innocents lost to the nonsense the talking heads, wackos, elected officials/authorities, and gun nuts


1 comment:

KP said...

Agree with everything you say, Bongo. http://www.dallasnews.com/news/metro/20140820-huey-p.-newton-gun-club-leads-open-carry-rally-in-south-dallas.ece