I’m wondering about what it might be like to wake up every morning and not necessarily anticipate being the victim of a racially motivated hate crime but knowing that for no reason other than skin color there is a higher probability that today might be the day.
The day a deranged white nationalist shows up at a supermarket, a restaurant, a movie theater, a church armed and loaded with an AR-15 rifle, a weapon never meant for use within the civilian population for reasons directly related to what amounts to little more than a slogan “You Will Not Replace Us” most recently associated with the 2017 rallies held in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Now, the YWNRU phrase has been given the slightly more scientific sounding “replacement theory” to legitimize what is still nothing more than MAGA fodder for those who prefer their bumper stickers with a touch of blatant antisemitism, and/or racially motivated hatred.
There are not “very fine people” on both sides. One side believes they are patriots, or a good guy with a gun for killing innocent persons in the interest of saving traditional American culture with their own “alien” culture.
The other welcomes both the challenges and proven benefits associated with diversity, the sharing of ideas, tolerance becoming understanding, leading to the “Great Melting Pot”, one of the signature features of American Exceptionalism.
Make no mistake, the recent wave of ignorant, self-righteous and hate laden mass executions are acts of domestic terrorism calculated to cause as much pain, misery and fear as possible. Anytime and anywhere. You are never safe and yes, today might just be that day.
What must that feel like? To face the specter of death not for your own ideology, but due to the misconceptions of a brainwashed, radicalized hate machine that might be having a bad day.
Now imagine a world where half of what we used to call the GOP believes in YWNRU, “blood and soil”, “America First” and any number of anger and rage formulates better left forgotten along with the era that first spawned the need for hateful rhetoric in small, bite sized portions for those who don’t like big words, much less concepts or ethical studies or a value system based on morality.
The frustration alone of trying to reach the unreachable must be at times, debilitating. Knowing that perhaps as little as one meeting, one conversation over a cup of coffee could open a door to walk through, leaving the animus behind while exposing a whole new way of looking at life.
Not only birth, but life in all its multifaceted and yes, often confusing tapestry all woven into a single fabric we call “being”. How when we do harm to a single thread, we begin and then if not careful, to accelerate the unraveling until eventually, we are all left threadbare without the pins, needles and moral clarity to repair the physical and psychic damage done to our collective heartbeats and souls.
What happens when the ever so thinly veil of “absolute” 2nd Amendment Rights is revealed not for its supposed role in defeating a tyrannical, out of control government, but for purposes of allowing the spread of violence and yes, terrorism in its simplest form to flourish for nothing more than campaign contributions and to appease a minority of a minority that prefers either a “beloved leader” or lunatic theocracy as opposed to democracy?
And you are the misery goat, along with your family and friends whose infidelity in the form of doing nothing more than a POC, a stranger in your own land, who must pay for their blood lust with your blood?
Pay for their fear with your fear and the proliferation of guns is but one piece of an evil, twisted and warped dystopian jigsaw puzzle being put together in the darkest recesses of a mind often subject to justification as part of God’s master plan.
So many words, hollow and empty when not put into actual practice. Justice under the law for some but not all. Equality that is never equal. A court system that favors irrelevant factors in the determination of guilt.
Politicians who fund-raise based on false narratives of keeping their constituents safe by denying you the right to be one. To live where you want to live, or not live at all as if “all lives matter” does not include black lives, a symbol of humanity, but blue lives, a reflection on one’s chosen employment, does.
Is this part of the legacy of George Floyd? A case due to the heroic efforts of the people of Minnesota finally broke the accountability barrier and delivering what could be reasonably labeled as justice for a man who did not deserve to die, on tape. Over a $20.00 dollar bill, real or not.
Did justice for George Floyd result in Kyle Rittenhouse? A so-called self-proclaimed medic who put himself exactly where he should never have been, with a gun fighting off skateboard wielding liberals who may or may not have threatened him? So, he shot them.
He was tried in a badger kangaroo court by a judge who did everything in his power to free poor Kyle. And, as expected, the jury did. Now he’s a hero to the far less than righteous Right. Kyle Rittenhouse is a murderer, plain and simple. Coincidence? Or a blatant case of you’re either for us, or against us?
Admittedly, his three victims, two dead and one injured, were not the victims of a racially motivated hate crime. They were there to protest police brutality. Close enough, I guess to warrant the judge, jury and executioner style of “law” associated with every vigilante’s most fervent of wet dreams.
Where is Kyle tonight? At home? In bed? About to wake up to the smell of his mother making a stack of patriotic pancakes she made for her little soldier boy. Later, a visit to the shooting range? Answer a few questions, sign an autograph or two? Check his email to see if Biden has answered him yet?
I would imagine that if Kyle doesn’t let the actual horrific impact his murderous rampage get to him, he’ll be fine. In other words, he’ll be fine. Unfortunately, someone else will not and probably never be quite the same again.
For what happens when you, a surviving family member, or good friend, wake up the next day and someone who should still be an integral part of the mosaic of your life, is not?
I can’t even begin to fathom it. But there are those who are living through it and will continue to do so for the rest of their lives. How grim must that be even without the added realistic, palpable anxiety and unnecessary stress that when you get up in the morning, today might be “that day” for you?
Finally, as you lie bleeding out, looking at the sky, knowing the cycle of hatred, rage, false entitlement, racism, violence and death will continue all brought to you by those who claim to be the ultimate defenders of life.
I wish I could laugh at the cosmic absurdity of it all, but I can’t. You?
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Oh how sad it is when we cannot recognize that we consist of a fabric knitted of threads of different colors, thicknesses, and textures. That, as we state in our book, there is no such thig as race—we all descend from the same Maternal womb. That we are all H. sapiens. That the words, “Let’s close our borders and keep those damn Mexican rapists and drug smugglers out of our country,” make us forget that immigrants also have heartbeats, are hungry, are evading terrorism, and simply want to come over to pick peaches to earn a living and feed themselves and their families. How quickly we forget that last year all six of the U.S. science Nobel prize winners were…