Brilliantly, sadly observed
David Kilroy
thesaintgodard at gmail.com
Wed Nov 25 15:21:49 CST 2015
All fair points, Joseph. Insofar as racial tensions in the U.S. go my
foremost problem is with a particular strain of toxic white masculinity.
Much of it hypocritical & self-serving. I don't believe Trump has the
convictions of half the gibberish he sputters: he's a wannabe D.C.
Stephenson at best. Trouble is he won't stop trolling.
Violence is, absolutely, the problem across the board. The cycle, the
perpetuation of injustice-- which comes as much as from the political
left's kowtowing to banks as it does to reactionary pandering to white
supremacists --there isn't a first cause we can point to anymore, and
that's what makes addressing it problematic. We can't explain why
Bluebeard killed his first wife, which elides our ability to understand &
discuss it rationally: we only know he keeps doing it. What to do but
demand his blood?
The Black Lives Matter movement has the right approach, in that they are a
non-violent, non-aggressive movement. The problem is they're up against
toxic white masculinity, which has a very solipsistic, self-righteous view,
consequently making it unapproachable. Refusing to parlay is the larger
pattern. Recall how, in the leadup to the military actions in Afghanistan
& Iraq, we actively handicapped our military by *firing* specialists in
languages & dialects for those regions? Ostensibly for reasons of
security, but mainly for partisan reasons: paranoia probably fed into it,
but my money's on purposeful self-sabotage. The governing forces who
wanted military action not only refuted proper diplomacy, they worked to
undermine communication. So too with the general issue in politics:
ethnicities & non-judeo-christian faiths want to be heard and understood,
while whites with a vested interest in America's ignorance & inability to
redress injustice don't want the conversation to happen. They work to
undermine education, they work against peace. They see no profit in it.
The NRA doesn't bankroll campaigns based around peace.
This is *willful* ignorance. Creating a media bubble that supports a
worldview with a bias in favor of white male conservatism (with wiggle room
for "honorary caucasians" who support the agenda) seems no more
reasoned-out to me than William S. Burroughs being a gay misogynist. Gay
misogyny, like gay white supremacism, is way weird doublethink. The
hispanic conservatist who shoots a black man has allowed himself to be
brainwashed, same as the black man who blames jews in lieu of the white
power structure, or the Zionist living in America saying j'accuse to the
embattled Palestinian. It's giving in to these forces, allowing them to
deform our worldview, that permits them to retain their power. In America
politicians mainly keep office through a policy "Let's you and him fight."
Racism is predicated on intellectual laziness. People tend to read only
what they already know how to read, same as they only have room for those
facts & figures which, factchecked or not, serve their agenda. That, to
me, is semi-literate. These people don't know how to read with any voice
other than their own. That, too, is semi-literate. We are only as much of
a melting pot as we permit ourselves to be-- and if you've taken a long
despairing look at the disintegration of federal support for education in
this country I don't think you'd disagree that the shitheads are humming
Onward, Christian Soldiers.
This all concerns me as much personally as it does in the abstract,
hippy-dippy love my neighbor sense. As I have remarked elsewhere, the only
people who have ever pointed guns at me, the only people who have ever
attempted to crush my windpipe, have all been white males. As someone who
has survived violence I see it as an especial problem emanating from the
white community, and so far as I can see the American political system has
no interest in ever addressing this. Even if it weren't terrified with
having the conversation to begin with, it benefits, THRIVES, on being
dysfunctional in the extreme. Pacifists & peaceniks in this country are
regularly brutalized & shot for being opinionated about... people being
brutalized & shot.
Forgive me if I crack wise about cromags, semiliterates and
knuckle-draggers, but if I didn't I would flip my mercury wig.
Fundamentalist violence in the muslim community cannot be denied. But it
is nowhere near the concern for Americans that violence committed by white
males is. The police in America have released more videos of public
executions than ISIS. White teenagers are taking military hardware into
day cares, schools & colleges. If we cannot handle the threat we represent
to ourselves-- and to all appearance, we cannot --what right have we trying
to restructure nations & reformat policy in the middle east?
Re-reading the thread and then this jeremiad I don't think we're actually
disagreeing on anything, folks, so I'm going to stay schtum for a nice long
while. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
--
http://davidkilroy.tumblr.com/
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