Saturday, August 17, 2019

Another Place The Shoe Fits


The country is being ripped apart by hatred, so Republican strategists have rolled out a new initiative: I Know You Are, But What Am I? And that is why we Democrats and liberals are now being called racists. Because we persist in calling everybody racist.

Except, Sugar? It's not true. We only call racists racists. It just seems like everybody, these days. Believe me, we're not happy about that. Nobody's "playing the race card." Even though it's, ah, a trump card. Our problem is that our whole deck is full of those shitty cards. We would be so happy if the pit boss would come along and swap out that deck, but we can only play with what we got. And what we got here living among us is a shit-ton of racists.

And a lot of them are accusing us liberals of trying to sow division and hatred by calling our President and his supporters hateful names. Why, they even say we want a civil war!

Yeah, no. No we the hell don't. We aren't even armed. What are we going to do, whack you with our Talking Stick? (Because that is an improper use of a Talking Stick.)

Yes. We're scared of you. Because you're scared of everyone else. Y'all are frankly terrifying in all your fear. We're not inclined to violence and we got nothing in our tool bucket to make you go away, but if something were to happen and you were gone, we'd be relieved. Some quick, tidy, painless thing. Maybe the Rapture. Oh praise the Lord, let it come, so the rest of us Americans, in all our splendid variety, can continue on in peace without you.

The only bright spot in all of this is that apparently, at this writing, people still consider it a bad thing to be called a racist. Ain't that quaint? They have no problem being racist but they don't want to wear the T-shirt. Despite a nearly complete inability among many white people to imagine a person of color, other than Morgan Freeman, as entirely human, they do not want to be called racists. They're fine with people of color existing as long as they do it quietly and far away.

We're not racists, they say. It's not racist to call out people who knock over liquor stores and break into houses and sit around all day drinking Colt 45 and collect welfare checks and food stamps, and it's not our fault if all of those people happen to be black. They're either guilty or they look just like someone who is, so it's no wonder the police give 'em an extra thump just to make sure. You can't blame the police for that. And it's not our fault so many of those people are in prison, because they wouldn't be there if they didn't deserve to be.

And Muslims. There is no reason to wear the hijab if you're not trying to hide a bomb. Those people are dedicated to enshrining Sharia law in America and outlawing Christianity, and our own God and Constitution are not strong enough to withstand a threat like that. It's not racist to sound the alarm about those people if it's true. It's just standing up for what we believe in. You know. Freedom.

And don't tell us those "refugees" at the border aren't a threat. A good parent feeds and clothes her child and makes sure she goes to school. You sure as hell don't march your little kid across a thousand miles of desert to sneak into a better country and steal someone else's job. What kind of monster would be that cruel? Fix your own damn country, that's what a good parent would do. My God. So obvious. These are not good people. It's not racist to say so, if it's a fact.

Thieves and terrorists and drug dealers don't belong here. It's not our fault that we can tell who they are just by looking.

Well bless my buttons. What happened to the Home of the Brave? I don't understand much of this. I don't know why folks who are proud to sling rifles over their fat butts in the town square are so damned afraid of so many powerless people.

But I did just think of a good place to store my Talking Stick.

As this post rolls out at 3am PST, Portland is, reluctantly, about to host a swarm of right-wing provocateurs from across the nation. Many of them haven't been laid in a long time and they're very interested in exercising themselves violently. They are likely to find willing foils on the left here, and they know it. Ordinarily, I like to attend these events to witness and to point and laugh (as appropriate). I'm skipping this one. I don't actually want to die yet. Wish us luck.

27 comments:

  1. Good god, Murr! Barricade yourselves inside, turn out the lights, and hide under the bed! I hope that you're not close to the epicenter of this maelstrom. These people are fucking scary! And armed!

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    1. It occurred to me this morning that this is like dressing up in Blue or Gray and going somewhere to face off. If one side shows up, the other side shows up. Why not stay home?

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  2. Stay safe, Murr, or just get out of the way for a few days. I am just disappointed that those people haven't died off yet.

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    1. "Drop dead!" That would be an excellent snappy chant.

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  3. I know. My only ray of hope is that huge group of people did not vote.

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    1. Which reminds me. We still haven't done much about voter suppression. Or sensible voting methods with a paper trail (or better yet, as here in Oregon, nothing but paper).

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  4. I just read that the "Proud Boys" are actually planning violence in Portland. Geeze.
    Stay home and stay safe. And Trump wants to call the Anti-Fascist group (Antifa) terrorists. Trouble ahead, I fear.

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    1. They're setting it up to be able to impound anti-fascists. Or anyone who looks like them. Because, you know, they're the ones who start all the trouble.

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  5. This is the scary thing - the dumb violent people are the ones with weapons, which they won't give up. The reasonable people are out-armed. Bullets stop words. How do the odds ever get more balanced? Well, through voting in a different governing party, one would think. But, as I understand it anyway, gerrymandering and the electoral college system makes that an uphill battle. It all feels so hopeless sometimes. A lot of the time, even.

    *leaves to go watch cat videos*

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    1. If we could straighten out the gerrymandering and voter suppression, we'd be in excellent shape. But steal they will.

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  6. AND, in addition to gerrymandering; Russian, et al, interference; the Electoral College; there is the voting machines being 'fixed' and owned by the GOP.

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    1. Please, please, please, the Oregon system nationwide!

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  7. Yeah don’t engage these asswipes. Stay safe. This was a great line:”I don't know why folks who are proud to sling rifles over their fat butts in the town square are so damned afraid of so many powerless people.” I know just who among my FB friends this is directed as. I’ll share with them. Expect blithering and blathering in response.

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    1. You have a lot of stamina to put up with the nonsense on your FB threads. Is it entertainment? Sometimes that BS keeps me up at night, it's so depressing.

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  8. I'm with you. As a Portland resident, I advised my adult daughter NOT to go downtown today. There are too many out-of-town folks with guns just looking for a fight.

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    1. Is there anything stupider-looking than a straggly band of shirtless men in flak jackets crossing the Hawthorne Bridge with flags flying?

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  9. Having grown up in Oklahoma and Texas, where folks treat you just dandy as long as you are White, Far Right, and Suthun Baptist, I'm mighty happy I took a hard left and married a Canuck at age 19, and have lived in Canada since 1971.

    My gg-grandparents, g-aunt and her husband, g-uncle's wife and two children, all of Bell Co TX, were gunned down by the KKK in 1865 because the men had served in the Union Army, and were a bit too dark to be 'White'. Granted they were genetically mixed; European, Tuscarora (one of the six Iroquois or Haudenosaunee Nations) and African. Their murders made the San Francisco paper at the time. The rest of the family scattered to three states, too terrified to even bury the dead.

    The Tuscarora have been on Turtle Island for 20,000 years. Who are these White "Supremacists" think they are kidding? They have little to feel 'supreme' about. It's been pointed out that before Europe's con-men, cast-offs and po' white trash arrived (no insult intended to current company, some of mine fall under those headings) Native people had no need of courts and prisons. Theft was unheard of and domestic violence rarely occurred. Villages were run by the clan matriarchs, who named the children, made the decisions on when/where to move, and when to go to war. There was no drunkenness, because they had never thought about brewing hooch. A man who abused a woman was turned out of his wife's lodge, which was tantamount to a death sentence. He might go crawling back to his mother's lodge, but if he had actually caused harm to his wife or child she might very well bar him entrance. Children belonged to their mother, and were mentored by her brothers, father and uncles. Their father would be busy mentoring his sister's children.

    The Native peoples of the Americas only became violent in response to violence perpetrated against them. Columbus killed several Arawak Indians when they approached his 1st landing party with gifts. He shot them, butchered them and fed them to his dogs.

    My advice is to stay well away from the likes of the KKK, Odin's Warriors and anyone who believes having melanin-challenged skin confers some special status with God on them, including the right to kill anyone with a genetic suntan.

    Please God, Make America SANE Again. Trump may not have a racist bone in his body, but that slime that serves him for a brain sure bubbles up some doozies that pass pretty close to the edge.

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    1. Good advice, but I'm still drawn to these events (didn't go today). There's something about these assholes tha makes me want to put on my old lady hat and wag my head at them and go "REALLY, Petunia?"

      That's horrible about your ancestors.

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  10. Crivens! The stramash in Portland even made it to the BBC news website over here:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-49382386

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    1. And yet it was mostly a non-event, as it turns out. When it comes down to it, I'm proud to be a citizen of a place Nazis want to march around in because they hope to be challenged.

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  11. I should watch the TV news tonight and see if Portland is there. I wish you all the luck in the world to be staying safe, locked in your home if necessary.

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    1. Nobody got hurt, much. Six or seven, and none seriously. The Nazis got their own bridge to march out on and they dissipated, claiming some sort of victory. By the way, one of those lit-up traffic signs that get employed to say "MERGE LEFT" or "ROAD WORK" was changed to read "FUCK NAZIS." I'd sure love to know who accomplished that, and I hope he's a Dept. of Transportation employee.

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    2. There was a photo in yesterday's paper, showing a line of police officers facing a mob of protesters, just a short story underneath, but hey! You made it into the Adelaide paper! Well, not you personally, but Portland.

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  12. Ya know, it’s interesting. My ancestors came over on a leaky boat that took two months to make the crossing; never once did any of those boats dock with the same number of people they left England with. However, we celebrate what my relatives did. We celebrate that my ancestors put three boys on a boat and sent them to the most wild, the most unknown of futures. The youngest brother was 17. The oldest was 23. No one else from the family went; back in 1635, they probably used some form of “coyote.“ But Pilgrims, amirite?

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    1. Ha. We beat you by 25 years or so. Thank goodness there weren't any people already living here.

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  13. Instead of sending the antifa to confront the proud boyz, an army of willing sex workers should descend on them and...well...drain them of their anger.

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