SKIBO…. In the 1980’s book, The Turning Point, author Fritjof Capra writes about the inter-connectedness of our societal problems. He points out how one thing or event relates to and impacts many other matters in our lives around the globe. This book is a challenging read but invokes deep thought on many issues of the day. In the most recent edition of The Atlantic, Jonathan Rausch opines about the demise of our political system in an article titled “How American Politics became so ineffective” and why it is so painstakingly hard to make even miniscule progress on anything of any scope or magnitude. Sometimes we seem to be willing to call anything “progress” just to be able to say that we have made progress on something. We haven’t. We are going nowhere. And a lot of us have become both stupid and violent.
After the passage of the 1965 Civil Rights Act it was thought that we could be moving toward a more equal and level society. It was thought that ethnicity truly wouldn’t matter anymore at some point. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s “dream” remains just that. All of the southern white haters abandoned the Democratic Party and jumped ship to the GOP. Yup. A great deal of them were Dem’s at one point, until the left aligned with the civil rights movement. We seemed to be moving toward a more peaceful, accepting society until Ronald Reagan ran for President and invoked his “Southern Strategy” to pull those former Dem’s into his camp.
Unlike the outspoken current Presidential Candidate Don Trump, Reagan’s racism was always in code, utilizing dog whistle tactics to incite the haters toward his side. And now, due to a variety of factors driven by hate groups, even including our own government and others, the racial animus we are now seeing seems to be at as high a level as I have witnessed in my lifetime. Racism is alive and well here and is being fed heavily on a daily basis. The Media is a participant in this phenomena.
A common stereotype against blacks here is that the majority of them are government program freeloaders of one sort or another. And then the hate and low level thought commentary kicks in from there. Most of the haters are incapable of thinking it through a few more levels. Are there problems in the black communities across the country? Sure are. Some they are directly responsible for and a lot they aren’t. Lets apply some Capra thinking here. When you systematically exclude an entire ethnic group from full participation in our economy, do not provide the same education opportunity, do not allow them full unfettered participation in our society and what it has had to offer to white people, what did you think was going to happen?
So the reality is that we are as responsible for their problems as they are. How do you break the cycle of decades and centuries of this type of treatment? When right wing conservatism constantly chips away at the social safety net what is the impact of that? When food and housing programs are slashed at and the people dependent upon them are left to fend for themselves, did you think there was going to be some other result besides what we are seeing today? Not a chance. People still have to eat and have shelter and they will go to some extreme lengths to do just that.
So we have the absolute breakdown of most of the black communities in this country. They have become third world entities right here in the USA. I have been to those places and I have seen them. The haters though can’t think that through. It’s too much for them. Those places are one facet of a multi-faceted problem. One thing kicks one domino over and so on. So the haters see this and the response they come up with is to hate more.
Guns are a fact of life in these places as much as they are in suburban and rural white areas. And like in the white communities, these weapons often end up in the hands of people who have no business having them. In black communities where strength and power, supported by weapons is quite often how you get things you need, the shit frequently hit’s the fan. Now that we have de-evolved back into an era not unlike the Wild West, thanks to a proliferation of weaponry on the streets, driven by poverty, lack of sustainable employment and many other factors, pushed onward by a government global campaign of death and destabilization, ethnic stereotyping via a fake “war on terror” and even a Presidential Campaign based upon hate and stereotyping, it hardly seems safe to live here anymore.
When your own government is violent on a global scale and you have a populace totally desensitized to violence, how do you change course? The recent murders of two black men by police and then of several law enforcement members is despicable to say the least. I can guarantee you that many factors combined got us to a place where these events were made possible and we have an urgent need to discuss that. But that requires political leadership and our country, our planet is mostly devoid of that with no immediate help on the horizon. But external groups with political power and their lobbyists will never allow us to have that discussion anyway.
The Human race has always been violent, history proves that. This is a dynamic that seems unlikely to change. So perhaps allowing the public unfettered access to things that can easily kill needs to be rethought. I’m not interested in guns, but I go along with the 2nd Amendment. And instead of background checks and registration how about a maturity and intelligence test to prove one is capable of responsibly owning a weapon? Age and not being a felon are proving to be a poor litmus test. Just think about that; how many people do you know that possess one or more firearms that have absolutely no business having them? You have a right to own a gun and I have a right to be safe without having to arm myself to the teeth. Where can we compromise here? PEACE