Sons of Bitches All!

Yet another brilliant meme! I won't blame it on any of my friends or family, but I DID see it on one or two of their Facebook pages. I took this from Ted Nugent's page. I am rarely in agreement with him, but still like to see what kind of nonsense the right wingers are force-feeding their flocks.

I posted a comment, "The brakes on your car fail from time to time but the other parts are working fine. Your kid has this habit of killing neighbourhood animals but other than that he's fine. Your blood sugar is 600, but you're healthy as a horse otherwise. Why choose to concentrate on the bad stuff?" Am I doing this positivity thing right?

Here's what can happen if even ONE person (if she's white) is assaulted (allegedly) by another person (if he's black). Anybody ever heard of this? People in TULSA haven't heard of this. That makes a strong point on its own! Dick Rowland, a black shoeshiner, was accused of assaulting Sarah Page, a white elevator operator. He was 19, she was 17. Do you suppose that 99 years ago there were no people telling the angry, white mob that trashed Black Wall Street, "Hey, why choose to see this one boy? Look at the thousands of other GOOD black people around here!"?

Here's another look at the story.

In the end, Sarah Page did not wish to prosecute. Dick Rowland wasn't caught on camera kneeling on Page's neck. He was believed to have tripped and grabbed Page's arm to stop himself from falling. As shaky as that sounds, why did Page, who must have been under tremendous pressure to do so, NOT prosecute? Whatever the true story may be, this account of black on white assault ended in 800 injuries, 35 confirmed deaths (but possibly as many as 150), 1256 residences destroyed and 35 city blocks burned to the ground. There were refugees, shootings, even bombings from private planes! The protests we are seeing now have sometimes been described as "war zones" but back in 1921, Tulsa WAS a war zone.

And who remembers this literal war? Not many. This brings up the subject of history whitewashing. There are many stories hitting the media these days about relics of the past that are rooted in racism. The "Black Lives Matter" protests ARE changing things. My favourite couple of examples is Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben. Here's an article on Aunt Jemima that is very interesting. The photos, like her image on the syrup bottle, were removed because they could be considered offensive by some. These brand names were, " built on a racial and cultural stereotype that is widely regarded as offensive," says this article. I didn't think I was offending anyone when, as a kid, I ate pancakes with my second favourite maple syrup on them (Log Cabin was my fave), or when I ate Uncle Ben's rice or even when I dressed up as Aunt Jemima for Halloween. But I was. I didn't think I was offending anyone when I picked sports teams as a kid with the "Eenie meenie miny moe, catch a nigger by the toe," rhyme either. But I was. Calling brazil nuts "nigger toes," eating the licorice candy black babies, calling any brown skinned person a "Paki," these were all things we did IN CANADA when I was a kid less than 50 years ago! So I don't want to hear anybody saying that we in Canada don't need to educate ourselves about the past and learn from it. I was ignorant. I had no idea where those words I was saying and food I was eating came from. Now I can understand the connotations of inequality, oppression and violence they are charged with. While I don't necessarily believe we should erase all the items that have such connotations, I accept such actions as attempts to fight the inequality, oppression and violence that could be present now and in our futures.

While we're on Canada, I'd like to post a link to a good example, but I can't. It's blocked on my internet here in Korea. I can only view the story if I turn on my VPN. I won't even start in on whitewashing history from a Korean perspective because that would be a MUCH longer post than this. The article I'd like to post, but can't be viewed here in Korea for some inexplicable reason, is an opinion article written by an Inuit Canadian about a statue of John A. Macdonald on Prince Edward Island. He says folks are talking about removing the statue with Macdonald on a bench, because he was terribly racist against natives. He was our first PM and was instrumental in passing the horrible "Indian Act of Canada." But the author says, "Why take it away? Keep it up to remind us of our racist past so we can learn from it." I see his point.

I also see the points of people who say some statues honouring slavery and racism should be taken down. As this article suggests, it's just silly to say history is being removed. Maybe putting a statue of Dick Rowland or Breonna Taylor beside it might be better? Hard to say.

Since I can't post that article about Macdonald's statue I mentioned above, here's one about the same topic. I post it because it is a clear link between Canada and the US in learning from our histories where this aggression of white police on black perps originated. Note the chalk on the sidewalk. The creation of police forces to keep indigenous Canadians and to keep black slaves "under control" in our respective countries of Canada and the US, makes me a little more educated and allows me to understand the division that was fostered by politicians, and enforced by police, based on skin colour, from the very beginnings of politics in our countries. I see it as something we DO need to be reminded of and a LOT of us don't know.

I support "Black Lives Matter" protests. But as usual, I think I crave MORE! I am excited to see the people becoming hostile but wish that hostility were increases and focused more efficiently. The pitchforks and torches could be black people and white people or indigenous people and white people. In the cartoon it could be guns and knives. The manufactured division is all that concerns the king. The police aren't even in the cartoon. The "Black Lives Matter" protests haven't reached far beyond the police forces just yet, though I have hope for them. The political leader is the ginger with the salad bowl hairdo and the king, the person against whom I dearly wish the whole world would launch full scale violent protests, who is he? He represents a very small group of people, a secret empire, or monarchy if you will, that, as yet, remains unaffected by its plebeian, riff raff chattel. Us. The owned. The livestock that keep them kings. In this respect, which is impossible to prove, hence the term SECRET empire, NO lives really matter. We are a bit unequally inconsequential, but that really shouldn't matter. We're ALL inconsequential consumers and workers. We're dollar signs to our owners.

But who the hell are they, this secret, global empire? I'd like to know too! You've seen this before but it bears repeating:

The secret empire.

In this little cartoon, the huge corporations of the world are blamed, most of them American and most of their logos are as recognizable as our own faces. But have we ever seen the faces of these corporations? The loans are arranged at the World Bank, or its sisters (IMF) but who are the people who operate the source of all the world's money? Has anyone seen them? Of course not! If we knew what they are doing, we'd lynch them! So in this way, the above cartoon is a bit inaccurate. Those "kings" would never show their faces to the angry mobs of scum they own. Us.

The secret "kings" in this video are referred to as "a few very wealthy people."


This one is long, but well worth it.

It says the animation is funny, but I'm not laughing. While watching this, it's hard not to think, "Conspiracy!" Go with that thinking because it IS a conspiracy! One that the last US president to ever oppose it probably lost his life over. JFK called it a "monolithic and ruthless conspiracy."

In the vid, Thomas Jefferson says that "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." The tyrants are the very few wealthy people. The only ones who benefit from the unsustainable world economy we have right now.

Some of us feel comfortable. The "At least" justifiers. At least I have a home and a good salary and blah blah blah. "Those who would sacrifice freedom for comfort deserve neither." Why is anybody satisfied with the least? Because we've been slowly conditioned to be. Like frogs being boiled alive in pots. When I watch "Black Lives Matter" protests, I see frogs waking from their psychosocialized stupors and saying, "WT ribbit F? This water is hot!" and jumping out of the pot to attack the sons of bitches who are boiling them. The attacks, at the moment, are admittedly on the lesser sons of bitches, but they could eventually lead to a battle like the one at the end of this cartoon.

I hope I see it in my lifetime, but have my doubts. I hope we win. I KNOW we can! Our owners know we can too! Why do you think military and police forces are so well armed? Not for the minor protests we are seeing now, but for the ones they lead to. I say bring 'em on! Then maybe someday we'll be able to say, "some lives matter," then a bit later, "most lives matter," then finally, "our lives matter."

Keep protesting and keep educating. We'll get there! Our true enemies are a handful of people. Probably less than .001% and they'd love it if we maintained the mindset of the initial meme. I hope we're not that weak-minded.

The George Floyd Effect

I think it's starting to happen. The whole world has flipped its lid. And it's been slowly rolling around for years, let's face it. With the ubiquitous corruption we all encounter on a daily basis even if we're trying like gangbusters to avoid it, we're all just a bunch of latent looters, arsonists and vandals anyway, (or as the largest single cause of this situation might say himself, "or worse."), aren't we? Are we as far removed from our primitive urges as we pretend we are? Or do we just need the right catalyst to revert all the way back to our primeval roots where brains were undeveloped and violence was the solution to almost everything?

Maybe Covid isolation and cabin fever has hastened this collective mental eruption. Not sure. But I, for one, have been awaiting anxiously, praying for this sort of thing. Not just for George Floyd or corruption and racism within police forces, though I am glad to see it. I've always been a HUGE Floyd fan. Ar ar. Too early to joke about? Well then you're gonna hate this:

 

Black lives DO matter. I'm 100% behind that! However, there are a number of things we need to watch out for. A number of things that could send righteous indignation spiraling out of control into the exact same thing those righteous people are indignant about. Let me give you an example. An obvious example. I hope I don't get any opposition because it seems like an obvious example to me, but then, I might not be so emotional and illogical about this situation as some otherwise very intelligent people I've seen doing, saying and posting things that aren't very smart. You have probably seen it too. You may have even seen this meme:

I shot Martin Luther King Jr. So did you if you're white! We should feel guilty about this. Because we're white. That's the message behind the meme. Well I don't feel any guilt about my skin hue because it wasn't my choice. I don't claim any part of the shooting of MLK Jr. because when it happened, I wasn't quite a year old yet. I couldn't even operate a spoon let alone a gun. And having studied the man, and grown up to support virtually all of his major messages, I am confident that I wouldn't have shot him, nor would I have supported his shooting in any way. In fact, I would have protested it. But I need to feel guilty! Why don't I understand? My skin makes me a murderer! It sounds absurd when it's said like that, doesn't it? But the absurdity is exposed through logic. Sometimes logic is blocked. Sometimes purposely. I don't know, but maybe this meme was put out there with the purpose of creating the very same violence Dr. King opposed so vehemently, only in reverse. It doesn't matter to some people whose vested interests are to create separation, segregation and fighting as a form of distraction from more important things that they don't want people protesting about. Black people hating white people is just as good as white people hating black people. As long as they don't land in the middle, they'll keep fighting.

This is undoubtedly the kind of thing MLK Jr. would oppose. It's just flip-flopping a very bad thing. You can't convince me that he wanted black control over America. He certainly didn't want black only schools, restaurants and drinking fountains, whether the good ones were for the white people OR the black people. To tell you the truth, I LIKE the back of the bus. I never understood the Rosa Parks story. But do you think it would matter whether the black section were the front or the back? Of course not! The separation doesn't matter to certain people who enforce it, so long as it's there. It can be flip-flopped, and this is sometimes, in these situations, what happens. People get emotional, caught up in group dynamics, peer pressure and protestor power and they go too far. When they get what they've fought for, they keep on going for more.

Not being from the U.S., I have no skin in this game, but having lived in areas of Canada with high concentrations of Indigenous people, (who we still ignorantly call "Indians,") I can tell you that over the years when they went from having their land stolen and even getting killed by the white man, to having special rights and freedoms, it hasn't brought about harmony. We no longer call the Inuit Eskimos, but insisted on calling the Native Canadians Indians until very recently. The tone deaf fact that they are still referred to as "Indians" in most or all the legislation that has been drawn up to deal with them, should give you a clue that there has never been any intention on the part of the lawmakers and politicians of Canada to create equality between Canadian natives and other people. I dream of a day when natives and other Canadians realize that we're equal, the Canadian government has screwed us all! To borrow a familiar phrase, separate, but equal, the government has screwed us separately, but equally. But I think that realization is precisely why we are strategically kept at loggerheads. If we were truly equal, and how hard could that be to bring about, honestly, we could unite against the common enemy: the people who own us all.

Did you know that native Canadians were not considered Canadians, nor could they vote until 1960? And the sexism! Until only a few decades ago, when a "stutus" "Indian" woman married a "non-status" man in Canada, she lost her native status and privileges whereas if a Swedish, ginger woman married a "status" Canadian "Indian," she got "status" and privileges. I know a girl named Zoe of Swedish heritage who married a native and had her housing, food and education entirely covered by the Canadian government. And nothing is ever covered by the Canadian government, it's covered by the Canadian people. Do you think for half a second that the drafters of the laws that enabled this situation DIDN'T anticipate the jealousy, resentment, hatred and conflict that would result from them? Of course they did! That was their major purpose!

The "calculation of Indianness" is a thing in Canada! STILL! I don't know if it includes comparing your skin colour against swatches like you're trying to choose a dark beige tone for the living room drapes, but it might as well, eh? This is just one of many examples of the state of ugliness that exists right now in Canada. Here is a long and ghastly summation of it. It was the result of intentional overcorrection, and this is what happened in some other areas in Canada as well. People from other countries have a lot of advantages in investment, government assistance and other areas. This does the opposite of creating equality or harmony. We like to portray ourselves as a happy, multicultural country, but the government is constantly fighting against that by creating inequity in employment laws, business laws, and many of the basic things that make up Canadian citizens.

I can very easily see this happening in the US. This current situation will be abused by those who want division. Look who you have running the country! He's the one I referred to as "the largest single cause" of recent escalation in disharmony in the US. As if you didn't know...

I'm trying to think, if I were a lifelong pacifist, left wing, socialist who believed strongly in the equal treatment of all citizens in my country, saw what happened to George Floyd and many before him, chose to protest against racially-based violence, had a passion roiling inside my whole life, found a voice in a protest, a strong voice, in massive numbers... would I power trip? I don't know. It seems unlikely, being a lifelong pacifist, but who's to say? However, if I were a scumbag looter, arsonist, car-flipper, mugger or whatever, ANY large exhibition of social unrest and civil disobedience looks to me like a green light! For another example from Canada, when the Canucks lost the finals in 2011, I seriously doubt it was just hockey fans doing the rioting. Perhaps the scumbags who came out to join and escalate happened to be Canuck fans, but that wasn't what made them crazy. That's my opinion anyway. I've lived in Vancouver. There are lots of assholes there who don't need much of a catalyst. I'm confident the same could be said for the cities where the protests have gotten out of hand in America.

But, here's another thing to watch out for, and I've seen some keen-eyed Americans already doing so: those with vested interests in creating separation and conflict within your society are just like the looters, they don't need much of a catalyst either. I have seen pictures and read articles about conveniently placed piles of bricks along protest routes.

Now who do you suppose put them there? Those who want things to escalate so that they can write off the entire group of protestors as a pack of asshats. The same thing happened back when people were marching on Wall Street and getting closer to what they really SHOULD be protesting in America. The media showed the worst of the protestors (who may not have been conscientious protestors at all) doing drugs, acting erratic, and by association wrote off all protestors demanding very real and urgently needed social change in the country.

In summation, I think it's great, the protesting I'm seeing in the US and around the world. I'm worried that it might get carried away, and I'm even MORE worried that it might, by design, distract us from other things that are far more worthy of our efforts. Indeed, if we protested with such gusto, the things more worthy of protest, and WON, I think police corruption, a lot of racism, and other things that keep us from harmony, would all melt away. Unfortunately, I don't have the links or examples or proof of what I believe is true for the whole world, likely never will, so I would be written off as a conspiracy theorist with the aplomb of Wall Street protestors and current social activists being written off as thugs. I maintain that someday we'll all figure it out and get really angry and protest in throngs that dwarf the examples we're seeing on social media these days. I say, "we," but doubt it will happen in my lifetime, if at all.

At the very least, this is good practice. I hope the protestors won't be considered rioters and their message won't be buried by the media. I believe there ARE some things FAR more worthy of protest, and I would definitely advocate angry, violent protest in those cases, but in this case I hope the indignation will suffice. And I hope equality can result, not reversed inequality in which black Americans are considered superior to other citizens. Reasonable heads. That's what I wish upon my American friends and neighbours now in this trying time. At the very best, I hope they will prevail and I hope the success proves to be a catalyst to encourage other more urgent social change in the US and worldwide. I am actually encouraged to see this and I'm behind the protestors! This could be a turning point that may in future be called something like the George Floyd effect. If it is, let the dominos of corruption fall!