Don't look away.

History wll judge societies and governments — and their institutions — not by how big they are or how well they serve the rich and the powerful, but by how effectively they respond to the needs of the poor and the helpless. ~Cesar Chavez

Yesterday, I had to finally break down and mostly stay off social media for most of the day.

Whatever the other facts of the case may be, millionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide in jail in the small hours of Saturday morning, having only just been taken off of suicide watch after a previous attempt.

I'd gotten sick the night before, some kind of virus with flu symptoms and vomiting, my head was pounding for much of yesterday and I didn't need the aggravation of dealing with a billion conspiracy theories spawning in real time right before my eyes.

So I played with ferrets all morning and spent most of the afternoon playing Skyrim.

I'm here to tell you, I could give a fuck about Epstein. Yes, he was an evil man. Now he's dead, and I feel sorry for the devil because the devil has to put up with his ass now.

This last week saw two mass shootings, the first, in El Paso, Texas, was a racially-motivated White Supremacist terror attack against Latinos. The second, in Dayton, Ohio, appears to have been a case of a violent racist and sexist asshole with a gun.

That was followed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in Mississippi that snared 680 Latino immigrants, undocumented and otherwise, in the Trump administration's likewise racially-motivated pogrom against Latinos.

The raids...on purpose or otherwise...coincided with the local first day of school and thus left many children without parents to pick them up, or without a way to get home, or into their houses once there.

And because of course, 300+ of the 680 people in question were found to be citizens, or legal immigrants, and released. It's not about immigration status, it never was. It's about racism, period. It's about making racist conservatives feel like "Something is being done" even though the reality is that nothing constructive is being done...because the truth is that for something to be done they would have to arrest and perp-walk and charge and try and convict a billionaire or two.

Also, yet again, it's funny how in the minds of all the "Family"-friendly Evangelicals and shit, only some people actually get to have families, or have the integrity of their families respected, etc.

The vast...if not overwhelming majority of these Latino immigrants are Christians, left to their own devices many, if not most of these people would tend towards small-"c" conservative Catholic social mores that could translate easily into moderately conservative political ones that 25 years ago would have made these people a natural fit for the Republican Party. They could still be today. IF, that is...they did not have White "Big-C" Conservatives, the Republican Vichy Establishment, the President and anti-immigrant hard-liners in government agencies lined up against that possibility.

I read the comments, like Jim said. A lot of these so-called "Conservatives" who support this crap really are nothing but racist human garbage.

Plus, in our society as it actually is right now, being a moderate conservative most likely makes you a Democrat...or at least one of their voters for the moment.

Maybe it's just me but it seems like government policy here is going to do nothing more than to exacerbate an already-bad situation. In a diverse, multicultural and multi-ethnic society the President has decided to throw gasoline on the simmering embers of racial hatred for his own political profit, and of course, ultimately everybody will be targeted, or face the eventual backlash for supporting this crap...or end up fighting in or fleeing from the resulting ethnic conflicts and politically-tinged wars.

In summary, we all go down or at least take hits from this crap, while those responsible will get fair trials, kill themselves while awaiting trial or shuffle off this mortal coil due to old age while awaiting trial or hiding out from the consequences. And for what? So sociopathic rich Conservative Baby Boomers could loot the country one more time before they go? So white racists could kick somebody else in the teeth one last time before they start to fall into demographic obscurity in a few years? So some fool could give a guy like Vladimir Putin a chance to instigate a second U.S. Civil War?

And of-fucking-course, rather than face up to any of this shit...or answer my question...what does the Internet collectively do after the news broke yesterday morning but gleefully go off chasing down dumb ass conspiracy theory rabbit holes?

There's a hell of a lot of people in this country and around the world who need us to not get distracted or look away right now.

So, naturally, what do Americans in general and white people in particular do, but aimlessly look away from this mess that was created as much by liberal apathy, purity-testing and triumphalism as it was by conservative fear, gullibility, hate and racism? Why face our problems?! We can make up new ones! It's only those people over there who are suffering, and not us.

And don't think that the Latinos, for one, don't have a sense of what's actually going on here.

For too many people it's easier to make El Paso and Dayton about guns or mental health or video games than it is to face up to the hatred, racism and sexism that are the actual motivating factors. Yes, limiting access to weapons will probably help a lot and it still needs to be done.

But ignoring these underlying problems will not make them go away...even if we found a way to disarm every misogynist , racist nut or right-wing extremist in the country.

And jumping down rabbit holes over how some millionaire died or about this or that political policy somebody proposed or whatever isn't helping.

Unless we start to focus and stay on Congress and other aspects of the power structure so that they do what needs to be done, they won't. Don't think your skin color or social status will protect you, it won't.

As I have said so many ti mes, too many people only care about keeping their place in the magical city. They don't give a fuck about you...or me.

Fuck that noise. It will be us, fellow white people, before you know it. In some places it already has been...even if those people are too snookered by crazy rhetoric about abortion or guns to see the threat. This situation will even affect all those members of Congress and wealthy people, even though they think it won't.

But we can stop this, and you know we can. We can save ourselves and yes, them. We can save our civilization.

How do I know this?

Today is the first day of Eid al-Adha, one of the most important Islamic holidays. The 'Feast of the Sacrifice' honors the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son at God's command.

And...

We live in a world where even a Fundamentalist Christian-nationalist dickbag like Mike Pompeo has no choice, by dint of his current place in the world, than to wish those people a happy holiday.

Listen, ya'll, and listen good. All these so-called "Conservatives" the goons and the gun nuts and the racists and the Republicans...and GOD but I wish that one had not become a synonym for the other in that case, but it is what it is...and all these other motherfuckers...they know their time is getting short. That's why they want to do as much damage as they can in the amount of time they have left.

But to get them to slink back into the political wilderness...much less defeat them completely...you have to stay on task and you cannot keep jumping every time some motherfucker shouts "Squirrel!"

At the end of the day, we'll find out eventually what really happened with Epstein. The investigations into the stuff he did are all still ongoing, for fuck's sake. If he died because somebody wanted him to we'll find that out as well. These murderous nuts in our government are the type of people who can't wait to tell you, one way or another, that they're murderers, or nuts. If there's a cover-up give it a week or two and they'll screw up.

But if you want these motherfuckers to succeed at killing America, for ideology or personal profit, keep chasing after conspiracy theory crap instead of staying focused and paying attention to the big picture.

Don't look away.

There's a lot of us who can't afford to.