"It is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the negro poor has worsened over the last twelve or fifteen years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity". ~Martin Luther King Jr.Martin Luther King Jr. famously said that a riot is the language of the unheard.
Let me tell you what I see right now, what I hear and see in the conversations, in the voices and on the faces of many of my co-workers.
I see and hear one hell of a lot of white people who are desperate to go right on unhearing... and unfeeling and unseeing.
Not just as regards the riots or the killings of black people by police officers, but the virus, the unraveling of Trump, all of it. This last few days feels like shades of 1989, to me...except that WE are the East Bloc now.
Do you know what brought that about? Privilege, Whiteness, the actual worship of comfort and convenience and social status. The dedicated effort by enemies foreign and domestic to elect a fool, and then these people crowed about having gotten a meme elected as President.
A cop killed a guy, in a cruel way, for no good reason just because he was Black and the attitude of a non-zero percentage of white folks is "But I'm uncomfortable."
This is what the Bible speaks about when it says "Babylon The Great Is Fallen." In the time in which Revelation was written, Babylon was used by Christians as an allusion to Rome, then the world-empire that ruled over most of the lands in which they lived. If you preached or wrote tracts against Rome, you would be killed. Thus Babylon is used as a symbol for decadence, for empire, for power.
Is there anything, really, more decadent than getting a person elected whose only real talent was self-promotion and getting himself made into a meme on the internet, to the greatest position of responsibility in the world, just because you can? And is there anything more base and decadent than doing your level best to studiously ignore all this even as it unravels, and threatens to destroy our country, just because you think who you are or what you look like or how much money you have will protect you?
And worse, there are those who fear the destruction of our nation less than they fear the election of a member of the other political party, or a person of color, or a woman...to the very office that an old white man has bungled and degraded to almost beyond recognition.
Regarding several things, the Bible uses the words "He that hath an ear, let him hear..." But can you hear, if you have been convinced to believe things that are not true?
We have eyes to see, minds to think, and imaginations to dream up philosophy and religions that call us to awaken to the world around us and see the suffering of others and of the world itself... and do something about it.
If we know this, and do it not, we become Babylon.
Christ said that faith without works is dead. What good is it, to believe in or to profess a belief in equality, or freedom, or any such thing, only to then not act when it should be required of us because acting would be inconvenient or uncomfortable.
Why then, when the world and it's people use their voices and say "I am here, wake up!" in a way that cannot be ignored, do so many wish only to go back to sleep?
But the odds are very great right now, that if you go back to sleep you may wake up the next morning in a different country, because the lines on the map moved and you couldn't.
I remember when that happened to people.
The Cold War, the East Bloc, the Soviet Union...all these things were forever...until they suddenly weren't anymore. One day I remember hearing on the news that there was some kind of government and immigration-related shakeup in East Germany...and the next evening I was watching people dancing in the streets and taking sledgehammers to the wall that had divided their city for longer than many of those people had been alive...and there functionally was no East Germany anymore.
This is what I feared when Trump said "Build the wall" and ran a campaign on racism, that he'd turn America into East Germany. When I joked in 2015 that "Republicans are Communists now" THIS is what I was talking about...
As a little kid I watched reports of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the few days after Christmas in 1979, I spent my formative years in the shadow of the Cold War, MX (Peacekeeper) ICBM's and Pershing missiles were things that were on the news. Apartheid in South Africa, demonstrations, protests, fear of nuclear war, the fierce courage of the Afghan Mujahideen as they faced down the Red Army with nothing but AK-47's, improvised explosives and their own guts (and later our Stinger missiles) and as a young teenager I watched Ronald Reagan stand at the Bradenburg Gate and say "Mr. Gorbachev, Open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" A couple years later, the Soviets were out of Afghanistan and I was watching people climb on top of the Berlin Wall in full view of the guards and not get shot, in short order Solidarity triumphed after its long struggle in Poland, other East Bloc governments fell. On Christmas, Romania's communist dictator was executed. A few months later, Nelson Mandela was released from prison, and all the sudden the other bad guys of the era were gone, too and I began to realize that I would live in a different world from that in which my parents had.
But there were, and are, people who fear that kind of change. People who'd rather that the Cold War would have ended with the Soviet 1st Guards Tank Army getting massacred by the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment in the Fulda Gap, then the Black Horse having to withdraw under cover from Apaches and Warthogs and flanking regiments as the next Red Army formation moved up and the Abrams tanks ran low on ammunition and pulled back to rearm, and vast air battles in the skies over central Europe as the difference in numbers started to tell on the ground and NATO traded space for time even as REFORGER plans were activated, convoys began to form up in Hampton Roads and New York Harbor and the US Navy stood out to sea in battle lines thousands of miles long as hellish weapons were locked and loaded and the crews of the Bones and the BUFFs and the Minuteman silos sweated out alert duty knowing the next alert could mean the end of everything.
There are people who would have preferred the sun-bright flashes of nuclear detonations in the middle of the night to the value of their politics, their shitty selfish God and their Whiteness diminishing.
It was also in 1989 that Donald Trump...then at the peak of his gold-plated New York Fat Cat fame...crusaded for the executions of the Central Park Five.
I was a fifteen-year-old kid in a moderately conservative family at the time. The fact that some of those kids were my age bothered me. What if some rich asshole decided they wanted me to die? Come on, this is America.
We have eyes to see, minds to think, and imaginations to dream up philosophy and religions that call us to awaken to the world around us and see the suffering of others and of the world itself... and do something about it.
If we know this, and do it not, we become Babylon.
Christ said that faith without works is dead. What good is it, to believe in or to profess a belief in equality, or freedom, or any such thing, only to then not act when it should be required of us because acting would be inconvenient or uncomfortable.
Why then, when the world and it's people use their voices and say "I am here, wake up!" in a way that cannot be ignored, do so many wish only to go back to sleep?
But the odds are very great right now, that if you go back to sleep you may wake up the next morning in a different country, because the lines on the map moved and you couldn't.
I remember when that happened to people.
The Cold War, the East Bloc, the Soviet Union...all these things were forever...until they suddenly weren't anymore. One day I remember hearing on the news that there was some kind of government and immigration-related shakeup in East Germany...and the next evening I was watching people dancing in the streets and taking sledgehammers to the wall that had divided their city for longer than many of those people had been alive...and there functionally was no East Germany anymore.
This is what I feared when Trump said "Build the wall" and ran a campaign on racism, that he'd turn America into East Germany. When I joked in 2015 that "Republicans are Communists now" THIS is what I was talking about...
As a little kid I watched reports of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the few days after Christmas in 1979, I spent my formative years in the shadow of the Cold War, MX (Peacekeeper) ICBM's and Pershing missiles were things that were on the news. Apartheid in South Africa, demonstrations, protests, fear of nuclear war, the fierce courage of the Afghan Mujahideen as they faced down the Red Army with nothing but AK-47's, improvised explosives and their own guts (and later our Stinger missiles) and as a young teenager I watched Ronald Reagan stand at the Bradenburg Gate and say "Mr. Gorbachev, Open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" A couple years later, the Soviets were out of Afghanistan and I was watching people climb on top of the Berlin Wall in full view of the guards and not get shot, in short order Solidarity triumphed after its long struggle in Poland, other East Bloc governments fell. On Christmas, Romania's communist dictator was executed. A few months later, Nelson Mandela was released from prison, and all the sudden the other bad guys of the era were gone, too and I began to realize that I would live in a different world from that in which my parents had.
But there were, and are, people who fear that kind of change. People who'd rather that the Cold War would have ended with the Soviet 1st Guards Tank Army getting massacred by the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment in the Fulda Gap, then the Black Horse having to withdraw under cover from Apaches and Warthogs and flanking regiments as the next Red Army formation moved up and the Abrams tanks ran low on ammunition and pulled back to rearm, and vast air battles in the skies over central Europe as the difference in numbers started to tell on the ground and NATO traded space for time even as REFORGER plans were activated, convoys began to form up in Hampton Roads and New York Harbor and the US Navy stood out to sea in battle lines thousands of miles long as hellish weapons were locked and loaded and the crews of the Bones and the BUFFs and the Minuteman silos sweated out alert duty knowing the next alert could mean the end of everything.
There are people who would have preferred the sun-bright flashes of nuclear detonations in the middle of the night to the value of their politics, their shitty selfish God and their Whiteness diminishing.
It was also in 1989 that Donald Trump...then at the peak of his gold-plated New York Fat Cat fame...crusaded for the executions of the Central Park Five.
I was a fifteen-year-old kid in a moderately conservative family at the time. The fact that some of those kids were my age bothered me. What if some rich asshole decided they wanted me to die? Come on, this is America.
Not a day goes by, especially lately, that I don't think...or say out loud "Come ON, man, this is America!"
But that's because I can see, because I can hear, because I know...because I want to know.
I was a conservative as a teenager and young man in part because the New York Liberals and fat cats and shit allowed themselves to be represented by...people like Donald Trump...because the Left allowed itself to be represented by a goofy dork like Mike Dukakis and as much as I often thought George H.W. Bush was only the better of two evils in that case, I felt guys like Bush more represented my views.
A few years later, voting age, more experience and a few years of social change...and I voted for Bill Clinton because I liked what he had to say on taxes and some other issues, Democrat or no.
And that's what they're afraid of. Me. The voter who gives a shit, either out of natural inclination or because he has to.
Sixteen years later, disgusted with what Republicanism had become...conspiracy theories and racism...I stopped being a Republican and voted for Obama.
Conservatism and Republicanism is no longer Reagan's "Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate, Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" or a high-minded commitment to democracy and nuclear detente and a thousand points of light as pitched by Bush the Elder nor the "He's a good guy to have a beer with" earthy conservatism and sincere if simplistic spirituality of Bush the younger.
No, conservatism has become embodied by a very stupid man whose only game in life was that he was born wealthy and could fool the feeble-minded. Conservatism has become not much more than contempt for everyone and everything and loyalty only to one man...even over your own self.
And that man is loyal only to his own ego, power, and wealth. And Trump's platform as of now could be boiled down to two words "He White."
Doesn't seem to register with these people that the guy who's running against him is also an old white man, a literal political institution unto himself simply because he's been around so long. But ya know, for the record I've never in my life had any issues with Joe Biden. I for one have never had anything but issues with Donald Trump.
You have to be the right kind of white person, I guess.
The kind who regards [self-inflicted] political turmoil, and things like cultural and social change as an inconvenience, who worships a golden image that represents an unholy trinity of color, comfort, and convenience...and for whom being inconvenienced or made to feel uncomfortable is the worst thing ever and who wants nothing more than for people to stop bringing things to their attention so they can go back to sleep and anesthetize themselves with being told what they want to hear and getting what they want when they want it and not having to get mad at other people for pointing out injustices.
I've never really had the option of being that kind of person. I was a Christian for most of my life. He that hath an ear, let him hear.
Love thy neighbor as thyself.
If you don't care about your neighbor enough to know what's going on with them, or simply to ask how they feel or what they think, is that love?
Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, all thy soul, and all thy might.
But to do that, you have to know what is true. The world, both physical and spiritual, is what it is. There is a right and a wrong and it's on you to know...to find out...what is truth. Do you truly love God or anything at all if you do not seek to know it, to understand its nature?
And to read the Word, you gotta have your eyes open. To know the Truth, you gotta keep your mind open to it, yet sharp enough to divide fact from fiction.
The time to be asleep is long past, wake up, and put aside foolish things. They who have ears, let them hear; Man cannot save Man. Anybody who believes in Donald Trump will end up in hell with him when they die.
It doesn't so much matter what it is, but you have to believe in a power greater than yourself, greater than Man, and believe in the day of judgment. It doesn't matter what form this takes. Hell, you can be an Atheist and still believe that we're all going to face the consequences if we don't get our shit together. This is really not hard. It's literally the lowest imaginable bar...
But we will all be judged on that simplest of criteria "Did you give a shit, or not?"
Have the sense to assume that the judge in charge of determining this is gonna be smarter than you are and knows what ya done, and life your life accordingly.
Sleep-walking your way through this shit in some kind of state of comfortable convenience where you feel entitled to get a trophy just for showing up ain't going to cut it.
The hour is late, wake up.
Trump is openly calling for race war and frantically urging Americans to turn their guns on each other in the middle of a pandemic because whatever control he thought he had, he's lost it, and if you don't see a problem with this, fuck you.
If you are not willing to stand fast against the fall of night, to be the light in the darkness, you cannot expect someone else to do it for you. Either you stand up, or you don't, there can be no middle ground.
It is late, choose, and choose now.
Part Two
Prequel
Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom.
And five of them were wise, and five were foolish. They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them: But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps.
While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept.
And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him.
Then all those virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps.
And the foolish said unto the wise, Give us of your oil; for our lamps are gone out. But the wise answered, saying, Not so; lest there be not enough for us and you: but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves.
And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage: and the door was shut. Afterward came also the other virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us.
But he answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I know you not.
Watch ye therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh. ~Matthew 25:1-13
But that's because I can see, because I can hear, because I know...because I want to know.
I was a conservative as a teenager and young man in part because the New York Liberals and fat cats and shit allowed themselves to be represented by...people like Donald Trump...because the Left allowed itself to be represented by a goofy dork like Mike Dukakis and as much as I often thought George H.W. Bush was only the better of two evils in that case, I felt guys like Bush more represented my views.
A few years later, voting age, more experience and a few years of social change...and I voted for Bill Clinton because I liked what he had to say on taxes and some other issues, Democrat or no.
And that's what they're afraid of. Me. The voter who gives a shit, either out of natural inclination or because he has to.
Sixteen years later, disgusted with what Republicanism had become...conspiracy theories and racism...I stopped being a Republican and voted for Obama.
Conservatism and Republicanism is no longer Reagan's "Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate, Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" or a high-minded commitment to democracy and nuclear detente and a thousand points of light as pitched by Bush the Elder nor the "He's a good guy to have a beer with" earthy conservatism and sincere if simplistic spirituality of Bush the younger.
No, conservatism has become embodied by a very stupid man whose only game in life was that he was born wealthy and could fool the feeble-minded. Conservatism has become not much more than contempt for everyone and everything and loyalty only to one man...even over your own self.
And that man is loyal only to his own ego, power, and wealth. And Trump's platform as of now could be boiled down to two words "He White."
Doesn't seem to register with these people that the guy who's running against him is also an old white man, a literal political institution unto himself simply because he's been around so long. But ya know, for the record I've never in my life had any issues with Joe Biden. I for one have never had anything but issues with Donald Trump.
You have to be the right kind of white person, I guess.
The kind who regards [self-inflicted] political turmoil, and things like cultural and social change as an inconvenience, who worships a golden image that represents an unholy trinity of color, comfort, and convenience...and for whom being inconvenienced or made to feel uncomfortable is the worst thing ever and who wants nothing more than for people to stop bringing things to their attention so they can go back to sleep and anesthetize themselves with being told what they want to hear and getting what they want when they want it and not having to get mad at other people for pointing out injustices.
I've never really had the option of being that kind of person. I was a Christian for most of my life. He that hath an ear, let him hear.
Love thy neighbor as thyself.
If you don't care about your neighbor enough to know what's going on with them, or simply to ask how they feel or what they think, is that love?
Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, all thy soul, and all thy might.
But to do that, you have to know what is true. The world, both physical and spiritual, is what it is. There is a right and a wrong and it's on you to know...to find out...what is truth. Do you truly love God or anything at all if you do not seek to know it, to understand its nature?
And to read the Word, you gotta have your eyes open. To know the Truth, you gotta keep your mind open to it, yet sharp enough to divide fact from fiction.
The time to be asleep is long past, wake up, and put aside foolish things. They who have ears, let them hear; Man cannot save Man. Anybody who believes in Donald Trump will end up in hell with him when they die.
It doesn't so much matter what it is, but you have to believe in a power greater than yourself, greater than Man, and believe in the day of judgment. It doesn't matter what form this takes. Hell, you can be an Atheist and still believe that we're all going to face the consequences if we don't get our shit together. This is really not hard. It's literally the lowest imaginable bar...
But we will all be judged on that simplest of criteria "Did you give a shit, or not?"
Have the sense to assume that the judge in charge of determining this is gonna be smarter than you are and knows what ya done, and life your life accordingly.
Sleep-walking your way through this shit in some kind of state of comfortable convenience where you feel entitled to get a trophy just for showing up ain't going to cut it.
The hour is late, wake up.
Trump is openly calling for race war and frantically urging Americans to turn their guns on each other in the middle of a pandemic because whatever control he thought he had, he's lost it, and if you don't see a problem with this, fuck you.
If you are not willing to stand fast against the fall of night, to be the light in the darkness, you cannot expect someone else to do it for you. Either you stand up, or you don't, there can be no middle ground.
It is late, choose, and choose now.
Part Two
Prequel
Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom.
And five of them were wise, and five were foolish. They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them: But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps.
While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept.
And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him.
Then all those virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps.
And the foolish said unto the wise, Give us of your oil; for our lamps are gone out. But the wise answered, saying, Not so; lest there be not enough for us and you: but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves.
And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage: and the door was shut. Afterward came also the other virgins, saying, Lord, Lord, open to us.
But he answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I know you not.
Watch ye therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh. ~Matthew 25:1-13
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