Stone Of Hope (Ahmaud Arbery Post II.)

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today. ~Martin Luther King, Jr.

Today, on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners sat down at the table of justice and voted to find three white men guilty of murdering a young black man. I'm not sure it's justice raining down like waters or righteousness like a mighty stream, but goddamn, I'll take it. It's definitely a start.

Meanwhile, Kyle Rittenhouse met with former president Trump yesterday. And *He* got away with his crimes.

Because reasons, or something.

Among other things, as I remarked yesterday it seems like the prosecution in the Arbery murder case was much more ably led, and the facts of the case more clear-cut despite previous prosecutorial and police misconduct in not charging these three motherfuckers until national notice and political pressure forced them to. On the other hand, Rittenhouse was arrested the next day, no questions asked and no screwing around.

Worth noting though, that while I was writing this I saw that the former Prosecutor who didn't want to do her job was arrested and booked like a common criminal for failure to uphold her oath of office, misconduct and violation of public trust. I saw her mug shot on Twitter.

Good.

But I'd also argue that Authoritarianism, Inc. (Both in terms of its US Republican and foreign wings) wasn't going to go and launch some balls-out effort involving millions of dollars and every far-right celebrity they could scrape up to save three butter-faced inbred Hills Have Eyes mutant looking motherfuckers who were basically a canoe full of tourists away from trying to reenact Deliverance no matter how you slice it. Nobody's going to get rich off trying to make three stereotypical Georgia rednecks into right-wing cultural icons, they'd just get laughed at.

Same with the former prosecutor. Nobody's going to save her.

It's been my experience, though, that the average MAGA is far closer to being these perps than to being Kyle Rittenhouse, so maybe they should damned well take note of that, too. 

Just a thought. If you're not pretty, young, or preferably both, the old perverts like Gosar or Trump and the young perverts like Lauren Boebert and Madison Cawthorn aren't going to notice you, certainly not in the same way. And if MTG manages to get him first, I rather suspect nobody else is going to want Kyle after, they'll be afraid what they might catch.

Of course, there's another factor in play here too. This case was just straight-up naked-ass old-fashioned racism with about the most stereotypical perpetrators that would be possible unless somebody built some in a disused secret Nazi lab. 

There's supposed to be a layer of separation between the racism and the crime in order to provide plausible deniability for all the dog-whistle racists. The Rittenhouse case had that, being a shooting at the protest following the shooting of a Black man. The Arbery case didn't have that and thus didn't get the attention from far-right money and politics.

Kyle Rittenhouse was and is a racism-laundering operation. That's why he went on Tucker Carlson and said he wasn't a racist and he supports BLM. (There's also a non-zero chance that Rittenhouse was just trolling his own supporters, too.)

But it's more than that. A lot more, if you think about it, and all the hidden layers are what make this shit so insidious.


While racism is important to these fucking goons, it's less important than their culture war rage bullshit unless it can be worked in directly, and preferably unobtrusively. They like to hide that shit, and right now it's Culture War above all. Or, as Rick correctly makes the connection, the Kulturkampf. Yes, that's right. Weimar Germany and Nazi Germany after it had a Culture War, too.

Think about that, for a second. Just go ahead and give it some thought, I'll wait.

And I'll give you three guesses who modern "Conservatives" think were the good guys, but you're only gonna need one.

And think about how many of the old standard-issue Republicans either just roll over for this shit or enthusiastically jump in. I've said before that "Conservatism" is going full Weimar Republic in rolling over for these assholes and it's kicking out anyone and everyone who won't vote for the Enabling Acts, preemptively, just like the Nazis eliminated the Communists as a voting bloc in the Reichstag before they made their move, not after.

Because after all, these people's egos are brittle and even one or two people resisting might hurt the feelings of the wannabe-Nazis. Ya know, if this ever comes down to a fight like these fucking people want, given their performance thus far, if even some, let alone most of the rest of us get our acts together...these people are going to get their ass kicked. 

But lots of people will still die who do not need to, and there will still be a vast amount of disruption and suffering and that's the goddamned point.

Both the point I'm trying to make as to why we need to nip this shit in the bud preemptively and the point for them, because cruelty and disruption are always the point. And for them, so is trying to make a big show of everything because they think they'll impress people with this stupid bullshit.

They keep talking about history.

Let me tell you a story. 

In February of 1994 I was a young Security Policeman in the United States Air Force. The local university was having a Black History Month event at which a few Tuskegee Airmen would be speaking. The higher-ups thought it would be a good idea for the local Bomb Wing to represent, so a bunch of us got told to go get our dress blues and drive into town for this thing. Hey, I thought, easy duty!

So I spent a fair amount of time that evening standing at attention while some old black dude talked about having been one of the Red Tails of the 332nd Fighter Group, a no-shit hero whose unit never lost an escorted bomber to enemy air action over Nazi-occupied Europe, only to come home and find out that little if anything had changed. Segregation was still in effect and all that. This guy talked about how he'd drive from Chicago down to Mississippi to visit family and how the Jim Crow bullshit started at Cairo, Illinois. Yes, the 1950's, the good old days of the Negro Motorist's Green Book and segregation. You know, what the MAGA's are talking about when they say "Make America Great Again." These people were honest-to-god heroes and came back to an America that didn't want to let them use the goddamned bathroom same as everybody else.

Think about that for a second.

That's America's history. 

I'd heard some of it by then, sure, even in High School. But the Tuskegee Airmen and much of that history was only just beginning to be a trending topic at the time. I was ashamed that my country put these people through this shit, but proud of my Service for giving them a fair shot, and most of all I was proud that they took it and overcame all the obstacles set against them and became fucking legends, contributing directly to the overthrow of that oppression. But the truth is, they shouldn't have had to do all that. The oppression never should've happened in the first damn place.

In terms of the military it would be three more years after the end of that war before the desegregation of the Armed Forces and took nearly twenty more years and much effort, pain and suffering for them and their people to have legal equality in any civilian context...and despite the milestones of 1948 and 1964 we're still working on making that full equality a fact today.

They should have been treated the same way as every other citizen and judged and inducted and trained the same way as everybody else was even at the time. They were sure expected to fight and die same as everybody else was! The way I was trained, and treated and quartered (my roommate in the Airman's dorms was Black) and this and that and the other thing should've been the standard all along.

That's our history and that's what those jurors in Georgia had the guts to face up to, and what the jurors in Wisconsin did not. That's what Movement Conservatism and most of all Authoritarianism Incorporated don't want people to face, to deal with, and to maybe effect changes because of.

The fact that some people did have that courage, at least, is one more stone of hope.

And I'm here to tell you that people facing our history and seeking to do something about it and change things for the better is exactly what the authoritarians and the racists and the revisionist historians will try and fight a new civil war to stop.

We have to be prepared for this.

Together we rise, or none of us do.

As long as any one of us is still not equal or free, none of us really are.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day. ~Martin Luther King Jr.

Post I.