The Monticello Heresies, One.

My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn't
dammit: No tears.
I'm stone. I'm flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night slanted against morning.
I turn this way—the stone lets me go.
I turn that way—I'm inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.
~Facing It, by Yusef Komunyakaa, US Army Veteran

I saw this the other day.

Some old white man bitching about the fact that they talked about Slavery during a tour of Monticello he supposedly went on. It was a literal Slave Plantation, you goddamned dumbass. 

More to the point, the power and station in life and the wealth that Thomas Jefferson got from being its owner is the only reason he was able to do the things he did, or that the beliefs he articulated in all of his writing have any relevance in our society. You can debate all day whether that's right or wrong, but given the state of the world in that time it's an amazing thing that an elite like Thomas Jefferson believed in freedom at all, for anybody...because most people didn't.

If they could even understand the idea, as illiteracy was also pretty widespread.

It makes the things Jefferson did all the more wondrous by comparison to the rest of the world at the time, where emperors and kings and queens, princes, petty despots, sultans and satraps of every kind made people's decisions for them. 

Injustice was fucking normal.

And I find it interesting that so many of these racists don't want to talk about slavery, it's almost like they feel bad about it or have some sort of a guilty conscience. Isn't that system something they've covertly (or not-so-covertly) idealized for a long time? 

Wasn't that the entire point of the Lost Cause/State's Rights bullshit?

Oh, right, trying to hide the racism was the whole goddamn reason these motherfuckers drummed up the "Pro-Life" movement in the first place. It's almost like they know that it's wrong and they have something to hide.

Like, that to "Conservatives" injustice should just be fucking normal because "That's the way it always was before."

As if that was ever a good goddamned reason to do anything. A lot of those ways got cast aside because they didn't work for people.

But back in the day, either you benefitted from the system, or you submitted to it. If you fought back you either became a national hero and sometimes the new ruler...or you were executed by some horrible means...and all of the above happening to one person was not unheard of either. 

And to be an elite who failed in some way, much less a king who was defeated, was usually to suffer a horrible death. For the common people, again, injustice was just...normal.

As was having leaders that were nothing but well-dressed buffoons, surrounded by corrupt advisors and manipulative priests.

And people wonder why Europe had so many bloody revolutions and wars of religion?

But for some people in ruling classes, adaptation or at least less injustice was seen as a chance at self-preservation.

America was an experiment, precisely because even some of The People got to determine their own destinies or change rulers or governments without death or violence or have rights at all, and the whole world truly was watching. 

If History isn't nice to old rich white conservatives, maybe there's a damned reason for that?

And the worst part is, Jefferson is doubtless considered scandalously liberal by the Fox News crowd, who seem to think that Fascism or some kind of neo-Feudalism backed by economic Libertarianism should be the way of things.

Fuckers should possibly be trussed up Clockwork Orange style and forced to watch as someone Googles "Causes of the October Revolution."

Or causes of the French Revolution, or the Civil War, or what happens every goddamned time rich elites and their hangers-on decide they want to take a shit all over everybody else, and keep doing it.

And the worst part is, rather than deal with cultural and social change or be just One of the Many that is supposed to be one people, these fucking white conservative assholes would rather burn America to the ground and throw the ashes in the sea than be equal to Black people or liberals or Muslims even though our Constitution and form of governance has stated exactly that since after the Civil War if it didn't before that. 

Jefferson specifically used Muslims as a test example on the subject of religious freedom, for a reason.

Not that the average dumbass Evangelical even knows this.

(And deliberately so.)

These motherfuckers don't want to be part of a system that doesn't at least pretend to kiss their ass and at least claim to let them set the agenda or the tone all the time, and if they can't at least think they're in charge they don't want to have anything at all. Remember, even Barack Obama felt the need to sound conservative now and again, and invited people like Henry Kissinger to the White House.

Because the Chicago Boys set and the underground NatSec fascists in orgs like the CIA must be tossed a bone now and again or something.

But that's not working anymore, and hell, even the NatSec people have even been kicked to the curb by Republicans.

And here's the thing, if we want to keep our current system, if we want America and capitalism and freedom to survive in the world we can't do any of that...because the current system needs Black folks, immigrants, LGBT people or whatever participating as full members now in order to maintain its functionality. 

Now, not three or four generations down the line when they're fully assimilated into Americanism and only the very eldest speak their original language or know their original religion at all and the family name is little more than a relic of a place none of them know except from a map.

Now, not when White Conservative Evangelicals get around to it. If they ever do. 

Even today the only way these assholes will accept a Black person is if they are a Republican first, and performatively abandon all else, including Blackness.

There was a plaque of a Norwegian dinner table prayer in my grandparents' dining room. It had belonged to my great grandmother. She, my Grandpa and his brothers were the only ones in the family who spoke Norwegian on any kind of conversational level, and only my Great Grandma was the sort of Evangelical Lutheran that was once the dominant faith in that country. Most of my family was Baptist, Catholic, or just plain not religious.

And because basically nobody in my family is or ever has been the kind of nonsense performative Evangelical that became such a thing in the 1980's and 1990's we still don't really exist to those fuckers.

For fuck's sake, it's only in my own lifetime that racism by white people against other white people ceased to be a thing. Shit, ethnic jokes and slurs were still a thing when I was a kid and had only faded down to being unacceptable by my late teens. I mean, shit, anti-Catholic bigotry only went underground in my own lifetime!

20 years ago, I was getting shouted down on "Christian" message boards for saying "Hey, this is America, it's a free country and you should show some basic humanity."

I've been suspicious of anybody who talks too much about "Christian Love" ever since. Ain't no hate in the world like "Christian Love." And I say that as somebody who was a Christian for most of my life.

Because none of this was ever about Christ or Christianity.

I saw this earlier, some Republican railing against Juneteenth being a national holiday, saying "We don't need another one. What's next, giving American Indians their own holiday?"

Now tell me why there shouldn't be a national holiday for Native Americans, or LGBT people, or Muslims, or Women  or whatever. 

Show your work. 

I mean, fuck, the Federal government could just follow the lead of a number of states and designate Columbus Day as Indigenous People's Day. 

Columbus Day (originally a bone thrown to Italian Americans by a society that then still regarded most of them as criminals and fit only for manual labor or prison) doesn't mean much to most of us anymore. If you don't work in a bank or the Post Office all it means is "Fuck, the Bank is closed" or "Shit, I forgot, there's no mail today."

Black people, Latino people, LGBT people, Immigrants, Native people, etc. etc. etc. have been in America and part of America and bleeding and dying for America as long as there's been an America. Why shouldn't they be recognized as part of America...as a full part of America, not as a curiosity or some kind of lower castes.

And how in the hell did we ever get to the goddamned point where White working people, of no discernable privilege or wealth, would rather be on the table as a meal for the privileged and the wealthy than seated at that table in a spirit of brotherhood with Black people, or LGBT people or even people who have different political or social beliefs?

So long as somebody else gets eaten first. 

These fuckers would prefer cannibalism to equality.

And if these assholes can't have that, they'd rather no one have a table to eat at, period.

These fuckers done told on themselves by buying into Zombie Apocalypse fiction a little too hard.

I'm a fucking white guy. How the fuck does "Christianity" or "Whiteness" these days seem to connote only a specific kind of reactionary white man? And no, nobody else's Christianity seems to matter either. 

And why the fuck is this narrative even being tolerated...even by conservatives, who surely must know how that ends for them, too? Why the fuck do we have even a tiny minority of people who want to live in some kind of medieval Catholic feudalism when it's no secret that this exact situation led to, and ended in more, generations of war and death?

And what the fuck do right-wing Protestants think they're going to get out of that?

 

Zero-sum wars of religion they'd likely lose? How many of these "Christians" are even Biblically literate? How do you think you're going to win if you don't even know the rules of the game?

Especially when the other side's been gaming the system longer than the religious movement you're only dimly even aware of being a part of has even existed?

When the Constitution was written, the memory of Martin Luther, of the Reformation, of European wars of religion was, if not exactly fresh, still fresh enough. Enlightenment rationalism was seen as a way to avoid repeating all that.

Which, by the way, was precisely why the founders of our country designed its system the way they did.

Nowadays you'd be hard-pressed to find a Christian in America who knows who Martin Luther was or what he did, even if they're theoretically part of the movement he started by writing down his complaints and nailing them to a church door.

Ignorance, if widespread enough, is prelude to savagery. But, some people regard dancing around a fire and shouting "Unga Bunga" as something to aspire to.

The day may come when teaching real history in some places is an underground profession, or when learning or teaching the real history requires being in another country. It's already that way in China and Russia. There's a reason for that.

History means understanding the truth of how things came to be. Truth gives people a means to push back against Power. The day may come when Reading Du Bois In Dallas is the new Reading Lolita In Tehran.

Freedom to learn, and to know, IS freedom. It's the beginning of all the other kinds of freedom, too. Knowledge Is Power. Why the fuck do you think current selfish elites glorify ignorance and shit like teenage girls getting pregnant?

Ignorance is only strength to those who have power and don't want anybody to be smart enough to challenge them.

Understand that now, and act on it, or the day will come when the writings of Thomas Jefferson are published under the title "The Monticello Heresies."

These assholes are already trying to call true history "heretical." Racism is the glue that holds all this right-wing shit together. Take that away, and it falls apart into a melee of competing factions.

Either we're all free, or none of us are. Either you believe in freedom...for all...or you don't.

Why the fuck do we have Americans who identify more with Russification and Sovietization than they do with America, diversity and pluralism?

Either you're an American or you're not. 

Together we rise, or none of us do.

When the earliest settlers poured into a wild continent there was no one to ask them where they came from. The only question was: Were they sturdy enough to make the journey, were they strong enough to clear the land, were they enduring enough to make a home for freedom, and were they brave enough to die for liberty if it became necessary to do so? And so it has been through all the great and testing moments of American history. Our history this year we see in Vietnam. Men there are dying; men named Fernandez and Zajac and Zelinko and Mariano and McCormick. Neither the enemy who killed them nor the people whose independence they have fought to save ever asked them where they or their parents came from. They were all Americans. It was for free men and for America that they gave their all, they gave their lives and selves. By eliminating that same question as a test for immigration the Congress proves ourselves worthy of those men and worthy of our own traditions as a nation. ~Lyndon B. Johnson.

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