Let us never forget that the deep things that are American are the soul and the spirit. The Statue of Liberty is not tired, and not because it is made of bronze. It is because no matter what happens, here the individual is dignified because he is created in the image of his God. Let us not forget it. ~Dwight D. Eisenhower, Speech to the B'Nai B'rith
I have a confession to make. As I've said before, I used to be a conservative. I used to be a Republican. I spent much of my life as a Christian, for awhile there I was a borderline Fundamentalist. In spite of that, I was never one of these fucking people.
By "These fucking people" I mean these conspiracy-minded chuckleheads pitching the idea that this migrant "caravan" is some kind of Jewish conspiracy to "Replace white people." Now, if the last such group is any guide, most of those people will settle in Mexico or become disillusioned and go home and a very small percentage of them will actually reach our southern border, where they will lawfully turn themselves in and ask for asylum. Out of the last group I think maybe 230 people actually did so.
Not much of a "Replacement" then, is it? It's sure as hell not an "Invasion." It's sure as hell no damned good reason to shoot up a synagogue.
There's something else at work here. I mean, aside from base racism, that is.
.There is, and always has been, among certain conservatives, a tendency towards belief in conspiracy theories, toward intellectual curiosity, toward magical thinking. I suppose when you start out believing in something like Creationism or that just about anybody can acquire
Spiritual Gifts Magical Powers
if they pray the right words toward the right interpretation of Jesus in the right kind of church, are part of the right "in- group" or something something Gazpacho.
If you don't think manipulative shitheads the world over, starting with the Russians, are ready to exploit this kind of mule-headed willful stupidity on the part of the American Idiot, you have another thing coming. As evidenced by the statements of their Orange God,
Trump, these fucking people have been convinced that the rest of the world, all those
Godless heathens,
non-Americans, people not of our Tribe are somehow taking advantage of "Us." Note that "Us" does not include 75% of Americans.
As somebody who paid attention in the 1990's I'm here to tell you we can all thank Newt Gingrich for that aspect of our current mess.
But who is "Us?" I mean, who do these people think they are? I submit to you that These Fucking People are the absolute last ones who know who the fuck they are.
I'm divorced. My ex-wife and her family were basically poor Northern Michigan white trash, almost all Christian Fundamentalist or Pentecostal nuts, with most having at best a high-school education, overwhelmingly poor or at best lower-middle-class, all of them dependent on Food Stamps, with elderly family members mostly having nothing but Social Security to fall back on. Now, that's not a value judgment it's simply a statement of fact. These people were cooks and grocery store stockers and retail workers for the most part. At one time or another half my ex-wife's family and most of her church worked at Wal-Mart.
I'm not kidding when I say the highest-status job of any person that I regularly interacted with at the time was that one of my Wal-Mart Co-workers was also a member of the Michigan Army National Guard. (Oh, and by the way that dude was intent on getting out of his small hometown as well.) Others, professional people, might make appearances from time to time. Your kid's teacher, the cop that pulled you over, etc.
Most of these fucking people resent those people. You can damned well imagine what they think of the government, can't you?
Some of those people got an education and got out, the rest of the family doesn't really talk to them as much now.
I was a Christian, being an actual tithe-paying member of a Baptist church at the time. I was a conservative, for fuck's sake I was still an NRA member when I got sucked into this mess.
But I'd grown up reading, I'd traveled, I'd even been around the world a bit and I'd dealt with people from other cultures, other countries, other races and other religions. So some of those people looked at me as if I'd been born on the Moon.
Hell I still get that here, but not as much.
I can't say I ever encountered much racism, in point of fact a lot of my ex-wife's friends were dating and/or had kids by Jamaican men, and in fact one of the members of her little church clique was Jamaican (although she was a Canadian citizen and married to one of the church's "Praise and Worship" people, who was also my immediate supervisor at Wal-Mart.)
But you know what? To these people a person that was a Jew or a Muslim or some other non-Christian or even a different kind of Christian might as well have been from another planet. My ex-wife was literally never able to relate to my Mom in even the smallest possible way, because my Mom was (and is) bisexual and had given up on conservatism and religion years before.
An awful lot of her family members and friends could barely relate to
me, because I knew history and theology and the world outside of their little rural bubble, I cared about science, I paid attention to politics beyond reflexively voting Republican, I watched CNN and actually
read the Detroit Free Press...a habit largely limited to the elderly in the circles I was moving into.
Of course they could relate to the Jamaicans, who were here primarily for purposes of corporate profit (which these people understand) and because most Jamaicans are Christians. Even the few who weren't...Rastas mostly...could and did still talk Bible and shared many of the values of the lower-class Northern Michigan people.
By which I mean things like homophobia and toxic masculinity, but I digress.
Personally, I had nothing against gay people...and I'd been taught that way. But back in 2000, Homophobia was one of those new words that was just entering our lexicon, at least where I was at. It was an educated word, a liberal word that some of those people would look at you funny if you used it. Toxic masculinity? If you'd have used those words 20 years ago these people would've laughed at you.
Of course, the world had already begun to change, I was aware of it, had for the most part embraced that myself, and resolved to roll with it even if I didn't necessarily agree with everything. I'd find a way.
But my ex-wife's people? Aside from the obvious presence of more Black folks, the odd open bi or gay person here and there, a few factory closings and the fact that most of the people who joined the military or went to college never came back...not much in 2000 had changed from how things were in 1950...and that goes double for people who are poor and simply cannot afford to keep up with our modern world. In point of fact, the world changing was evidence that we were "Living in the End Times" although this kind of thinking had taken a hit (briefly) when Y2K and all that crap did not come to pass.
But then 9/11 happened, and even though most of these people couldn't find New York City (much less Afghanistan) with a GPS locator, a map and a pathfinder platoon,
that was a sign of the End Times. Right after 9/11 two things happened, I observed that the churches in my ex-wife's hometown all became very aggressive in their evangelism and I started seeing Fox News on the TV a lot more, and CNN at least a little bit less. Conservatism has never looked back, and those fucking people (and thus the rest of us too) were set to get dragged down this path of Crazy until, well, here we are.
So you see, the problems of "today" have been with us for quite a while, maybe not as bad, but they've always been there. It's not that some people got "Left behind" by our global economy and modern world, it's that they were never included in the first place. Call it poor schools, or intellectual incuriosity, or just laziness in not making people keep up, but here we are.
Russians? Well...they're white, they say they're Christians and they hate gay people, so that's good enough for most of these white trash motherfuckers.
For all of their claimed "Nativism" most of the people that these people hate are just as native to the United States of America as they are.
By the way, I should add that their view of the Jamaicans has considerably darkened and become resentful with time, not that these fucking people want to do the jobs the Jamaicans are doing. They don't want anybody else to do those jobs either. If the comments section is to be believed, a majority of the women who get with the Jamaicans these days are (or are at least seen as being) "Liberals" and such...even if they're not, really.
But then these days, to those fucking people, "Liberal" is just code for "Not racist enough" or for "Somebody who isn't a destructive shithead."
I can remember when Trent Lott got ran out of Congress for speaking favorably of Strom Thurmond, mostly by Republicans, and I was still a Republican at the time and I agreed with that course of action.
Now? Somebody who Retweets hashtags like "Burn the Jews" or "Bring Back Slavery" has thousands of followers on Twitter, the support of the President, and no incentive to stop acting like a goddamned moron. Oh, and against this crap, the rest of us have absolutely no recourse whatever, simply because any attempt at advocating for decent behavior or imposing some level of standards, or even trying to make people understand what the Constitution, the Law, and basic humanity say about such things is derided as being "Politically Correct."
Ya know, in some ways 1988, 2000, or 2002 or even 2008 were barbaric and savage times compared to today...but I'd gladly take that over this Anything Goes crap today, where if you're a
conservative then the basic humanity of other people and any pretense of obedience to our own Constitution, human decency, or the law is suddenly up for debate. How is any of this conservative?
You know, Conservatism, "Things as they are" and all that, never mind that when I was growing up in the 1970's and 1980's racism was not cool, and things like Anti-Semitism simply were beyond the pale, and free trade, international engagement, Medicare, Social Security and even Roe Vs. Wade were basically recognized as part of the social fabric.
Not to mention, one of my deaf ferrets could probably provide a better definition of the word Conservative than most of these people can, and ferrets can't read.
It's not just that conservatives have let conservatism and the Republican Party become bitter, hollow caricatures of their former selves. It's that the rest of us have let them. It's that the most ardent far-Left hater of all things right-wing couldn't come up with a better two-dimensional caricature of Republicans than the one they've made of themselves...and
Republicans are fast doing the same to America if we don't step up and do something about it and vote the bastards out.
I'm an American, I used to be a conservative, and what I want to know is when the hell did conspiracy theories, hate and murder become "Truth" and when did caring about other people, doing what is objectively the right thing, and treating people decently become crazy ideas?
When the fuck did some half-baked idea of a second American Civil War and all the millions of deaths, vast financial losses and the possibility of fratricidal nuclear attacks on ourselves that such might entail become preferable to getting along with your own neighbors, conservatives?
I don't know, but I know there's one way to start reversing this, and that's to vote the
bastards Republicans out.
Otherwise they'll bring about their own End of Days, and as it happens they'll wonder why the lights are going out and the money has stopped rolling...and why there's no Jesus.
