Charlottesville is a hot shitty mess. And it’s been a long time in coming.
My thoughts, bullet list style:
- America is not a racist nation
- White nationalists are racist assholes
- Black nationalists are racist assholes
- The first amendment matters
- The sixth commandment matters
- Not everyone who voted for Trump is a racist
- If you are a racist, you likely voted for Trump
- The Civil War was fought over slavery
- Many MANY Confederate soldiers and officers were noble honorable warriors
- Removing Confederate statues does not carry moral worth
My heart breaks as Charlottesville unfolds. So much pain, so much tragedy, so much misplaced … misplaced ‘righteousness’.
Such bullshit.
What is it about human nature that we always see the ‘other’ in the other? Why is it that we can’t see the common? See that each of us, almost all of us, wants the same thing? We wanna love, deeply, and then fall ever deeper in love. We want a home safe from danger, to live with the front door unlocked, and wake up to sunshine and birds in the yard.
I have never known a neighbor that didn’t want their kids to play in the street, to go to a good school, then a good college and then a good job. Marriage and kids of their own are next. We all want that picket fence. Why do we need to hate? And hurt? And be so afraid?
When did we all become so afraid?
Why are we so afraid of the way each lives his life? Why do we care if he reads Asimov? Or he reads Othello? Or she plays chess or he Pokemon? How can it determine the content if he enjoys listening to this style of music or she enjoys studying this war; this artist or this general? How can that matter so SO much?
As I watch the news and listen to the radio and read the papers I am inundated. Inundated with the horror, the rage, the vile nature of the worst example of us.
This is not us – this is not who we are.
Reject it. Simply reject the premise and make your own way; shit, continue on the glorious noble way that you’ve already forged. Do it with honor, do it boldly, do it with the same compassion and love that drove you to that place to begin with.
Because the alternative is simply impossible. It is impossible to live in the world envisioned by those who perpetuate the divide.
For just one fuckin’ second, consider how we are the same and stop focusing on how we’re different.
