white people are so scared of black people. they bulldoze out to the
country, and put up houses on little loop-d-loop streets. and while america
gets its heart cut right out of its chest, the berlin wall still runs down
main street separating east side from west. and nothing is stirring, not even
a mouse, in the boarded up stores and the broken down houses, so they hang
colorful banners off all the street lamps just to prove they got no manners,
no mercy, and no sense. and i wonder then what it will take for my city to
rise. first we admit our mistakes and then we open our eyes. the ghost of old
buildings are haunting parking lots in the city of good neighbors that history
forgot. i remember the first time i saw someone lying on the cold street, i
thought, “i can’t just walk past you, this can’t just be true.” but
i learned by example to just keep moving my feet. it’s amazing the things that
we all learn to do. so we’re led by denial like lambs to the slaughter,
serving empires of style and carbonated sugar water and the old farmroad’s a
four-lane that leads to the mall and my dreams are all guillotines waiting to
fall, and i wonder then what it will take for my country to rise. first we
admit our mistakes and then we open our eyes. 'til nation’s last taker
succumbs to one last dumb decision and america the beautiful is just one big
subdivision.
You know, I’m a Finn, and I consider myself a patriot. Both of my grandfathers served in WWII, and one of my grandmothers was a nurse at a military hospital. I served a year as a conscript, and still strongly support our system of conscription. I watch the independence day festivities on TV, as well as the FDF parade on June 4th, and proudly fly the flag on national flag days. (Which we have a bunch of.)
And with all this said, I still find the American obsession with the Stars and Stripes bordering on idolatry, and the civilian reverence for the military and the veterans (in the abstract, but often not in practice) quite creepy. The reaction to the NFL protests, in particular, bothers me because it’s so obviously hollow. All the patriotic outrage it’s clothed in looks like nothing but a cover for the real source of anger: that white people are reminded of the pervasive and problematic racism that still infests America, and they don’t want to think, let alone do, anything about it.
My aunt was very angry about Kapernick’s protest because she felt it disrespected veterans. When it was pointed out that a veteran suggested the method of protest in the first place, she changed her tune.
…She’s now angry because the NFL is “full of convicted felons” so that somehow also invalidates the protest. I certainly didn’t hear anything about how awful the NFL was when, say, Ray Rice was indicted. And I don’t recall Kapernick having any felonies …
I’ll be the pedantic one…Memorial Day is for those that died in service to their country. Veterans day is for current and retired members of the military. Only minor but distinct differences.
I have a co worker who is also a Vet like me. He takes veterans day off every year and complains on high up and down how it should be a mandatory free day off for veterans and he shouldn’t have to use a vacation day. My response every time I hear this is…“Dude…your employer gives you a crap ton of vacation days to use…shut up and be thankful for what you have.” Take a wild guess who he voted for in 2016 and loves to no end.
I love the Pats too (as a New Englander). Interesting about the anthem issue for that team…Belichick actually wanted to go back to teams stay in the locker room during it. His attitude has been “stand, kneel, whatever…just do it together and make it look organized…or better yet, let’s just stay in the locker room and have 15 more minutes of prep time before the game. We are here to play football”
I’ve removed some posts from this discussion that had begin to veer more towards the beliefs of individual posters, rather than the post itself. Let’s keep to the topic of the post, please.
Worse, bad actors in the GOP and movement conservatism regularly exploit it in situations like this to distract from deeper problems like the one Kaepernick is protesting and to further divide Americans (to the great distress of the “both sides do it” crowd lamenting the loss of civility and comity in our society).
This culture-wars line that “the liberal BoingBoing consensus is out of touch with the concerns of Real Americans™” is tiresome and false whether it’s coming from someone who truly believes it or from (as it has elsewhere) Libertarian grifters who think they’re being clever by scoring points on behalf of their marks.
It doesn’t matter that some people are in obvious willful denial; many of us here in the States know it to be the truth, and it’s a measure of cold comfort that some of our neighbors from other countries can see it too.
The real problem is that many people of privilege don’t want to admit ‘the knife’ is still deeply embedded…
Folks somehow think that everything became magically okay after the Civil Rights Act.
The Civil Rights Act of 1968 was basically just a repeat of the Civil Rights Acts of 1866/1871/1875. It wasn’t a great advance, it was a (more in theory than in practice) return to a bare minimum standard of decency.
The most notable feature of the 1960’s Civil Rights era was that almost every major Black leader was assassinated. Usually by agents of the state. This is not a record a achievement, it’s a litany of murderously brutal racist dominance.
There is hope for the future, because the liberation of Black America and the non-fascist half of White America are fundamentally dependent upon each other. But that cannot happen without an honest accounting for the past.
in some cases they don’t just feel everything is ok because CRA…they now willfully think somehow something has been taken or denied to them! Because they don’t have whatever magical measure of success they have in their head they somehow equate that to “I’m the oppressed one now”.
The basic Marxist / anti-imperialist analysis of white supremacy is that racism (in the Black/White sense, not the “Germans don’t like Frenchmen” sense) was born from the “need” to render slavery and genocide psychologically tolerable. Dehumanisation was fundamental.
The massacre and exploitation of Africa, Asia, Australasia and the Americas provided the wealth that created the basis for White European dominance of the world.
Racism was and is deliberately enhanced in order to divide the working class against themselves, thus securing the position of the capitalist class that arose from the enslavement of the non-White world.
Because as long as they are distorting the past