PROBABLY FUTILE CALL TO 'FELLOW' PALE MALES

 So now MAGA and their Orange Julius Caesar have served notice on us: NO more heroes of color, no female heroes or exemplars to be held up AT ALL! And pale male mediocrities (maybe I should apply for a post; more than one person might see me as such a critter) will be promoted over better qualified women and people of color! And saying to all the out-groups, your excellence will no longer earn you anything; only saying 'Sho' Massa!' loud enough and long enough may get you a few picayunes!
But to all those pale males who think, perhaps with tremulous near-ecstasy, they are about to be restored to their 'rightful' position with the lowest of them still better than the best people of color, let me let you in on a secret which today's 'planters' will probably chase me down for telling you:
The new rule for women and people of color that excellence will gain you nothing but the blindest obedience may get you something also applies to....y'all! To all us pale males without money, connections or social capital!
Yes, that's right! We too are now subject to the same rules the oligarchs are reinstating for women and people of color. But no one, except women and people of color, are telling us that!
And how do I know this? I know it because of memories which came out in therapy decades after my dad erected a firewall against them by means of hypnosis. Memories of seeing my father rankly abused by his planter of a boss at the small Midwestern women's college where he worked and on which campus we then lived. I also know it by hints he dropped about his being let go from another business a few years later. Whether there's a connection between the two I don't know and don't expect to know in this world.
But I do know that my dad did what was expected of him and he still got knocked in the head. Maybe twice. And he was a white Southerner of mixed British ancestry (English, Scots, Welsh) Our family name is of impeccably English origin. Maybe what knocked him askew is that we come from the Southern whites the ex-planters called 'scalawags' during Reconstruction.
That is, Southern whites willing to work with the freedmen and the Yankee Carpetbagger transplants in the Reconstruction state governments. The ones with antebellum memories of being squeezed and muzzled by the greedy, arrogant and prideful planters. The ones who know why no Southern state had any public education for anyone of any color until Reconstruction. And the ones who knew that, already by 1835, no Southern state was any kind of democracy even for white men! Only for rich white men!
So two colors determined whether these states were democracies: white and green! Or, back then, white and gold, as coin was still 'specie' as was said. That fits better as white and gold were also the colors of the prerevolutionary French monarchy--and we all know what happened to that!
Probably that's a big part of how I got to be a second-generation Southern white anti-racist.
I used to wonder why my dad had such a passionate hatred for 'whiteness'. The sixteen years, and much of what I've seen and heard during them, have answered that question most emphatically. Today, I share my dad's deep hatred of the falsehood called 'whiteness', possibly with interest.
Anyway, 'fellow' pale males, I have pathetically little hope of you. I have little hope that you won't take the devil's bargain which, once again, the oligarchs offer you of doing their dirty work in exchange for lying to yourselves and thinking yourselves one of the ruling caste when you're not. You're only their bitches doing the work they consider too nasty for their delicate, inbred, palsied hands!
Mind you, I would never be happier to be mistaken in this than now. If you wise up and join with people of all colors and all women to build a strong working people's coalition capable of demanding what our country needs and seeing it done, I will be very pleasantly surprised!
Prove even LBJ mistaken when he said, "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him someone to look down on and he'll empty his pockets for you."
Prove both me and LBJ mistaken in that! You call yourselves Christians; so show yourselves so by not needing to look down on anyone!

FOR DEMOCRACY'S SAKE, DO NOT 'FOLLOW ORDERS'!

 

If I were the Canadian Prime Minister, I would be ordering a general mobilization, troops to the border and put a conscription bill before Parliament after Trumpelthinskin's latest expression of greedy lust to absorb our neighbor! Further, I would appeal to our Armed Forces to refuse to invade Canada if Orange Julius Caesar issues orders to do so. I might even suggest they might want to turn their weapons on the whole MAGA/Project 2025/Federalist Society gang!

What Donelon is after is the marginalizing of ALL of us who are not white, male, straight and RICH! And I suggest in the strongest possible terms that all my 'fellow' palefaces, be they male or female, should examine themselves to see whether, and how, each of us may have colluded in the marginalizing of our fellow citizens with darker skins and/or different sexual orientations, because, now, Donelon means to send us the same way unless we become their overseers and slave-patrollers! So, then, what will you do?

Will you take the devil's bargain that the oligarchs MAY (not necessarily WILL) offer you or will you do what's best for ALL of us, including y'all, and join with black, brown, yellow and red working people and be part of a working people's Rainbow Coalition?

I remember November 4, 2008. My heart was so full that night as I witnessed the election of Obama, something I did not expect to see in my lifetime. I actually thought we were becoming post-racial.

The sixteen years between then and now have taught this straight pale male a hard and bitter lesson.

I thought we were moving past racism. LOL, right? So much for what a straight pale male can know, right?

I used not to know why my dad detested 'whiteness', including his own. Boy, do I ever know why now and don't I share it--with interest!

I exhort you all to turn from your heedless ways and complete the rainbow of a working people's coalition to defend and extend democracy! Help us stay on the path of building something that has, so far, been absent from human history: a multiracial, multiethnic, multi-faith representative democratic republic!

Take up the pioneers' path and let's march forward together on it!

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CAN'T YOU GET THE IDEAS RIGHT SIDE UP?!

 We all need to 'know our tribes'. But neither can we make them into idols without losing what is best in them.
And this is just what both Islamists and 'Christian' nationalists do. They seek to grab all power in whatever countries are cursed by them. They seek to rob their neighbors of their God-given freedom of conscience, faith and worship. And, since neither can conceive of a god who is no more than the head of their particular tribes, they believe the whole world is organized exactly as are they and that all the talk about 'creative freedom' and 'the marketplace of ideas' is simply a ruse to clear the path for 'atheistic, komm'niss, sosh'list, FAG i-dees'.
Well, pardners, why, then, do you need the state's help in fighting such 'idees'? If your ideas are better for us and healthier for the planet, why are you losing the contention of ideas and losing it bigtime without prohibition on criticizing this or even saying that? Like, for instance, wanting to prohibit even the use of the words 'climate change'? Or any criticism of Islam and/or the Qur'an?
If your ideas come direct from God as you claim, why do they bring so much more DEATH and misery in their wake? No, dudes, I for one don't buy it. Serving the Lord our God with all our minds does NOT mean, we switch our minds off! No; the God I know wants us to engage our minds with his, even to the point of speaking up even to Him and asking why--but be prepared for at least the implication you can't digest His reply--at least not yet.
My continuing conversation with God seems to indicate that He shares infomation and answers question on a need-to-know/ability-to-digest basis. That is, whether we really need to know and/or can digest whatever answer(s) there might be. And He knows this far better than we can, in much the same way as we know what's good for our children's bodies and minds; what they can digest.
Those who want to 'freeze' their societies either in the 1950s or at around 1000 seem to think that they know what's good for the rest of us because they want complete and total overlordship over the rest of us--including those of us far more advanced than they are! Again, no dice, dudes! And you Islamists, beware: I have an electric shaver with your beards' names on them!
And your belief that you can 'freeze' culture is still more evil and ridiculous! If you knew any truthful history, you'd know how culture changes all! the! time!
Imagine culture as a 'tube' which is, indeed needs to be, open-ended towards the future! If you want a vigorous culture attractive to others, that's how it needs to be. Try to sew up the end of the tube pointing towards the future and you seal your culture's death warrant, for it will wither without the oxygen which comes from cultural interaction.
G. B. Shaw once wrote, "Our societies' vigor springs not from the purity of our genes, but from us being arrant mongrels." And I for one say he was right.
Anyone who owns dogs or cats, or who works with them, has seen how some breeds can be overbred and, when they are, they acquire ailments unknown to the more vigorous and fortunate mongrels, or mutts as we call them here.
I don't know what animal example the apostles of the lie of 'racial purity' will cite, but I have all dogs and all cats to cite to prove that lie for what it is!
I suggest the proponents of such lies as racial and/or cultural 'purity' are motivated by the nagging knowledge that their cultures, or subcultures, or 'tribes' really are less advanced than they 'ought to be.'
And they are eaten up with envy. Both among our fascisti and in too many Middle East Studies departments, they try to dress up their bad ideas with ten-dollar words which have nothing real behind them except bigotry.
Are they trying to be better than the Son of Man who, when a rich young man (a ruler? not sure) asked him, "Good Teacher, what must I do to attain eternal life?" responded with, "Why do you call me 'good'? There is none good save God."? Then they've set themselves up a mountain which cannot be climbed except by freely given and unmerited Grace. Are you ready to take hold of that? Not everyone is by a long shot!
We liberals have been too civil and polite for far too long. We need to refresh our memories as to whence the ideas we know are true come and to express them in as few words as is possible. Beginning with that, the more rights we all have, the more secure everyone's rights are. Power, not human dignity, is the zero-sum game and NO, the two are not the same by any means!
If you're interested in finding out more why we almost always get these ideas upside-down, askew, or any way but the right way, here's a link to another post where I put out an idea which I hope will be helpful.
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/1544353602029642191/6491367396937253970
No: diversity is, within a universally-supported democratic framework, our strength in the West, both in the variety of our DNA and how quickly we assimilate helpful new materials into our cultures. Within the universal support of democracy, diversity is not a weakness but a strength.