"...[S]o that some mentioned of the injustice and outrage done them might endure; and to state quite simply what we learn in a time of pestilence." Camus, The Plague.
We tried to warn you. I did. I tried to tell you that "post racism" wasn't a thing. After the assassinated leaders were buried only to be resurrected in profitable slogans for the capitalists, newly anointed leaders climbed ladders, joined hands with the capitalists. Both invaded lawns of struggling Black residents with real estate signs and demolition teams. The "American Dream" was over for those Blacks offered buyouts. A takeover of land for white citizens no longer wanting to live in the suburbs.
We, I, witnessed the devastation and the betrayal.
"Ole school," isn't the term "liberation" out of date?
White supremacy? A bit over the top, isn't it? We, I, was asked not to speak about America's history of fascism and of exceptionalism. Don't say, I'll stand on the side of history. Makes you sound like a socialist. Or worse, a communist!
But I kept talking about authoritarianism or totalitarianism. I never lived in the South, but I heard what my grandparents said about Louisiana, my father about Arkansas, and I didn't think that Black's in Chicago had come that from. Once introduced into the world, authoritarianism, totalitarianism, fascism would still exist. As Camus' protagonist Dr. Rieux reminds us in The Plague, we could have "learned from books: that the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good; that it can lie dormant for years and years."
Determined to enrich the coffers of corporations and his billionaire donors, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and others, they see a good friend in Trump. He in them too! Usable friends. All. Who can say that among certain folks might become less and less human to the notion of family and friendship and community becomes nothing more than a series of emotionless transactions.
When the "plague bacillus" of white supremacy returns, it descends like a whirlwind and in this chaos is a flurry of inhumane executive orders, staged by a seemingly a new kind of leader, to lead a new World Order. But in fact, here was once the worst humanity offered the world. Here, humanity sunk to its lowest level. If we look back at the history of this World Order, citizens who voted for these "new," charismatic leaders had long before abdicated their rights to be free thinking human beings. Citizens of the world rather than slaves to ideologues.
These citizens didn't keep up! Didn't read history or they would have known this current outbreak of fascism by authoritarians and oligarchs has happened in the world, happened in the West, in the US. In fact, it's a feature of capitalist-driven white supremacists.
But ignorance will see to it that the like-mind citizens take up new careers: in sniffing!
For white supremacy never dies, as Dr. Rieux declares in his chronicle. It's never appropriate to announce a "final victory." Just when citizens think it's okay to be in love with democracy, freedom, then along comes that manly man to removal of independent government watchdogs and open up the "dark" and "hidden" crevices of the so-called "deep state" so that hordes of loyal yes men and women become rodent-like, sniffing out anything that might smell like diversity, equity, and inclusion. In the military, the universities and schools, the FBI, the CIA. More like-minded join, ironically, to watch out for the "rats!"
Look over there! "Rats."
"Leftists," "lunatics," "socialists," "humanitarians!"
"Democrats!"
Trans teens!
Young pregnant women!
"Aliens." Even if citizens by birthright!
Black people and talk of slavery, or reparations or civil tights, voting rights.
Black Lives Matter! Inclusion and Equity!
Project 2015 comes along to replace all other books and documents, except Mein Kampf, on what needs to be done for the restoration, once and for all, of white supremacy. The "Make America Great" slogan is repeated again and again until a certain uniformed population believes the lie that all men are white and the US, therefore, is a nation for the expression of the white man's power. Hasn't the US, they ask, been anything but a white nation?
Just like magic, the reality of the country's refusal to reference the conquest of the Indigenous and the forceful removal of children sent to boarding schools is replaced by an imagine of a lily-white wilderness, free for the white man's taking.
And one has to wonder, if there are human beings among Trump's loyal army of sniffers?
But of course, humans aren't "aliens." Or "monsters."
I read in Timothy Ryback's book on the "takeover" of fascism in Germany that Hitler and Goebbels stayed up until late the night before they were to takeover. Envisioning themselves in power, Hitler, as F u rher, saw himself defying the Constitutional Republic. "'I shall continue as I have begun, I shall attack, attack, and attack again.'" Goebbels vowed to "never surrender power." As minister of culture and education, he would takeover "'schools, universities, film, radio [and] theatre.'" And of course, "propaganda."
These two men transformed into humans who saw in certain fellow human beings "rats." Of course, "rats" must be marginalized only to be exterminated, sooner rather than later. For the good of the innocent, according to developing normalizing narrative, pointing out the unhealthiness of allowing "rats" to roam freely to exist at all! An invasion of "rats" then justifying the drastic extermination of something along the lines of a plague! An executive order and a propaganda campaign. And journalists of good conscious, woke ones, aren't to compete with this narrative! Don't dare cross us!
It doesn't take long! For us, it hasn't even been a month, and yet, some are terrified. Our data confiscated, our children afraid to go to school, parents to go to work! Gaza to be a Trumpland of golden toilets?
We are so tired"
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A few years ago, months before the COVID epidemic, I volunteered to work at a local site for the mentally and physically disabled. Days before this white woman quit, she mentioned, in front of all in this arts and crafts room, that she hadn't allowed her children, presumptuously grown now, to watch Sesame Street.
This was about six years ago, and we were already into Trump's first term as president. But this woman was well ahead of him. He wouldn't have been far behind with his full-page ad accusing innocent Black children of a crime they didn't commit and denying housing to Black residents. In this room of mainly whites, I didn't mention that I watched Sesame Street's first programs with my youngest sibling. He wasn't of age for kindergarten yet. Someone like my brother and I would have welcomed the inclusion and diversity. The multicultural perspective.
I knew white supremacy was having a comeback in the silence of the anti-war, anti-capitalists, anti-racism population, but I never thought about parents like this woman, far from silent, pro-actively instilling in her children the ways to sniff out "rats."
Where are these white men and women now?
The Trump minions are asked to sniff out "anti-Christian bias." I'm not sure what Jesus these "Christians" believe in, given they don't ask questions and start sniffing away. And the capitalists' corporations, while capitulating and removing any reference to D. E. I, must consider every dollar a saint and every gold bar a shinning god.
According to Reuters, Trump states that he will "create a White House faith office and direct Attorney General Pam Bondi to lead a task force on eradicating what he called anti-Christian bias within the federal government." Making America, once again, faithful to the "Christianity" of slaughtering mobs of colonists, in the South as well as in the West.
But what do I know about Christians. I don't know them. I can't quite recognize Jesus that Palestinian, activist guy who sacrificed his life to protest the foes of anti-diversity, anti-equity, and anti-inclusion.
I know that for this current administration as with others we have endured since colonies and the beginnings of a new country, there have been "rats" abound. "Rats" everywhere. Day. And a whole lot, apparently at night, visible in the sun of day, swinging from trees. Others are left to die in the desert heat near a border town.
Yet, there is a mission statement issues to sniffers trained to weed out "anti-Christian bias." These loyal army of sniffers are "'to immediately halt all forms of anti-Christian targeting and discrimination within the federal government, including at DOJ, which was absolutely terrible, the IRS, the FBI and other agencies,'" according to the edict of their lord and master. Any and all "anti-Christian violence and vandalism in our society" will be prosecuted! The new leaders of the newest regime of authoritarians and oligarchs and loyal sniffers will "'move heaven and earth to defend the rights of Christian and religious believers nationwide.'"
Trump's a godsend. Maybe he was "dormant." Maybe. Or not!
At any rate, he and the sniffers are wreaking havoc now!
Would Jesus be cruel?
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