Not My Crisis (Existential Violence, part four)

I guess all of this started for me with a thought I've seen repeated all across social media:
This is not the America I grew up in.

Because this is not the America I grew up in. Or, at least, it doesn't feel like it is. Even growing up in the South, where racism was (and is) more than common, we were all taught (at school, anyway) that racism is wrong. I suppose it's not difficult to digest that message as a kid, and I did. I took it to heart. But, maybe, I just got lucky with good teachers...

I have a cousin who used to call the Civil War, the war of northern aggression, and used to argue all the time that it was about state's rights. I'm sure he still believes those things (though I haven't spoken to him in 20 years). Honestly, thinking back, I did get some of that in school, about the state's rights issue, but that was always overshadowed for me by the issue of slavery. It seems that an awful lot of people in the South came away with the White Supremacist message that the North unlawfully stole their slaves, and they have been champing at the bit ever since to get them back.

But it's more than just the racism and the South for me that's causing the disconnect; it's this whole problem with Nazis. While there were conflicting messages going out about the Civil War and racism, there was no conflict on the issue of Nazis. It was pretty standard teaching that Nazis were the ultimate evil and Hitler pretty close to Satan incarnate. People seemed to agree that World War II was an experience we never wanted to repeat. And yet...

And, yet, here we are with Nazis in the White House (and there seem to be an awful lot of them with the name "Stephen;" what's up with that?). And I can't, for the life of me, wrap my head around how we, as a nation, got to this place. Again. It makes me feel crazy, as if I'm the one suffering from the existential crisis.

So I have to remind myself on pretty much a daily basis that this is not my crisis. I mean, it's not my crisis. The problem is not in my head; it's external.

Which does not mean that it's not my responsibility; clearly, I am part of the mass of people who didn't work hard enough 20 years ago to start putting a stop to this assholery. We all let the GOP get to the place where they are today. Well, not millennials. America is not one of the things that anyone can legitimately say that millennials are ruining.

No, that's pretty much just the Boomers, and the Gen Xers who let them get away with it. But they are our parents, and it's difficult for a child, even an adult child, to step up and tell his parent to quit acting like a sociopathic idiot. But it's no excuse. We should have done more to stop this escalation, even though I'm not sure what that more would have been. Certainly speaking up sooner and louder that this shit wasn't okay.

But we didn't... And, now, we're at a crisis point because of it. So many crises...
But the climate crisis is the one that may kill us all, and the GOP seems pretty intent on letting it do just that. You know, for profit. Unless someone shoots us all first, because the GOP also seems just fine with that.

Unfortunately, all of this really comes down to an issue of violence and whether violence will be necessary to restore sanity to the United States. The Right is heavily armed and Trump (#fakepresident) has already been hinting at the use of force to retain his power. And we know that he loves dictators and authoritarian rulers.

Then there's the need to for someone to just make the GOP stop what they're doing. They've become like the disobedient child who doesn't listen because the parent only ever makes threats and never follows through, so the kid pushes and pushes and pushes... And that's what they've been doing for decades, now, and no one has ever said, "Enough!" And it's time for that.

Yeah, I realize that we get the opportunity to do that through voting, but I'm not sure that's going to be enough and in time this time. Or that the GOP will voluntarily relinquish power as they get voted out. They've shown themselves to have more authoritarian tendencies than are healthy for the USA.

Then there's the issue of the growing lack of confidence in democracy, which is not a topic I'm really going to get into right now, but it's disturbing on so many levels, because for more than 200 years America has been Democracy. It's probably that more than anything else that's feeding the existential divide in the United States. How can we be the United States without democracy? Obviously, in my mind at least, we can't.

All of that, I guess, to say that now is the time to really cling to the ideals that America was founded on. Cling to them and stand by them. The idea that ALL men [people] are created equal and that people should be allowed to pursue their own happiness. You know, as long as that happiness is not controlling someone else's happiness, because that's bullshit.

So...
This is not the America I grew up in.
But, then, the America I grew up in was not the America I thought it was.
It's time to make America better than the America I thought it was.

Racists (and also Paul Ryan)

R is for racists and lyin' Paul Ryan.
Turns out he's like Robin the Brave.

Day 34 (a future history)

Thursday, February 22, 2018

I’m going to run away. I’m really going to do it. I don’t care if I don’t have enough money. I’m not staying here anymore.

This week has been shit.

Tuesday morning when we got to school, we found out that all of the little Nazi boys had had their lockers vandalized. All 18 or 20 of them. I don’t even know how many there are, though I think they’re adding more. yay It was all stuff like

Fuck Nazis

Nazis suck cock

Nazis are LOSERS

Most of us thought it was pretty funny.

Caleb didn’t. Caleb was going around school calling it terrorism and demanding to know who’d done it. Like anyone would tell him. No one liked him before he had his Nazi goon squad, and everyone hates him now. But Caleb whined to daddy. He actually went to the office before school had even started and called him, so there was a special emergency assembly called during first period. It turns out that Caleb’s dad isn’t just in the National Guard but is a captain or a sergeant or something and is the Nazi in charge of the Nazi babies.

Captain Nazi gave us a long speech about how this kind of behavior wouldn’t be tolerated and that the people responsible should turn themselves in to avoid horrible punishment. He also offered a reward for anyone who would turn in the people who did it.

So there’s this guy, Evan, who’s kind of a smart ass. He’s always saying disruptive stuff in class and making teachers mad and, sometimes, making them look dumb. He’s super smart and he knows it. He doesn’t care about any school stuff because he already knows it all. But he really doesn’t try to make people feel stupid. Except for teachers when they act like they’re right because they’re the teachers or people who are really just being stupid. I think he likes the attention he gets from being a smart ass in class because he’s so bored with being in school.

So Evan stood up, just stood up as soon as Captain Nazi-pants offered a reward, and said, “I know who did it.” Everyone got real quiet, and I’m sure whoever did do it was scared. I would have been scared. But I also wouldn’t narc on people bashing Nazis and couldn’t believe Evan was going to, even for a reward. Evan didn’t say anything. He just kept standing there. Everybody was looking at him, and I think he was enjoying it.

Eventually, Nazi-pants said, “Well?”

And Evan smirked and said, “It was your momma.”

Which doesn’t sound very brilliant coming from Evan – that’s the kind of thing a 6^th grader would say – unless he was trying to say the thing that would most piss off Nazi-pants. Or almost the thing that would most piss him off. Because Caleb started yelling, “You take that back! Take it back!” And Evan looked at him and said, “And your momma was watching and sucking a big black dick while it was happening. Two of them, in fact.”

Nazi-pants lost it. He went flying off the stage in a rage but some other National Guard Nazi guy had Evan by the arm and was pulling him from his seat by the time Nazi-pants got there. Caleb was right behind his dad. Evan was freaked out and trying to get away. Caleb’s dad grabbed Evan and punched him in the face. Just punched him in the face! Blood hit the wall and Evan collapsed. Caleb started kicking him and no one stopped him.

Evan is just a kid. Really a kid. He’s in 8^th grade, but that’s because he skipped a couple of years of school. He might only be 10. I don’t know.

I think everyone was too shocked by what was happening to do anything, but the soldiers weren’t shocked; they just didn’t care. Eventually – and it probably wasn’t really very long, but it felt like a long time – Mr. Chambers started yelling for them to stop and headed that way, but soldier dudes got in his way. But Mr. Chambers is a big guy and used to play football and wrestle and stuff, coach stuff, and kept pushing his way through. Then the soldier dudes started attacking him, and he was knocking them all down until one of them pulled out his gun and told Mr. Chambers to freeze.

By that time, Nazi-pants was arguing with the principal, and a few moments later, the police and an ambulance showed up. I guess someone must have snuck out and called 911 during all of the fighting and confusion with Mr. Chambers. Nazi-pants didn’t want to let the ambulance take Evan away, but the police made him leave them alone. I think they may have been trying to arrest Nazi-pants, but I don’t really know. All I know is more police came and, when the more police got there, they made all of us clear out.

At some point, between the police getting there and the more police getting there, the soldiers took Mr. Chambers away. He hasn’t been back to school. Neither has Evan.

Evan, though, is in the hospital. The school did let us know that so that any of us who want to can go visit him. I want to visit him, but I wasn’t really friends with him, so that seems awkward to me. Especially since he can’t talk because of the broken jaw. And broken nose. And cracked ribs. And internal bleeding. His dad is someone kind of important, I think, so I hope he makes bad things happen to Captain Nazi-pants.

No one knows what happened to Mr. Chambers.

So far, nothing has happened to Nazi-pants, at least according to Caleb. He’s been bragging, now, about how his dad can do whatever he wants and no one can do anything about it or stop him. And, according to Caleb, that means he can also do anything he wants and no one can stop him, either. It seems like the teachers believe it, because they are letting Caleb get away with everything, even telling them what to do.

Mom is calling for dinner. More beans and rice, probably. That’s all we’ve had to eat for a week, and I’m sick and tired of beans and rice. But I’m also hungry. Mom is talking about getting chickens, but dad keeps saying no. Mom says we at least need them for the eggs because it’s been almost three weeks since we’ve had any meat, and it was two weeks before that.

But, anyway, all of that was JUST Tuesday, but I’ll have to talk about Wednesday later.