Before getting into the heavy stuff in the blog today, perhaps we should start off with something sweet and soothing, like a double-chocolate Mocha Latte. That is my go-to drink when I need to relax, and I really need to relax big time today. Between the stress of the impending move and the stress of the news this week, I need two Mocha Lattes.
I haven’t said anything about the horrible violence in Charlottesville before now, because I just could not get my head around the fact that there are so many people out there who hate, hate, hate so many others. Foolishly, because the neo-Nazis and other hate groups had gone to ground, I thought perhaps people of reason and intellect had overshadowed those of limited world view.
Sadly, I was wrong.
And the future of America is more uncertain now than it has been in many years.
Before writing this blog post, I did a bit of research and found some interesting, if unsettling, bits of news.
There was an interesting article in the New Yorker by Robin Wright Is America Headed for A New Kind of Civil War.
She interviewed a number of historians about the parallel between the divisiveness we are seeing now and what was present before and during the Civil War, asking their opinion as to whether we will see another one. Several of the historians answered, “yes,” giving various estimates of a time-frame. I found the fact that the responses were all in the affirmative most disturbing, as was this quote from David Blight, a Yale historian.
In a reversal of public opinion from the nineteen-sixties, Blight said, the weakening of political institutions today has led Americans to shift their views on which institutions are credible. “Who do we put our faith in today? Maybe, ironically, the F.B.I.,” he said. “With all these military men in the Trump Administration, that’s where we’re putting our hope for the use of reason. It’s not the President. It’s not Congress, which is utterly dysfunctional and run by men who spent decades dividing us in order to keep control, and not even the Supreme Court, because it’s been so politicized.”
“…men who spent decades dividing us in order to keep control…”
Wow! Is that what we elect our government officials for?
So I am going to go out on a limb here and challenge all those who blindly support their political party, and the candidates, no matter what. Why do you do that? Why support a system that is breaking down? Why support a party just because? Could e vote for a person and not a party? Can we stop those who encourage us to be a society of “them” vs “us?”
This Vice News video of the protests and violence in Charlottesville clearly shows that for too many people, them vs us is just what they want. It was very scary to watch the White Supremacists spout words of anger and degradation, and listen to leaders lay out a plan to make America “white” at all costs. Then there was the sickening justification Chris Cantwell made about the hit and run that killed three people and injured many others, saying that the driver had no recourse.
Watch the video and then say whether you believe that.
According to an article in Hollywood Life, Cantwell has been banned from Facebook because of his support of bigotry, hatred and violence toward non-whites. He has stated that non-white people are more prone to violence and have lower IQs; he thinks Jewish people spread communism; and he once insisted that all white men should practice polygamy, marrying as many white women as possible to produce a Caucasian baby boom.
As many people have said this week in the wake of the horrible events in Charlottesville, is this the America we want for our kids and grandkids?
Not me.