Racial Politics and the Intentional Misunderstanding of Difference (Dispatches From the Fly on the Wall)

Let’s run down 2020 for a bit, give this as preface to the discussions observed this edition. During one week in January these were some of the disasters that happened around the world:

A brutal volcanic eruption in the Philippines, destroying towns.

Hurricane Tino.

Three out of five days, Puerto Rico suffered earthquakes.

The rumbles hit South and Central America.

This was in Mexico.

Which caused this. They even felt it in Florida.

This blizzard covered people who eventually died by suffocation or drowning in Vancouver.

Here’s Japan.

Kansas.

Of course there’s Australia.

and California.

All this in a single week, and believe me, I am limiting this list for space, merely giving a sample of the weather-bound apocalypses from the second to third week of January.

Of course there remains

Syria.

Yemen.

Afghanistan.

Iran.

Ukraine.

Turkey.

Gaza Strip.

Everywhere else.

2020’s main preoccupation however has been plague, certainly a death scare that turns paranoid people into fanatics. Then there’s this:

and this,

and this,

and this and this and this!

And then there’s this asshole, living out his comic book fantasy of someday leading a rebellion.

Douchebag.

But this is the era we are surging through, this year, in this horrible, horrible year.

Now of course all these massive protests, marred more because of the press than reality over the occasional and inevitable act of violence that spirals out of control. occur because some protesters are much more than just angry, wracked with disdain for the put-into-servitude reality they have been struggling with for far too many generations. Right now, reminiscent of earlier times when the nation and, still, the larger world, people are so divided they declare war upon each other. It is not just the protests and riots, and criminal activity and looting, and the many-sided duel outrages among the serious and their angry opposition that pour gasoline on the fires. In the immediate we find a poster child featuring a base piece of human shit, a cop coldly choking the breath out of a man with his knee. I bet the guy’s pulse never got above 90, his effortless, hand-in-the-pocket use of his weight, perhaps checking his watch, providing the match for the fire next time. Then there are those other cops, the detritus dripping down a glory hole’s active side, two guys gently holding the dying man, refusing to look death in the face. And the other guy just stood there, watching the commission of a murder, something by definition it is his job to stop.

I can imagine that this standing guy is the one who doesn’t go to jail. He gets fined, he walks around shamed, having only racists and other bigots offering him jobs. He is consumed by regret–not by guilt. He had almost forgotten what he’d witnessed until they started showing it on TV. This guy is thoroughly humiliated , laughed at on every sides. He probably gets beaten up a few times. Plenty see him and threaten to kill, which he walks past with his head down. He is seen slumping around town, hands in his pockets on a windy day, his baldness advancing, his complete ostracization from everyone in the world leading him to hang around cemeteries in the rain, staring at his parents’ graves.

The world seems broken, yet another disaster to unravel the soul of a nation, a deal with the devil for death. It has been seventy-five years (at the time that I write this) since the last battle referred to as a world war was fought. There were twenty years between World War I and II, a timed of lapsed personal responsibility where everyone danced and prayed and drank and fucked and didn’t care about society, just so long as they stayed entertained, their faux radical politics nothing more than social clubs And booze was illegal, turning it into an extra dirty vice, opening possibilities for anything.

Of course all this crashed with the death of the stock market, people out nightly, getting high, suddenly shuddered at home, worried about paying their mortgage. Everything was going wrong at the time. Let’s call it 1932:

Mt. Pelee, St. Pierre.

Bahamas hurricane, category five.

Pre-Communist, gangster Cuba, category five.

Puerto Rico, and all the way through the Caribbean, Category four.

Northern California, magnitude 6.4

Mexic), magnitude 8.1 with the first earthquake, 7.7 fifteen days later, tearing open a section of earth thirty-seven miles long. People in Florida were complaining that for the second time in two weeks they were feeling rumbles, and they should keep their disasters to themselves. It killed over 300 people. It was 1932. Everyone was an isolationist during the Great Depression.

This giant aftershock of the first quake caused a massive tsunami to storm in the ocean, rolling in through the Pacific coast, a huge tidal vortex that covered much of Mexico, roiling all the way to Honolulu.

There were tornadoes caused by the quakes too, swirling up and into the southern United States.

Then came the third quake, the weakest one, a staggering magnitude 7.0, turning the crumbled society into literal dust. Another tsunami formed as a result of this, and this one destroyed every hotel on the coast of Cuyutlán, along with hundreds more people, bringing the death total throughout this three week span to a staggering number that June.

In addition to this there was the rage and frustration–the world stopped working and we are gonna protest and scream about injustice and burn the whole world down. And to get to that better place what would they do?

This many-headed dragon ranged all over the political spectrum in 1932.

So there was the world–no money, rampant class and social warfare, terrible disasters eating up the few remaining foods people could afford, and, well . . .

Russian famine, killing millions (some of them intentionally).

There was a meningitis epidemic spreading around and outside Portugal, a terrible flu season, killing hundreds of thousands, polio was still at its peak, and small pox killed tens of thousands more people.

And so the world cracked open into ideological warfare, as was stated before, and this sort of crack, this aftermath of rage-fueled division and outrage led to total global warfare. It was war for property. For money. Chemicals. Drugs. Religion. All the toxic cynicism and bold lies ruffled through the minds of people, bombarded with bombast in the newspapers, and the radio programs getting more tabloid and serialized. Movie theaters would support political causes, rolling through the propaganda reels before propaganda for the kids, then a few grimmer admissions about the world before a glorious feature to escape into, movie stars more of our friends than most of the people we knew. All the people talked about was themselves.

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Now, back to the present tense, I will offer a series of conversations engaged between others and my own divergent comments. As always with these “Dispatches” I change the names into generalized characters most people have encountered in some form or another–certainly online, and otherwise occasionally throughout their lives. This is not done to protect anyone. I do not correct spelling, grammar, tense, or contextual errors of the respondents.

This conversation took on the guise of a very serious one, the clowns dropping out pretty quickly because everyone was sounding so grim (and subsequently edited out because they had nothing of value to say). The original post was submitted by one of the regular right-wing cynics I follow to hear a form of voice braying outrage into the world. Here:

Cranky right-wing guy disinterested in opposing views:

Me, pretending that what I am doing is actually work:

• Stupid comment. Republicans aren’t Americans either. Republicans are the ones overtly defiling the constitution. Democrats merely snivel, using guilt trips to get some of us (or them), on their side for a moment. Treason all around.

Cynical, moderate right-wing dude exhausted from assigning stereotypes to his opposition, repeating mantras:

• . . . where have you been the last few years? Democrats are scum of the Earth. We all know liberalism is a mental disease.

Me, having convinced myself that I am exposing buried truths, refusing partisanship:

• Sure, that’s fine. I’m more interested in the opposing ideologies on the farthest ends. Fanaticism on every side continues to grow mainstream. We keep going like this, life a college football game, rooting sides painting their bodies in stripes, we keep doing this, something is bound to erupt. That’s the division we’re dealing with in the actual world, not something so petty over which side are the more successful crooks, who fucks the better people, and how far the fringe are willing to go to start a revolution–that is the mindset that keeps oozing closer and closer together. When two extremes join in the center the whole world explodes. It has before. It will again. A bloody, apocalyptic revolution. Is that what you’re vying for?

He, becoming thoughtful for a moment:

• I actually agree with THAT statement. I think the fringe on both ends cause more problems, but what to do about that? That’s the billion dollar question. Nobody want’s to listen.

This remark surprised me, a rational turnaround from someone until this moment disengaged into partisan blathering, a simple good versus evil paradigm, not interested in seeing the flaws of his own superficial world views. He is clearly a real person, an actual individual interested in living in a better world. He has merely given up hope, rolling his eyes, plunged into the depths of cynicism, into the Slough of Dispond (https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?isbn=&an=john%20bunyan&tn=pilgrims%20progress&n=100121503&cm_sp=mbc-_-ats-_-used).

Me, further announcing my contempt for cynical partisanship:

• Yes. This whole theme of partisan warfare has consumed me. I’m not defending anybody.
• I just watch and mourn over the selfish, ghoulish, terrified hags all of us are turning into. Shout shout shout all of them down! “You should be listening to me!” is our sodden bark, not bothering to wait for an answer.
• We’re a bunch of hags, screaming at an empty room.

The conversation dissolved as other people joined in, their own cynicism destroying any value of anything either of us may have said.

Woman, hands thrown up with cold indifference, desiring what she is saying, proud of herself for prognosticating a mournful future:

• It will be both parties against one another, already rumors of blacks against whites, and yes, North against South too. All peoples and races, political and not against each other. I have seen this coming.

Another gloomy cynic, expecting their own selfish hopelessness, their watching the end of the world on TV attitude to be everyone’s desolate comeuppance:

• Then China, Russia, North Korea and Iran will be laughing watching you all destroy each other!!!!

This person’s detachment from real world problems is apparently so intense that when he says “watching YOU all destroy each other,” he seems to renounce his citizenship. I checked his profile. He’s from Texas.

A younger white guy, still convinced that his personal version of hope can win, and that the ideas he’s learned about in college make a bit of difference in a far more rigid world, consumed by selfish greed:

• We need to get rid of the 2 party political system. Our forefathers said it was a bad idea. We are all American! Creating tribes inside OUR tribe(AMERICAN) is divisive. The fact is it was wrong what happened to that man. Systematic changes are needed for this country to heal.
  Ppl speak peacefully protesting. Well that was done and it was said he is insulting the military and the US. so that was the wrong way to protest. I don’t believe in looting and destroying neighborhoods. I do believe there are groups that are going to these demonstrations and are creating the violence. We are seeing around the nation ppl protestors are surrounding some of these police from getting beating from the mobs. These anarchists are trying to discredit these protests. Look at what’s happening. I’m not saying it is in every situation such as looting!!! But more so in the violent acts.

Let’s break this comment down before moving on. Clearly the kid is barking subdued white privilege. Yeah, he sort of agrees with the protesters, but remains one of those nervous folks with an inkling of morality saying, essentially, “Yes, it was wrong what the cops did to George Floyd, but . . .” Such a comment displays a lack of sincerity in his voice. At the very least it is a lack of understanding, someone so cut off and inexperienced with the social problems at hand that they can only offer gentle armchair suggestions, a head-shaking presumption that every side is equally wrong.

This is dead inside, such an idea on the unraveling social chaos spreading across America, as well as growing pockets throughout the world. This shows an educated middle class, likely suburban youth wanting to be a part of a movement, but too scared to join. Of course this makes a certain bit of sense in present circumstances. The white folks involved–and white people should definitely be protesting not just the cruel murder, but the larger picture of dismissive governmental attitudes to the endless cycle of injustice–seem to take on two primary faces (and as with all generalizations, “not everybody”). They are the rampant radicals, somehow angrier even than the victims of institutional crimes, spinning around and wearing masks and burning everything in their path. I referred to one individual earlier, wearing a Guy Fawkes mask (and he was black to boot!) as a “douchebag . . . living out a comic book fantasy of leading a rebellion.” There are plenty of other people like this in the crowds.

Playtime at the riots.

The thing about many of the white people–and the news endlessly repeats how diverse the crowds of protesters are, a good thing for sure, people rising up together, having had enough of the same things–many of them are making racial crimes against, let’s admit it, the entire African race over hundreds and hundreds of years, into something about themselves they can boast about. They scream less about justice and more “look what I’m doing mom and dad!” Some even stop protesting to take selfies, soon to be posted on their Instagram accounts.

Look at the people glaring. Check out the blonde woman behind them doing the same thing. Opportunism is not just non-political looting

It is the righteousness people sometimes demand others submit to when they shout in other people’s faces.

The above creature is white supremacist Rob Cantrell, shouting about who knows what to cops smirking behind their masks. This was taken from an anti-mask protest in Michigan, but the point makes a clear comparison to

What follows, the author claims, is a letter-to-the-editor he submitted to “Texas and National newspapers.” Let’s call him

Trying to understand this moment in history from a wide perspective, impressing the Fly-on-the-Wall:

• George Floyd, another black man, died. For 8 minutes a police officer’s knee pressed on his neck. 3 others kept citizens from preventing his prolonged execution. This is not the country envisioned during my upbringing and public service career. However, it is the product of unaddressed issues of race, economic injustice and political corruption. The consequences of racism’s inescapable. Euro-Caucasian culture committed great wrongs against peoples of color. To a lesser extent, successive waves of white ethnic-national-religious immigrants, too. Minority neighborhoods and native tribes struggle most. Structures tethered to hubris buckled under the stress of complacency. Covid-19 provided the jolt. Witness the absence of a coordinated national response as Trump fiddles and Tweet rants. Healthcare systems and supply lines falter on the backs of overworked, underpaid at-risk employees. Critical infrastructure is D-. A dam ruptured, flooding thousands in Michigan. Yet trillions of dollars are borrowed against our future for endless wars. “American Exceptionalism” shoots the messenger daring to mention the obvious. Will we ever learn from our sins of omission and commission? Hope’s so. Taken from the Second Letter of Peter, an old spiritual warns: “God gave Noah the rainbow sign, no more water but the fire next time.” Martin Luther King, Jr. observed during his 1966 CBS Mike Wallace interview: “A riot is the language of the unheard.” Nation-wide, angry demonstrators shout: “Let him breathe!” Let us breathe, too, cleansed by the power of sincere introspection and loving forgivenes

Certainly a well argued perspective, occasionally lapsed into liberal power points which deserve at least to be heard. The tired arguments over military spending and oppressing the poor in addition to minorities is certainly relevant circumstantially.

Me, needing to put things much harsher, and in a critical sense, in order to call up the passionate opposition, trying to question their cynically dismissive absolutism:

• You handle the point very well. One aside, when you talk about the historical prejudice of the white man.
• The white man has always been an asshole. To everybody. Thousands of years of never leaving Europe led to innumerable barbaric wars, all the way back, slaughtering their own opposing sides long before they ever met another race.
• When they did finally meet, these people accustomed to conquest brought their brutal talents to the east, the west, and the south (Europe had already claimed the north hundreds of years before). They set out to take everything of value, land and gold and iron and women. Having better weapons and a much less tranquil nature, whitey targeted minorities. Whitey claimed possession. The white man took advantage of their numbers and took over.
• Generalizing this historic white villain, however, is a mistake. Smaller tribes among them are still at war with themselves too. They always have been. It has never really been about race exclusively. It was about who they believed could be conquered. Slavery wasn’t really so many years ago. There are even some of the oldest people whose parents had been born slaves still tinkering around.
• Be that as it may, every land they conquered adopted the war like European impatience that had so direly oppressed them. We are the result. That’s a big part of the problem running wild. We are all so angry and resentful. We quietly scream at the television, no one ever listening to our rage.

Guy more offended by the suggestion that white people have ever done anything wrong than by present reality spilling into the streets of the nation:

• What about the Moore’s? And African tribes killing each other as they are doing in the streets of many US cities? Biggest murder rate among blacks is by blacks.

Me, trying to be more tolerant than him, exploiting my personal historical research to explain the suggestions he is making:

• • I’m talking about human history. I am referring to how we got to the frustrated rage we are facing now. Of course it isn’t just the white man. Brutal African kings and dictators not only sold their enemies into slavery, but have ordered the slaughter of entire tribes, massacring more than 800,000 people in something like eleven days in Rwanda.

• But this is not the point either. The historical fact remains that the only thing the white man has ever really been good at is conquest.

Trying to one-up me with his knowledge of the past for reasons of stubborn pride:

• • As were Spaniards, Arab Muslims, Moores, Cosaks(sp) etc…

Me, I suppose returning to my own past as a teacher, trying to teach this defensive man something about history:

• Spaniards were white; Muslims were dominated by Europeans so badly they formed a new religion; Moors were warriors from Africa so technologically advanced that they made it to Europe and conquered some space of their own, until Britain and the Holy Roman Empire, in the midst of their wars, captured and enslaved them. Cossacks were native Russians being slaughtered by the french moving east. You forget Asians, the only other race every bit the conquerors of their own people as the Europeans. This is much deeper than your–‘oh yeah? Everyone’s bad!’ argument. That justification towards all people is why this our hatreds reign.

Him, perhaps grown thoughtful:

• Interesting….Still not so sure about Spaniards being white….

I let the Spaniards thing go other than to say, “They are.” I wanted to tell him about the conquest of the New World and about how Spain, Britain and France swept in with their giant warships and killed or enslaved everyone, before going to war with one another in the new land for their piece of the pie. I could have said that speaking Spanish does not make you an aborigine whose distant ancestors were forced to speak the language of their conquerors, and that all those European kings and queens were somehow of the same bloodline, and on and on and on into a history lesson going back to the Norman Conquests, but I figured I would have lost him from the considerations I hope were inspired.

There are so many of these conversations trapped in the smaller spaces of final opinions on the world that rages in quarantine. The brief glimpses most of us are getting from the outside are terrifying–fires, smashed glass, beatings and chaos surrounding the genuine uprising going on around the nation. And everything gets poisoned, our terror seeking comfort in justifying our rigid beliefs, condemning only chaos and not considering what causes it. “What the police did was wrong, but . . .” This is not a solution. This is a plea for a return to whatever was once considered normal after being scared for so very very long.