4th of July: Wakeup Call

Today is the 4th of July, and I got out of the hospital this morning. For that, I'm very grateful. And we're heading home to our remote cabin, and I'n grateful for that. But this year I learned racism isn't over, the Declaration of Independence was written specifically for white people, Mount Rushmore was stolen from Native Americans (well the whole continent was, but Rushmore specifically). And it appears that one-third of the citizenry are unrepentant racists. It's hard to be proud to be an American right now.

That last two days have been tougher on me emptionally than physically. I'm one of those white people who always goes out of my way to treat everyone with the same respect and care I would hope for myself. And I would never make an assumption about a person based on their appearance.

Well, except when I do. But I generally catch myself before anything overt comes of it.

However, it now appears that Trump's rampant and well-documented racism has emboldened his supporters. You know, the ones who were so horrified when a Black man became President, that they now happily catch the coronavirus rather than be saved by that Black President's pandemic plans (which Trump trhew out when he first stole the White House).

I'm not an idiot. I've always known there were a few holdout racists. But I had no idea there were enough to lynch several people in the past week. I had no idea how many police officers seem complicit. In my mind, maybe 5% to 10%, tops, of the population were these ignorant pieces of shit; and I figured they'd all be dead, soon, anyway. But, meanwhile, Black mothers still have to raise their sons to appear to be meek and unthreatening in public, regardless of how meek and unthreatening they might be in reality.

And, not that other ethnicities aren't also affected, but the sheer number of deaths of unarmed Black men, mostly at the hands of police, sparked a movement, Black Lives Matter. All over the country, people of every shade have been marching, shoulder to shoulder—but wearing masks!—protesting the deaths of these young men and women, trying, at last!, to bring this injustice to the forefront of white consciousness, where it's been ignored for so long.

Then, pouring gas on the fire, Trump insisted on holding one of his hate rallies at Mount Rushmore. This is about two weeks after his Tulsa rally, which was sparcely attended, but at which no one wore masks. Tulsa has already reported a spike in coronavirus cases that are directly traceable to Trump's rally. Meanwhile, no such increase in cases has been associated with cities in which Black Lives Matter protests took place. Masks work, people!

But Mount Rushmore isn't just any old venue and this isn't just any old time. There is also pressure to re-examine the display of the Confederate flag, and countless statues of Confederate heroes, due to the fact that the "Confederate flag" was the flag of America's deadliest enemy, and those war "heroes" were traitors to the United States. So, why the fuck are we honoring any of that?

I've always said, we were entirely too kind to the Southern traitors. They should have been crushed and re-educated when we had the chance. Sadly, Northern capitalists instead crushed them econmically, but allowed them to retain their racism and heroic fantasies, because it made them easier to control.

The above photo is of what we call Mount Rushmore, before the Presidents' faces were carved on it. I had always assumed the mountain was "just there" with no one claiming it. I assumed this because I was never told any differently, not even in the documentary I once saw of how the faces were carved, or in the museum when I visited in person. To the Native Americans of the area, however, the mountain was considered sacred (in other words, like Catholics consider Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris). They called it The Six Grandfathers (Earth, Sky, and the four cardinal directions). Who was Mr. Rushmore? A white guy who came to steal gold in violation of the treaty.

For me, the horror is in watching this play out. We have, essentially, three groups of people in America (and the world), which can be expressed in terms of subspecies.:

As you may know, what separates two different species is the lack of ability to produce fertile offspring. Subspecies are members of the same species in that they can intermix but generally choose not to. For example, the Northern Canyon Wren and Southern Canyon Wren, once the same species but separated physically as the Grand Canyon formed 20 million years ago, no longer mate even when they are brought together, because they have evolved to become pregnant at different times of year, to compensate for the North Rim's higher altitude and harsher winters.

Similarly, among humans it can be argues that we have already split into three subspecies: Rex, the sociopathic leaders and kings and priests; Servitus, the willing slaves who refuse to think for themselves, instead following their chosen authority even when it hurts them to do so; and Noeticus, the logical thinkers who can't understand why the others don'tt seem to get it.

It's not that members of different subspecies can't have children. It's that they tend not to, because each group member finds the members of the other groups to be rather disgusting. And, of course; none of us is going to be pure one or the other, as the Servitus and Rex been around since the beginning. This also has nothing to do with any visible physical characteristics, including complexion. Every race has its kings, workers, and inventors.

But it's Servitus that is most likely to follow an authoritarian leader. Servitus has a larger amygdala, the so-called "reptile brain" so their decisions are always fear-based. They also have less-developed frontal cortexes, so they are less able to think logically. Moreover, they truly do not and can not understand that their ignorance isn't just as valid as your education. So they believe Trump instead of scientists, and expose themselves at far greater levels to the coronavirus they don't believe in, because their master told them it was a hoax.

In the short term, that means that Trump's base, which not only attends his rallies but also have parties, attend crowded church services, and in general run around like nothing's wrong…exactly as their master told them. That means that, come the next election, most of them will be too sick to vote (and Trump has convinced them it isn't safe to vote by mail), and many of them too dead to vote. Meanwhile, H. sapiens Noeticus wears its masks and stays safe, knowing as we do that to listen to Trump is to listen to folly.

My prediction, then, is that by this time two years from now, Trump and his army of racists will be dead; the ones who survive will learn to keep their racist thoughts to themselves.

Anyway, Keith picked me up at the hospital (he had not been allowed to visit me, that's one of the precautions they're doing) and we drove home, getting there just in time for a cheery ssunset.

Keith had picked up a little box of fireworks which he set off.

A lot of people can't do fireworks because their dogs are terrified of them. Luckily that's not the case with Ella and Lilly. They're watched so many Avengers movies with us for so long that when they hear bangs, crashes, or see flashing lights, they just assume Thanos is trying to destroy the Earth again.