Sterotypes

There are people in this world who hate Americans because we have done something that hurt them or because we represent the evil in the world with our commercialism and arrogance.

Obviously they have stereotyped us and what they accuse us of is probably represented by a small number of us.

Similarly, we have a tendency to lump foreign nationals together because of the actions of a small number of them.

Terrorist acts against us involve a relatively small group of people.

Both sides are wrong to make sweeping judgments against people because of the actions of a few.

Still, it is clear that the distrust is not going away soon.

We have a similar problem in this country involving black and white Americans.

I was watching a documentary abut white privilege and while interesting I think it perpetrates a view that is problematic.

White people in this country get treated normally while black people do not.

I think we need to call it discrimination instead of White privilege.  Most white people don't feel privileged.  Being able to shop in a store without being considered suspect is not privilege, it is how it should be.  The fact that black people are considered suspect is the problem.

I think we can all agree that discrimination is simply wrong.  We all should get treated normally.

Its not a privilege, its a right.

More Dead

Maybe its the heat but we have had a spate of mass shootings in the last couple of weeks, Gilroy, El Paso and now Dayton.

There is no justification for them and they also seem to stem from various mental defects.

We have the suspect from El Paso but the other two died in their events.

We are not going to be able to identify people likely to commit such a crime, we don't have the resources or the capability.  It is also almost certain that for every loner who picks up a gun there are many, many more who don't.

The only real common denominator is the guns they use and their ability to kill large numbers of people in a short time.

People have a constitutional right to bear arms, but not any arms.  We certainly wouldn't allow a citizen to have a nuclear device.  What about a gun that fired a nuclear bullet?

We can place sensible restrictions on deadly weapons without attacking that right.  It was never intended for this.

Patriots Can Disagree

We seem to have forgotten the fact that people can hold different opinions without one of them being a traitor to the country.

As misguided as I might think your ideas are it doesn't mean you don't have the best interests of the country at heart.

We seem to be moving in a direction, led by our racist dontard where any disagreement is traitorous or at least disloyal.  No one is absolute in this country, we have a republican from of democracy where all opinions are allowed.

We aren't a dictatorship, at least not yet.

We used to at least pretend to respect people who held different opinions but it seems like that is a rarity nowadays.

What might be even worse is the amount of lying and deceit justified by some as a means to win an election.  We had an election where, at least one candidate, relied on catch phrases and slogans instead of policy proposals.

For years the attention span of many Americans has been shrinking and I think we are starting to see the impact of that in our politics.  Too many have no real grasp of the issues and rely on sound bites and headlines.

The politics are getting shallower and shallower, but the hate is running deeper.

Human Nature

If you consider both ancient and more recent history, humans have been brutish to both the world around them and each other.

The history we are aware of demonstrates our thin veneer of civilization.

In the some of our great early literature, we see the Greeks, after they take Troy, systematically throwing the Trojans they didn't enslave off the walls of the city.

The bible itself is full of brutal acts, the conquest of Canaan by the Israelites, the many wars where they were defeated by the Empires of the time.

Rome, conquered much of the known world, murdering and enslaving the lands they vanquished.

Of course we don't have to go back that far, we have the subjugation of many native populations by the Europeans, the World Wars, the Nazis, the Stalinist Gulags and the genocides in many parts of the World that are still happening.

We may think we are civilized, but all of these events were recorded because we had civilization.  Its not hard to imagine brutality and bullying were with us from the start.

Many experiments have been conducted which show that educated, civilized people can inflict harm on others when authority figures tell them its OK.

The simple fact is that human nature reveals itself under duress and generally it isn't very nice.

Yes, we are also altruistic, we are nothing if not full of contradictions.  If however you look at war zones and how we easily ignore the atrocities in them, at least most of us, you see that civilization is in fact paper thin.

We see a move in this country to hate and terror, not from outside extremists only, but native groups expressing hate against changes they don't like.  Immigrants, refugees, minorities, and others are the victims of this hate and we as a nation need to combat it.

Unfortunately our leadership actually embraces it, it promotes their ideology.

We need to overcome hate and never forget it is always right there.

Hate

Terrible news from New Zealand as misguided people decided they had the right to kill innocents in pursuit of some goal.  The idea that any group of people can be treated as "targets" is dehumanizing to all of us.  My heart goes out to the victims of this senseless violence.

There are people around the world preaching hate against those different from us.  The problem with that is we are all people who share the same basic feelings, desires and fears.  To create barriers benefits those preaching hate and who parlay that into holding power.

None of this is new.  History has shown us time after time how hate mongers have succeeded in oppressing populations, and holding on to power until the bitter end.

They generally act like it is some "us" against some "them" but really in the end the only thing they care about is themselves.  Whatever success they may achieve initially is often short lived leading to catastrophe for their followers.

Unfortunately we seem to fall for the hate promoters over and over again.

Its simply a lesson we need to learn.

Vote Against Hate

With Halloween behind us we move into the holiday season with the two big holidays on the horizon.

Of course its often considered the happiest period of the year but a season of giving thanks and celebrating the spirit of Christmas is going to be marked by fear mongering about immigrants and racism

The racism message is clear enough, hidden as make America great again.

The so called great years weren't really that great for many Americans, but in a sort of Normal Rockwell way we have built them up to some idyllic vision, at least for some.

What is always appealing, to  some extent, are the memories of our childhood, which good or bad made us what we are today.

That idea of family was often false but pervasive and for most of us at least somewhat true as we did celebrate the holidays as best we could.

The fact that the rest of the year was in fact a struggle was usually not something we talked about at Thanksgiving but instead celebrated that we had made it through.

I'm not sure this has changed as much as some think, but we do have the hate mongers who feel that they need to enforce some cookie cutter idea of how to live on everybody else.

Families today may look very different or very much the same as they once did, but to the extent they can celebrate the holidays together it isn't different at all

The message of the season is love and thanks, it is not that hard.

Some candidates are running on a platform of fear.  Its not the message of the season.

Senseless

Every time there's a shooting we have people saying its time to do something real instead of simply lamenting the horror and mourning the dead.

Each time nothing happens.

The gun lobby has decided that even conceding an inch is a slippery slope to gun control.

I do agree with them to some degree that the problem isn't the guns, its the people who use them to kill, but they couldn't do it without the guns.

Identifying and restricting their access t guns is opposed because it concedes something on that slippery slope.

There were a lot of groups this weekend in support of the innocent lives lost in Pittsburgh.  I don't think the speeches and the symbolism will solve anything, it isn't reaching the right people.

Its an odd thing the way hate groups act.

They engage in these terrorist activities, although we often don't refer to them that way, without a clear objective or message, except I guess hate.

Islamic terrorists generally want Israel and Western support for Israel to be eliminated.

Not an acceptable goal but one I understand.

There doesn't seem to be a reason for these attacks except just hate.

Guess that's all they need.

Close One

The special election in Ohio is still too close to call officially, although it appears the Republican is likely to prevail, although not certain.

That was what everyone expected at the start but they didn't originally think it would even be close, but it ended in almost a dead heat.

Its even possible that the rally by the dontard got a few thousand extra votes which would be the margin of victory if it holds.

No matter, they get to do it again in November, along with all the other congressional races.

You can't really say what is going to happen until it actually happens, 2016 showed us that, but all the signs so far point to a Democratic resurgence.

There is almost always a gain in the midterm after a Presidential election by the losing party, the question is how much.  It looks like it might be very big indeed.

Considering the damage done by the dontard's policies to equality and decency, it is important that the message needs to be clear, Americans are not going into a shell and reversing the progress in human rights we have made in this country.

We recognize the right of everyone to enjoy the fundamental rights this country was founded on.

We need to reject the hate.

Sunday Wanderings

Religion is one of those things that you think would unite people yet it has the opposite effect in many cases.

Most religions actually have very similar teachings, if not all of them.  I never researched all of them so there must be some that don't preach honor, respect and reverence, I just don't know which ones they are.

They have certain differences and the three that I'm most familiar with Christianity, Judaism and Islam actually all have similar roots and form a progression.

They all arose in the mid-east and are very similar in most things with some exceptions that are mostly superficial.

Religious scholars may disagree with me and maybe I'm missing something but the essence of all three are worship of a single God and the requirement to live a "good" life.

Yet throughout history religion, especially these religions have led to a lot of hate and death.

The idea that any God would reject some of his creations because they were born in the wrong part of the world or were raised in a different culture is on the face of it absurd.

Geography and culture could hardly matter to a supreme being.

Of course many things about what people believe about God is simply silly.

Even the idea that we could understand such a being is pretty absurd.

The God we worship is created by us, in our own image.

The hate we show is ours, not his.  The prohibition on using his name in vain can have no greater meaning than when we use His name to justify killing or hate.

If you claim to believe in God its time to act like it.  Actions do speak louder than words.

Exposure to Sunlight

Some things can only come out when its dark.

I'm not talking about Vampires, but the Vampire myth is likely related to the fact that the dark is a perilous place for humans in the wild.

We are creatures of the day and our evolution has strongly influenced us to prefer the lit to the unlit things in this world.

There is a whole catalogue of things that hide from the sun that we find revulsive.

Turn over a rock and see the various creatures scurry for cover is generally something that we find repulsive, yet we are much more accepting of butterflies and bugs that inhabit the world in the day time.

Now of course our language reflects our love of light and rejection of the dark side.

Generally the nighttime is the place where our worst instincts go on display, where conspirators and haters and racists get together and express their dark thoughts

So when we see the spewers of hate come out during the day it is disturbing.  You think something has made them do this.  Their rock was disturbed.

Of course there have been times in our history, too many, where the hateful people emerged and seized control.  Of course they had to put on a better face for a while, but their dark side always emerged in the end.

Fascists, Nazis, Stalinists etc. were able to disrupt their countries and the world and exact a terrible cost.

You would think that there would be a lesson learned there.  That we would know that haters simply hate and when they try to convince you they are with you, understand its only for now, they don't care about you and are willing to sacrifice you, your children, your wealth and property in pursuit of their hateful ways.

When they walk in public and wave their flags, you would think spotting them would be easy.

I guess not for everyone.

Some must have stared into the sun and can no longer detect the darkness.

Or they are one of them in their heart.

Hate in America

Someone who doesn't think he's a racist made an extremely racist remark in a comment recently and doesn't even realize how racist it was.

His comment was along the lines of how its OK for black people to riot when one of them gets shot but everyone makes a big deal about white people protesting in Charlotte.

He also argued how black people only supported Obama because he was black and Obama spread a black agenda and divided the country.

Now one could point out how wrong all of this is on its face but sadly it wouldn't be listened to.  The equating of seeing unarmed black men getting gunned down because a young white police officer perceived a non-existent threat with a clearly racist demonstration trying to impose outsiders views on an American community is so hate and racist tinged that he isn't going to accept how racist he actually is, it just seems normal to him.

Which is the underlying problem.

I grew up in the same world more or less as this person and was to some extent exposed to the same "truths".

These truths included things about those people and how they were demanding so much so soon and these things take time.

However these were, well lies.

Those people were people, in all respects entitled to all the same rights and privileges that everyone else had.  Demanding those rights is basic human justice, not some favor bestowed upon them, we don't have the right to bestow it and we don't have the right to deny it.

However, these "truths" were instilled in so many white Americans that they are there, and similar to say certain unpracticed religious beliefs can come up in certain circumstances.

The racism is there, just underneath the surface.

Trump has scratched that surface and he is still scratching at it.

The hate is starting to show.

Hate in America

If you are not as successful as you thought you would be, if you feel that you have been held down by the progressive forces in America and that if not for them you would be living the life of Reilly, you are wrong.

You are where you are because you lacked either the ability, ambition or persistence to do better.

except for a few very wealthy people, nothing has ever been handed to anyone in America.

Things have been stolen, exploited or appropriated but even those folks had to work for what they got.

In any group of Americans you want to categorize, a certain percentage succeed and a certain percentage don't.

White people generally have had the easiest road to success.

Not because they have more talent or work ethic, because they had lower hurdles to pass, but they still had to pass them.

Now, I don't know if the statistics actually exist but I suspect that the success for white people has been driven by the immigrants who came here and instilled a desire to succeed in their children.

Their are a lot of people, Bill Clinton used to call them bubba, but you may call them good old boys, who were pretty content with doing so-so in school, drinking beer, shooting guns, having sex and watching football with some good bar b cue.

To live that lifestyle they had to do some work and they expected to get paid pretty well for what they did.  Now they could generally put in a decent days work, when they weren't goofing off, but they did what they were told mostly and had to be watched if you wanted performance.

This way of life is a bit challenged as some of the jobs they used to expect to get went away and what's left  requires a skill set they generally never bothered to acquire.

Now the other groups have their own issues and I don't want to get into stereotypes here but there has been virtually no discrimination against white people in this country, ever.

Now in a few instances, some minority candidates may have been selected instead of an equally qualified white person but that's not discrimination, unless they weren't actually qualified.

Now resenting people who worked hard, got into school, got a decent job and are leading a better life than you are is hate.  Hate isn't going to get you anything, except maybe a prison sentence.  Work harder, get some skills and lead your best life.

Think about it while you drink your next beer.  Your life does matter as does everyone's, but that was never in question, except maybe to you since you wasted it.

Hate Mongers

Every nationality and religion has its own customs and practices.  Each of those come from something in their history or culture.

They may seem strange or odd to people not raised in that group, similar to how certain American customs seem odd to foreigners.

Pointing our these differences and using them to create unease and/or hate is a common tactic during times of conflict.

If you look at the countries of Western Europe, who share so much, the Germans were demonized by the British and French during the wars and vice versa.

Now of course there were some horrible things done during World War 2 but that was a result of the Germans demonizing a group within its own borders.

Now here n America we aren't very different. We sometimes think we are, but history proves us wrong.

We have a long history of demonizing new groups and even our black people over the years.

It continues to this day.

I see things that are simply hate propaganda spread by people who should know better.

Muslims are not all jihadists and if they want to practice sharia law, that is no different than what other religions do.

Undocumented immigrants aren't getting a free ride, in fact they generally work harder than many of those spreading these lies.

The thing to remember is that the lies you spread about others, may result in the lies about you tomorrow.