Happy White Independence Day, United States of America.\u00a0 People around the country are going to break out the barbecue, gather around, and celebrate the founding of a country where ‘all men are created equal.’\u00a0 All men, except for indigenous people, people of color, and women for starters.\u00a0\u00a0 We took a step in the right direction on 6 December 1865 when we said most slavery was intolerable through the 13th Amendment to the Constitution.\u00a0 The loophole we left open was for people convicted of a crime,\u00a0 and you don’t have to look hard to see the USA has around 25% of the entire global population of prisoners.\u00a0 Who makes up these prisoners?\u00a0 A disproportionate amount of people of color, as a matter of policy.\u00a0 Happy Independence Day.<\/p>\n
Lenin once said, “there are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen.”\u00a0 Since POTUS Obama has exited, the firehose of falsehoods and crimes committed by the failure of the electoral college has been difficult to wrap one’s head around indeed.\u00a0 However, 2020 has taken the pace and scale of history and turned it ‘up to 11.’ We will be unpacking this for years to come, and I hope we emerge the other side better from it.\u00a0 We are hit with something new to be angry about and something else to mourn at such a pace that we haven’t had time to process any of it properly,\u00a0 while it hasn’t even ended yet.\u00a0\u00a0 In those terms,\u00a0 it is akin to a combat operation.\u00a0 However, in combat, we didn’t lose 120,000 (and climbing rapidly)\u00a0 people to a leadership structure telling its people it will go away magically.<\/p>\n
Maya Angelou reminds us, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”\u00a0\u00a0 We have a statistically significant portion of the population who get angry if you tell them Jesus, a mythical entity designed to teach you how to be a good person,\u00a0 isn’t white.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We have a good chunk of people who wrap themselves in the confederacy,\u00a0 a period lasting around four years, and angrily scream about ‘heritage’ despite their entire reason for leaving the USA was slavery and racism as written in their founding documents.\u00a0\u00a0 We have a sizable sect of people who will look at you in the face and bemoan rural poverty as a tragedy and how they’re forgotten, left behind. Yet, these same people will say impoverished inner-city people brought it on themselves; the ‘pick them up by their bootstraps’ kind of mentality.\u00a0 From voting booths, Sunday services to 24\/7 media channels, this hatred is embedded and expanded.<\/p>\n
Lao Tzu wrote, “Failure is an opportunity.\u00a0 If you blame someone else, there is no end to the blame.”\u00a0\u00a0 You can turn on any news channel, flip to any comments section and you will find this.\u00a0\u00a0 There are some visibly, exponentially, worse than others, but it exists.\u00a0 Some stake the bulk of their identity on the impossibility of them being wrong,\u00a0 it is always ‘them.’\u00a0\u00a0 Who ‘they’ are may change, but when we go back to the founding of the country, it was: white, wealthy, native-born, land-owning, heterosexual, Christian, men.\u00a0\u00a0 Hundreds of years later and there is still a vocal group of people trying to keep things that way.\u00a0 Unalienable rights?\u00a0 Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?\u00a0\u00a0 Everyone is equal under the eyes of the law?\u00a0\u00a0 All of those things are just words on paper and at best applies to the narrow group of applicable citizens.<\/p>\n
2020 continues to show this struggle in ways that not even the billionaire-owned media channels can brush under the rug.\u00a0\u00a0 We have a Russian ally in the Oval Office playing multiple rounds of golf and hosting ego-boosting parties during a pandemic and trying to shift the narrative to statues of traitors.\u00a0\u00a0 We have an ongoing Friday-Night-Massacre in the Department of ‘Justice’ with firings and track-covering.\u00a0\u00a0 We have half of the Congress that either is shut down entirely or only exists to corrupt the Judiciary branch.\u00a0 Meanwhile,\u00a0 the people are still getting killed in the streets by police and the failures of government. Individual narratives are trying to paint agent provocateurs as ‘looters’ while their corporate buddies walk away with free billions, no accountability.\u00a0\u00a0 From coast to coast, from sovereign lands to public parks, and from small towns to big cities, people are trying to do the only thing they can with what they have available.<\/p>\n
The second half of Lao Tzu’s chapter from before is, “Therefore the Master fulfills her own obligations and corrects her own mistakes. She does what she needs to do and demands nothing of others.”\u00a0\u00a0 In an ideal world wherein we are all self-aware, compassionate, and strive to be harmonious, such a principle would be fantastic.\u00a0 However,\u00a0 we are not surrounded by such.\u00a0 We continuously fight with racists, religious zealots, and others who are not Masters, whose view of harmony and compassion is of obedience to their belief and deviation is exile.\u00a0 Their demands aren’t just let us be in peace but subjugation of those around them, and it has been for thousands of years.<\/p>\n
In the Gettysburg Address, President Lincoln illustrated, “It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.”\u00a0 History is happening every day, sometimes rapidly.\u00a0 Blaming other people to the extent of some of the media outlets and comment sections doesn’t get us anywhere.\u00a0\u00a0 We have a troubled past and population,\u00a0 and it is up to us to do something about it.\u00a0\u00a0 The process will be painful but ignoring the problem is the same as approving it now, silence is consent.\u00a0 From the snarky comments in bars to fights at dinner tables,\u00a0 from the underground railroads to the creation, signing, and upholding legislation, we advance little by little.<\/p>\n
I ask you to dedicate yourself to the unfinished work of making the USA ‘a more perfect union’ and join the ranks of people who can no longer tolerate the intolerable.\u00a0 It isn’t enough to vote and be politely quiet in public anymore.\u00a0\u00a0 The ‘battlefield’ isn’t limited to the supreme court docket or the presidential voting booth, but in the attitudes of everyday people and everyday interactions.\u00a0 Removing statues and taking down flags of another country is just one step.\u00a0\u00a0 If we want to live up to the ideals genuinely we claim to have; we have a lot of changes to make.\u00a0 Let’s make future fireworks shows ones we can be proud of,\u00a0 not ones tarnished by wildfire risks,\u00a0 spreading viruses,\u00a0 racial hatred, and more.\u00a0 We’ve accomplished some beautiful things; this is within our power.<\/p>\n
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Happy White Independence Day, United States of America.\u00a0 People around the country are going to break out the barbecue, gather around, and celebrate the founding of a country where ‘all men are created equal.’\u00a0 All men, except for indigenous people, people of color, and women for starters.\u00a0\u00a0 We took a step in the right direction […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[338],"tags":[291,179,168],"class_list":["post-27600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-considered-thoughts","tag-291","tag-anger","tag-hope"],"yoast_head":"\n