The Silencing of No One
Hey, you.
Shut up.
Didn’t work, did it?
OK. Let’s try something else:
You’re protesting the injustice of the 200 black men killed by police each year. Horrible, wish it didn’t have to happen, and maybe with better training we can get that number to zero.
I can save some people of all colors if I could get people to not give young men the idea that they can say and do anything to a cop, and the cop can’t respond.
Shut up and cooperate. You aren’t admiting to anything, you’re just moving beyond the present moment. You know, like an adult does. Cooperate, and then when your lawyer shows up, tell him/her what actually happened, and proceed from there.
You just might save your own life by not acting in the moment, like someone in a movie.
Black Lives Matter folks, do you really care about all black lives?
I don’t believe you. Not a word about all the other black lives that have been lost since George Floyd was killed. Yes, mentioning the many more dead proves I’m one of Those People.
You got that out of your system? Get your little charge from labeling me?
Let’s continue.
We know, you’re exhausted from protesting the 2500–3500 black men killed each year by other black folks. But if you want something changed that would drop that number so it’s even lower than the number of white men killed, which it lags, how about staying home, going to bed, and in the morning getting up a petition to have a law changed?
How about getting signatures to have statues removed?
Remember, it’s the right-wingers who hate art, who want ‘sacreligious’ art removed the way the Taliban…
Let’s do that game where we tell nothing but the truth for one minute. I saw that in that bad movie, 2010.
The Right Wingers (there are exceptions — #NotAllMAGA) aren’t interested in your problems.
They care about themselves and their family and their friends and their state. They get very touchy if you insult their state, even if they’re ready to throw down on their next door neighbor if they hang a UN flag on their own private property.
They’re not interested in changing your mind. They want to be with their own people — which more often than not means ‘folks who THINK like me.’
That’s why work and time spent in the military is good for people — they are forced to work with people who aren’t just like them. They get used to other sorts of folks.
Here’s another truth: Lefties truly believe there are two types of people, Lefties, and evil, racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic Deplorables.
Hillary Clinton made that pronouncement because she knew she was going to win — EVERYONE said so — and she was able to relax a little from her daily grind of shaking hands and smashing drives the FBI wanted to examine and never did. (#NotAllDevices)
Hillary was so comfortable that she dropped her fake smile and showed her actual self. And that actual person is overflowing with resentment and hatred for folks who Aren’t Like Us.
The Left prided itself for decades on being the ones who were for Free Speech and Love of Diversity. It ran on those fumes for decades, sputtering through the Women’s Lib era, the ERA, limping along standing for nothing much beyond Abortion, which they were passionate about.
They now stand for Free Speech for themselves. They label anything that isn’t Our Kind of Thinking as Hate, and then they push Hate off the public stage however they can. You disagree with them? Wow — so you’re pro-hate?
I’ve lived in and around Boston and Cambridge for years, and I used to roll my eyes at the idea of “diversity,” because I knew damn well the nation WAS diverse, always had been diverse, even when that diversity was made up of Native Americans who were being tricked and murdered, African Americans who under government ‘help’ went from 85% two-parent households to 75% single-parent, Asians brought here as slave labor… Even when we were doing evil, the country was never all white. And most of those white folks are mixed…
I digress. My mind’s been wandering lately, numbed by endless YouTube streams of protests that look very much like social events, becoming energized only when television cameras appear on the scene.
Where was I?
Bonus Other Truth: The most liberal person I ever dated is also the most racist person I ever dated. She openly longed for the days when black retainers would call her “Miss.”
The current screaming about masks or no masks was the beginning of The Screaming Year. The outrage would have you thinking if you wear a mask in public it’s as bad as seatbelt laws, and we don’t have to go into the horrors of THOSE. The news media led the charge, with non-mask-wearing Trump being lambasted by non-mask-wearing TV talking heads. “Trump’s KILLING people because he’s not being an example!” they tell us, these people we can clearly I.D. because NO ONE ON THE NEWS SHOWS WEARS A MASK.
The marches on state houses were, of course, the most evil thing ever, because they were spreading the disease, and we both know where I’m going with this, don’t we, so why not wrap this up?
Screaming at us will not change our minds.
Calling us ‘commie’ or ‘racist’ doesn’t make it so.
You know this, and yet you keep screaming.
I know why.
You like it.
You like feeling angry, or at least acting that way. Ignore the news TV version of these ‘protests’ and you don’t see anguished people pushed from their comfortable homes to denounce racism, but early 20-somethings, skaters, bike riders, everyone holding up their phones, everyone feeling the power of shouting out “F the police” and “SAY HIS NAME!” and getting the crowd to respond the way they do in a rock concert. Listen to the giggling, see the smiling faces. You can hear them, comfortable with their cameras on sending the feed to YouTube, CHATTING.
Just like the most overweight, blustery rifle-posing ‘redneck.’ You like using that term to denigrate working people, and it’s okay, because you’re the Good Ones. They deserve whatever insult you send at them, about their low-paying work, their lack of education.
You can throw those insults because you’re compassionate about the poor and the working class.
And what are you all angry about?
Wearing a mask in public, as a way to slow the spread of a virus. You have the chance to ACTUALLY save someone’s life, probably someone you LOVE, or at least know. But you won’t be told what to do.
Because you’re a snowflake, who melts when called upon to do anything you don’t WANNA do!
As much as I’d like to make this a ‘both sides suck’ judgment, I just can’t.
Because the Left is by far the bigger offender in all this.
The Left tells us how much they value democracy, they hate ‘voter suppression.’ How many votes did they take before they decided to tear down public property?
The Left tells us that black Americans are dealing under the weight of 400 years’ oppression, but can we knock off that B.S.? No one alive is 400 years old, and no one alive in America was born into slavery, or even born from slaves.
You cannot escape images and voices of black success in America. If you chose to do so, you could listen to only black artists, watch only black TV shows and movies, watch sports dominated by blacks. (I don’t hear as much about reading only black authors, but you could.) Your eyes roll back and you mumble some vague snark when I mention Obama, Oprah, Michael, Kobe.
Black folks’ lives are doomed to second-class status because of slavery, which ended a century and a half ago. But they can’t be successful even though there are countless successes TODAY?
B. And S.
Someone made a joke with a racial component? Let me introduce you to the work of Richard Pryor, among many others. Humor USED to be a way to express silly thoughts, to laugh about things we all think, even if we don’t believe them. Except you, of course, you make no judgments about anyone until you get to know them as an individual.
Countless black sucess stories are meaningless in terms of inspiring black people to success. But ONE tasteless joke, and the jokester must be wiped from society, because that joke can destroy countless lives. Or something.
The shouting and yelling and name-calling is fashionable. Destorying one’s own neighborhood isn’t a tragedy to those who don’t give a damn about their neighbors.
We have brought up kids to be resentful and spoiled and selfish. They do not care that their actions may hurt someone else.
We do not care that we give a president a pass on anything he does, because The Other Side will get a win out of it if we say, “You shouldn’t do that.”
We trash a man’s reputation because we can, not because he actually deserves it. We know the accusations are lies, but look at him, he’s SMILING, and…well, that’s enough.
We denounce TALKING about what women LET a man do to them, yet shrug when someone WE like does more than just talk.
We call those on the other side less than human, and shrug when someone suggests that might incite violence. I mean, really — did you care when you heard about MSNBC and Bernie Sanders fan James Hodgkinson?
I know, I’m wrapping up.
And I didn’t convince you of anything. Even though I typed it up for your perusal, and used a little humor, and some pictures, you weren’t convinced to change your mind about anything.
But you screaming at me, THAT’S going to change minds?
No.
You know you’re not going to change my mind, or anyone’s.
That’s not what you want, anyway.
You don’t want unity.
You don’t want everyone to get along — you know those are fantasies.
You want submission.
You don’t care if we LIKE it, you just want us to shut up and DO it.
Whatever “it” may be.
You want The Other Side to drop to their knees and just do what you’re telling them to do.
You’ll get them to drop by getting them kicked off social media, by smashing their stores, by boycotting, by violence.
Some will. If only to get something from you.
But the ones who don’t want something from you, just to be free of you controlling them?
You’ll never get them — us — to kneel to you.
And you’ll never make us shut up.
