If the American Civil War hadn’t happened back in 1860 does anyone out there believe it never would have happened and enslavement of Africans and their descendants would be ongoing to this day? If you answered, “yes” you may stop reading now and go back to your bunker with your guns and canned goods. The answer is, of course, it was inevitable. The economic engine of the southern “one percent” antebellum days of African slave labor was unsustainable and doomed by the combination of the northern industrial revolution and the simply untenable immoral institution that it was.
So my question is why are these clowns, both north and south, proudly waving Confederate flags as if the war never happened? As if the south won? Are they saying slavery was a good thing? Do they even think about what they are doing on the planet from one flaming racist thought to the next? How would Dylann Roof’s world view be enacted? Reality does not interest these Orcs.
To the rational mind there is no explaining the blind hate of and by people except to say it exists. I overheard a man in a coffee shop enthusiastically proclaim, “I’m a Trump man all the way!” Another asked him why and he said, “I like him because he is just saying what EVERYONE is thinking.” From what I have heard Trump say that isn’t necessarily a good thing unless you are a fellow xenophobic, racist misogynist. Sure, we all like and respect a person that isn’t afraid to say what’s on their mind, but one needs to listen to the content of their pronouncements before championing them.
Speaking of doubling down has anyone ever wondered what would have happened if Bill Clinton had just come out and said, “Yes, I had sex with that woman, in fact I am a very sexually active guy. I have a tough job and I need stress relief.” Do you think if he’d just been honest people would have been ok with his philandering? I mean, after all he was just doing what EVERYONE was doing or wanted to do. Right?
Ever wonder why a lot of people that profess to be Christian and moral are neither. We have a new Pope in the Vatican pointing out that poor people around the world are suffering because hyper-capitalist behavior has turned human beings into a disposable commodity and the Pope is pointing out the obvious that that was never a tenet of Christ’s teachings. In fact he has come right out and said, “by itself the market cannot guarantee integral human development and social inclusion” and he also sees climate change for what it is; “The warming caused by huge consumption on the part of some rich countries has repercussions on the poorest areas of the world, especially Africa, where a rise in temperature, together with drought, has proved devastating for farming.”
What would Jesus do? Rape and pillage the planet as if we have a spare one lurking about? Deny the majority of people the basic necessities of life by commoditizing food and water so to maximize the income for a handful of elites? I don’t think so.
Pope Francis may be the Church’s first truly Christian pope and the one percent does not like it. If you get right down to it Jesus was a Jewish socialist that thought love was the most important and powerful force in this world and beyond and as the Beatles said, it was “all you need.”
One more thought on Donald Trump, the right wing and the comic theater of the absurd that is presidential politics. As a victim of age, in the sense I remember a time when the American people would never ever have considered the soft bodied, combed-over, egomaniacal billionaire as a legitimate contender for the highest office in the land. However we live in a new culture where greed and money and celebrity and bling are worshipped and held in high regard. The love of money and contempt for the poor and weak and powerless have been nurtured and coaxed along to the point that we have lost all perspective and some of us are no longer able to make intelligent choices. Donald Trump?! Really?!
Related:
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The Donald Trump effect: How the GOP’s “conservative principles” gave way to racism, misogyny and infantile rage
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10 key excerpts from Pope Francis’s encyclical on the environment
