A Long Division

As we all do our best to navigate 2020, I feel like a lot of us are confused about our government, how we are policed and what to do going forward in a free country. I hope in this writing I can shed some light on what I think would make America better. My last name has been here in America for almost 400 years, and although I can point directly to my great-great grandfather, who fought for the Union out of Illinois, we haven’t always been on the right side of history. As a matter of fact, on that same side I have ancestors that were Canadian Loyalists, fighting for the Queen during the Revolutionary War. On my Mother’s side it gets even worse. Some of my ancestors were Indian fighters and while that might make a good premise for a Clint Eastwood movie, the reality is pretty ugly. I understand that not everyone has the time, or interest in researching their own genealogy, but if you are white in America, it’s important to understand the history that made your life possible. A lot of blood has been spilled. If you are a minority in America, there is a real history of oppression and some of it was not that far in the past. There are Japanese Americans still alive today that were in internment camps.

Now, sure, I could go on and on about how bad white people are, but I feel like that has been done to death. I would prefer to explain some things to you that you might not know instead. I’ll clarify one thing for you now, Europeans did not invade and pillage Africa in order to obtain slaves. Just think about that for a second. African tribes, that had fought each other for centuries would enslave their enemies and then trade them to European slave traders. That doesn’t mean white people are absolved of all guilt in regard to the slave trade, not at all, but lets be honest about the history. There were slaves in Africa before there were slaves in America. 

160 years ago we fought a war amongst ourselves, basically over what “freedom” means in America. Even so, we are still having that discussion to some extent today, much has been accomplished, and yet I feel like we still have a lot of work to do. The fact that Confederate statues are still up in the South, or that people still feel comfortable waving the Rebel flag are examples of how this division still exists today. People still say things like “The South will rise again.” It wasn’t even that long ago that we had Ku Klux Klan members in the House and Senate. The division between the North and South continues to this day. All you have to do is look at how we vote to see it. For the sake of brevity, I will not entertain the idea of a new attempt at secession. 

December 12th, 2000. A Day That Will Live in Infamy

One trend that has been long apparent to people that have been prepping for a “race war” is that the country is becoming browner faster than they can keep up. Whites will soon be a minority in America and there is no stopping it. Now, one thing to be aware of is the agenda of these people is not largely based on race. Racism and ignorance are two different things, and that is largely the box I have put these people in. They perhaps have not taken the time to examine their own racist past and come to any well informed conclusions, so many of them are simply not aware they are racist. That all has to be sort of under the radar anyway as “we’re the racist party” doesn’t really work anymore. So, what they want is “religious freedom”. Ironically, to these mostly white, mostly Christian, church going folk, that means no Muslims, not being “replaced” by Jews and mostly, persecution of people who have or perform abortions. It should be instantly apparent that this is completely hypocritical, and with America becoming less in favor of these things and more in favor of gun control they have employed a long game. The Federalist Society is a group that has long promoted judges who are aligned on these right-wing, conservative ideals and they have been very successful. There was a lot of fighting about the recent appointment of Supreme Court justice Kavanaugh and believe me, at the heart of the fight was not how hard he partied in college but the opportunity to shift power. Mitch McConnell successfully prevented Obama from appointing a Supreme Court justice and now he was going to fight, tooth and nail, to maintain the 5-4 imbalance in his favor in the Supreme Court, and he succeeded. However, largely, in my opinion, the greatest injustice has already been done and we mostly just sat there and watched it happen. You see, 20 years ago that court made a decision which killed democracy in America. This slow erosion of other peoples rights is what the Federalist Society, and others of their kind have been counting on.

You see, we know today that in the 2000 election, if you counted all the intended votes in Florida, Gore wins. So, people went out, got into a voting booth, voted for Gore, left believing they voted for Gore but their votes didn’t count. It was at this moment that the GOP pushed all their chips in the middle, saying, we will fight in court to disenfranchise voters if we have to. I mean, it should be complete political suicide for a party to go down this road, but they did. And they won. And we did not freak out. There was no rioting in the streets, no broken windows. They circumvented the democratic process and stole the election, right in front of us. On December 12th, 2000, in a 5-4 decision, Bush v. Gore was decided in Bush’s favor by the Supreme Court making him the first ever, appointed and not elected, President of the United States. I shouldn’t have to remind you, 2000-2008 were not great years for this country, ya know, unless you were heavily invested in Haliburton. 

So What Now? Civil War?

In a word, yes. If you have read this far and still consider yourself a conservative, hats off to you. Keep reading because you are really going to like this next part. Republicans do not have a monopoly on violence. They think a new Civil War would be easy. It wont be. First of all, we should exhaust all peaceful efforts first. If we, the people, can come together in large enough numbers, they can’t stop us. There are a lot more eyes on this next election than ever before because the GOP isn’t even hiding the fact that they will cheat anymore. They know they can’t win a fair election and we should continue to be vigilant about having them. However, that doesn’t mean that they wont succeed at stealing it again, and if that happens, all Hell should break loose. A lot of us that didn’t have guns a year ago do now, and that number should continue to go up. If you don’t own a gun and don’t know how to fire one, you should consider changing that situation. Do please make sure you take a course and learn about safe handling and storage as a new gun owner. Hopefully Coronavirus has also given us all a big lesson in being more self reliant. Learn to grow your own food, or hunt. If we can have a fair election, and Trump wins, so be it, but I think that is unlikely. We are already seeing divisions within the military. There’s no gray area here, you are either with Trump and his agenda or you are the enemy. They may also lose the election and start a war over it. Look, this is not inevitable and my point is not to scare anyone, but you shouldn’t be surprised if it happens. Hopefully calmer minds than Trump will prevail.

I was talking with my father recently and he was saying that they started in the 60’s with the civil rights movement and they ended a war, but then “the music stopped”. He has hope that the 2020’s can pick up from where they left off. Peace, of course, is the answer.

Biden and Moving Forward

So, lets say everything goes perfectly, Biden wins and there is a peaceful transfer of power, what next? Well, there’s a reason that we have the highest incarceration rate in the world, and it isn’t because Americans commit more crime, it’s because of money. Unfettered capitalism has some nasty side effects, apparently. We need to take the money out of policing and prisons, less cops, less prisoners, less of all of it, and more federal oversight. Some of these civil forfeitures are just insane where cops are motivated to take money from people who have a cash business and are pulled over for a brake light being out. I read about one situation where the police got to keep extra money left over from the food budget for prisoners so they would feed them the worst, cheapest food that they could find to keep the money. This stuff needs to stop. Body cams are a good start but a lot of cops, all across this country need to be removed from their jobs.

Secondly, education should not be for profit and we should take a big look at why administrative costs are so high. I think in the end we should shut down all for-profit education and still remove a lot of these people with cushy jobs at universities because they know the right people. Trim away all the fat, reduce costs dramatically.

Thirdly, healthcare should not be for profit. Same problem guys, people are greedy. If I have 3 or 4 medical issues, my doctor shouldn’t spread it out over 12 visits so they can charge the max amount to my insurance company. This is why we pay more per capita than any other country in the world for health care, and we don’t get the best results, we are being intentionally inefficient.

People need to get over the fact that a lot of people are going to lose their jobs in the coming years. It’s inevitable. I agree with Andrew Yang that UBI should happen sooner than later. What you should be working on is a way to provide value to the system. We should create new, green jobs and work on cleaning up the ocean and reducing carbon emissions. There is so much that needs to be done, that we can do, as one nation and be an example to the rest of the world if we can get past our greed and our egos. Become open to change, because change is coming, whether you like it or not.