[image is from here]
There's a whole lot of ridiculousness going on in the U.S.A. currently. This is nothing new, as this country is founded on some pretty ridiculous ideas:
--That Black people weren't people--they were slaves, or, when not slaves one Black man was a percentage of a white man. Huh?
--That white women were the chattel property of white men and therefore couldn't legally own things, because they were the things that were owned by their fathers or husbands.
--That something called "Manifest Destiny" and some warped idea of a white male sky-god endorsed the savagely barbaric slaughter of scores of millions of Indigenous North Americans.
--That heterosexuality and the nuclear family, each in its current very culturally specific form, are both universal and entirely natural.
More recently, we're being sold the idea that "good sex" is what corporate pimps tell us it is and that if you're a CEO of a financial institution that means you're smart about things like, say, good business practices. "Good" here meaning "ethical", "responsible, "sustainable", and "honest". One has to laugh. What would a civilisation look like that was MORE corrupt, callous, and calculatingly despicable than the Western one, short of being overtly fascistic and despotic? Another way to ask the question is this: for countries that pride themselves endlessly on being upholders of human rights and high standards of responsible behavior, how wrong do those who say such things have to be before we call their bluff?
Note this report on BP's lies. Or this one on the lack of aid that ever made it to Haiti. Or this one on the UK's Labour government's involvement in the illegal abduction and torture of its own citizens. Or this one on two Republican congressmen are urging other countries -- including, potentially, some where homosexuality is a crime punishable by death -- to vote against an American-led effort in the U.N. to recognize a respected international gay rights group. (Need I go on?)
One more, on Utah's violations of people of color's rights and privacy.
More to the point: how and when are corporate heads and political leaders fully to account? When and how will the dominant media be held accountable for promoting, rather than reporting accurately on, the U.S. wars in and against the people of Afghanistan and Iraq? And for being utterly silent on men's war against women, named as such. For news media making white supremacy appear more "complicated" (or invisible) than it ever really is?
When will the G8 leaders own up to the fact that they are willfully destroying the Earth and Indigenous people, and that, honestly, they don't give a shit? I'd find them no more or less honorable for stating it outright, but at least we'd know we're not crazy for noting this IS what is going on. Genocide and ecocide IS their plan, not an unfortunate consequence of something going wrong. Nothing's going wrong, folks. The plan, for the last many decades especially, has been to destroy the world we live in, while pretending we're doing something progressive, advanced, and noble. We're murdering everything. That's the sorry truth of it, and those already murdered--the wives of terroristic husbands, the prostitutes at the hands of procurers and pimps, the poor people by careless systems of lack-of-support and the exploits of the rich who don't pay all their taxes because they have ways of making their earned income disappear, who also don't usually go to jail because they are rich and white and can afford the lawyers who make deals in rooms with closed doors; the people of color--all ages--murdered by white supremacist police forces. The anti-girl and anti-gay bigotry and harassment that is allowed to go unchecked in small and large school and social systems.
Look anywhere at all, and white, heterosexual, and male domination reigns supreme. Invasion, pillaging, and gross exploitation of the Global South by the Global North, of the Indigenous by whites, and the pollution of land and water by those who still can get access to clean water and live on non-lethally toxic land, is endemic. Why isn't the media reporting on this? Why don't any of those several hundred channels on cable television or satellite services report on THAT 24/7? Is it unimportant? Is it not worthy of coverage? Is it really more important that I know on what reality show Kate plus her eight children will next be appearing? Is it really more important that I know which celebrities and politicians are breaking up, cheating on their spouses, or still not coming out of the closet? Sure, I want to know if some Right-wing pundit or preacher is a big ol' hypocrite, but I'm no longer assuming any of them aren't hypocrites. I want to know the latest evidence that the Democrats are no better or worse than the Republicans. But I already know both parties are beholden to (read: owned by) big oil, big pharmacology, big medical insurance, and the bluntly bludgeoning military industrial complex. Many of us know this.
But it would still be refreshing and less maddening if they'd just come out and say it. "We plan to continue to screw over poor people for the foreseeable future. We plan to do nothing at all to end rape or men terrorising women intimately. We have no method or means by which to stop killing our planet. We are and will keep on killing Indigenous people globally, probably until they're all gone and stop that complaining (read: determined political resistance).
Arizona's new breed of politicians, along with the older crop, have been recently outed as corrupt and bigoted as hell in this report.
Some ridiculous idea called "misandry" is making the rounds on the internet and in legal circles to further victimise mothers, wives, and girlfriends, who have already been made to endure men's violations and degradations. Let's face it: Mel Gibson is the current perfect posterboy for "anti-misandrists". When women claim being victimised, these woman-haters come up with tales of woe that ought to make anyone say "Whoa! You guys are, truly, full of male supremacist shit." If you don't know what irrational claims of victimisation look like, listen to the tall tales of these Western white, class-privileged, heterosexual men who have been, allegedly, "wronged" by court systems and social service agencies. I swear that a bigger bunch of ego-defensive, neurosis-projecting whiners with a terminal case of "victim mentality" never walked the Earth.
Every oppressor class claims to be the "victims" of the oppressed: men to women, whites to people of color, the rich to the poor, Christians to Muslims, heterosexuals to the rest of us, the able bodied to the disabled. Non-immigrants are victims of immigrants. Corporate welfare beneficiaries are being victimised by impoverished people who may or may not be on the form of welfare that doesn't allow one to have a yacht, a few homes, and a Swiss bank account.
If it weren't so damned harmful it'd just be hilarious. But it's far from funny. It's horrible and it causes levels of human and non-human animal suffering that is completely unnecessary and preventable.
Given this state of affairs, I'm expecting a whole lot more of this White Nationalist CRAP to be appearing in this Land of The He and the Home of the Slave.
