Thursday, November 1, 2018

Losing America (2)

   
    Secession was initiated by the South to insure continued slavery and the dominance of the white ‘race.’  They lost the formal war that ensued but have not lost the long social war for ‘white supremacy’ in America.  Years leading to the civil rights reforms of the 60's ended de jure apartheid in the United States.  Those reforms gave hope we were on a journey to realize values promised in our founding documents.  Since then, progress has been sporadic at best and recently reversed.

    It would be comforting to attribute the derailing of that journey to our President, or even to the Republican Party.  However we must point to ourselves.  It is we who have failed to embrace the values of the Declaration of Independence, the 14th and 15th amendments, and civil rights laws.  We citizens readily vote for candidates known to be bigoted, justifying our votes with some flimsy secondary policy name such as the ‘War on Drugs.’  Historians note that Germans voted for Hitler only after experiencing the terrible social shocks of defeat in WWI, hyper-inflation and the depression.  We Americans have not had such dystopian reversals.  Rather the foundation for our support of discrimination is far uglier.

    We in America have over, and over again, excused, endorsed, supported the introduction of methods to hold down those who are not white and Christian.  Voter suppression, white flight to private schools, massive incarceration, wide spread civilian armament, laws such as ‘stand your ground’ all combine to create great distortions to weighings on our scales of justice.

    After a week in which 2 people were shot for the crime of being black in a Kroger store, 13 liberals were sent pipe bombs, and Jews were targeted in a synagogue, it is time that we Americans rethink the political bargains we make.  Fortunately, there is soon to be an election and hence it will be easy for us to put our feet back on the path of righteousness, put our country back the journey to its proper destiny, and reassert our belief  “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.”