racism

Northam the Pious

Posted on by Alan Webb

I got asked what I think of the stink raised over a photo in a yearbook some claim is our Guvnut Ralphie Northam the Pious (Peeus?). I think many things, too many to fit into a blog post. So I’ll focus on a few.

First, let me repeat this question: are we only our worst moments? Our lives are a mixed bag of praiseworthy and regrettable behavior. How many of us could survive the sort of scrutiny given to Brett Kavanaugh and lately, Guvnut Ralphie Northam the Pious?

Can we stop micro-analyzing the lives of our leaders to find any tiny mote on their character? I and my friends would not survive such a close examination of our worst moments. Instead of a deep dive into youthful stupid behavior can we stipulate that all of us fall short and move on?

It’s a trope. A political leader is pure as the driven snow, more pious than St. Paul, unblemished as Mother Mary, and more wise than Confucius. That’s the standard some wish to apply to our leaders. They want a god-king better than a thousand years of Caesar.

So mythology is built around a potentate. Today’s blessed mother is Alexandria Occasio-Cortez (AOC). We are to believe she was conceived of a poor mother and father in the Bronx, raised up eating the tossed out scraps of beans and rice from a Cuban restaurant’s dumpster and automagically, graduated from BU. She is the next savior to triumph over the evil white dictator Cheeto Satan.

Shunned

You get to keep your high accolades until you become a threat to one of the political machines. Then you are worse than worm food. The machines must live so you must die. The machines fired a shot at Guvnut Northam the Peeus.

Northam the Peeus was elected with a similar bit of propaganda. We were told he isn’t extreme. He is a reasonable demi-god king free of any blemish. Desert Storm veteran, Pediatric Neurologist, and State Senator. He was our Lieutenant Governor before being anointed by McAuliffe the Wise. We voted for him because we were told that he’d be more reasonable than that evil, extremist and wicked demon Ed Gillespie (racist, homophobe, privileged, chauvinist, and asshat pig).

The weapon of choice is familiar. An accusation is published in a respected, reasonable news outlet. Rape for Kavanaugh, racism for Guvnut the Pious. The statement is made, “these are very serious accusations.” Every loyalist so accused is expected to accept his tub of worms and shovel with gratitude. Guvnut won his election by using the weapon of choice. Yet when it’s fired at him he isn’t sticking to the script.

Sullied Saint

And . . . guess what. Northam isn’t a saint. In typical fashion, the sins he accuses his opponents of are those that sully his dashiki. He never decried an ad that circulated during his campaign accusing evil Gillespie of the most vile of adjectives. Then we learn that there is a photo in a yearbook that might be Northam the Peeus. Ruh Roh.

Yes, ruh roh. Northam can’t be the Pious with a single mote on his reputation. It would mean he is mortal. Democratic leaders must be god-kings, not mortals. We could solve a lot of problems with our society if we would begin building temples to our gods, great and small. This mote can’t be.

It is. This week Ralphie the Mortal has gone dark. We haven’t heard from him since that disastrous press conference where he almost moon-walked until his wife told him it would be inappropriate. The rumor is that he isn’t leaving office and is looking for some land on which to build a temple to himself.

A New Deplorable

All the mortal sinners are either in the closet or sharing a bar stool with that KKK leader. So the battle over character has moved to increasingly minor, venial sins. The same level of moral outrage is given to a yearbook picture as an actual lynching.

Which is stupid. It makes the accusers sound like toddlers throwing a tantrum. Rather than inspire desired outcomes the accusations tend to fizzle. “These are very serious accusations,” goes the outcry. And the expected response is “ok, sorry, where are my worms and shovel?“

Northam the Mortal isn’t sticking to the trope. He’s decided to stay and fight. Good for him. It’s gotten stupid. The bullies have been in charge. They shout, “BOO!” and we are supposed to cower and eat our worms peacefully. Then Trump won. That wasn’t supposed to happen. Her Royal Highness Billary Roddamned Clitoran was supposed to be coronated and preserve the empire. She lost.

Then, to make things worse, Pimp Daddy Baroque Obummer let Cheeto Satan have the Oval Orifice. Obummer left to play golf in Palm Springs. The horror of it all. How dare Pimp Daddy do that? Does he even care about us? Doesn’t he understand what he did?

Pimp Daddy understands, more than you know. He left to play golf because it was the right thing to do. We needed Trump. As time goes on it becomes more clear that we were in trouble. We’d fucked the wrong john for too long.

So the old tropes are failing. It used to be that you could order the blood worms and the shovel ahead of time because the outcome was a lock. Now people are taking encouragement from Trump and starting to fight. Northam the Mortal is just one of many.

Fam Status Questionable

Last, I grew up around organized crime leaders. They worked in Philly and commuted home to my neighborhood. Palace intrigue is some of the air I breathe. This hit on Northam the Mortal feels like a fight between crime gangs. Northam is a pawn in a turf war between the Clintons and the San Francisco political machine. It was supposed to be a mortal blow for Northam the Mortal. Ralphy’s worms were specially raised in Mendocino in soil owned by cannabis sativa growers. He did a bad thing deciding to fight. We don’t know yet whether SFO will hit him again.

Trump isn’t the problem. The problem is a civil war started by SFO’s political machine to take over the country. Before the rise of the Pelosi gang we were controlled by dixiecrats and the Chicago machine. Dixiecago has been losing elections for a little over forty years. In its place has been the Pelosi gang.

The Pelosi gang are true believers in a mashup of Mao, Islam, and Judiasm. Their answers to the world’s ills deepen their roots in power and disparity. The goal is visible in the state of Golden Mountain where it is ever more expensive to live there and the proletariat’s desperation is carefully managed so as to ensure it’s continued oppression.

Dirty Pious Barons

Baron Ralphie Northam Guvnut the Peeus isn’t guilty of racism. He’s guilty of assuming that the Clinton machine would protect him from his past. His crimes were safe until he became a threat to the machine. Then everything he ever did that is even remotely outrageous became cannon fodder. His attempts at repentance were ignored.

I’d guess that back in the day blackface wasn’t the mortal sin its being depicted as today. Today it’s the same as lynching. So anyone who put on blackface as a joke is no different from a murderous Imperial Wizard of the KKK. He or she must be ruined.

Here is the thing. When every menial sin is treated like a mortal sin based on the propaganda of the day it becomes stupid. It’s like my ex-wife accusing me of horrible crimes even after I have not been in touch with her for a decade. It’s redunkulousness. She lost credibility and her accusations became words on wind and water. Ditto what the Pelosi machine is doing with Guvnut the Pious.

No Longer News

Last . . . I hate writing about the news. It’s a moving target. It takes me a few weeks to write something about a news story. In that time its fallen off the news cycle and we have moved on.

Barron Guvnut the Peeus isn’t helping. He did an interview with Gale King that was awkward. Really awkward. During the interview he announced an apology tour. I’m not feeling this apology tour.

Nawthum the Peeus presumes he can heal us from our white privilege and evil, racist ways. Uhm . . . Ralph? Hello!? We didn’t do what you did. Why are you deflecting your own bad behavior by roping in the Commonwealth and blaming us for your shit?

I’m OK with a repentant sinner. I’m not OK with a sinner who apologizes then tries to take it back only to apologize for using !shoe polish! as part of a Michael Jackson costume. Or a politician who wants to change the subject to the big issue of institutional and cultural racism so he can say he has apologized for a huge, stupid misdeed.

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On Being Apostate

Posted on by Alan Webb

You Can Blame Me

It seems that the reason so many are so miserable is me. My adjectives, WASP, cis-hetero male, from parents who busted their ass to give me a better life, makes me bougie and bougie is evil. Being bougie means that my existence is a sin. So I owe a debt to those who are not bougie that I must somehow repay. All because I was born this way. About that . . . about on being apostate.

This debt is evergreen. Whatever I do, no matter how much I genuflect before the proletariat, I am still despicable simply because of my parents. If I had 40 acres and a mule to give it would not be enough. I am born into a debt because somehow I had advantages I owe to someone who isn’t kin to me.  Mao is so wise.

Those who fight White Privilege are racist. I’ll explain. First, they need a narrative that names an oppressed class who are suffering under an oppressor of their choosing. They declare that African-Americans are all Stepin Fetchit enslaved by white plantation owners. Just being a WASP is ipso facto proof of White Privilege.

Rather nicely, two groups are tagged with adjectives they cannot be free of. Both end up being shit on, one because they are prevented from any agency that would challenge their designation as oppressed and the other because they are prevented from being anything other than the enemy of the oppressed.  This is what social justice looks like.

My Apostate, White Privileged, Pimply Ass

White Privilege is a cocked up reason to feel guilty for being born into a WASP family. It makes great virtue signal and excuses a personal obligation to be accountable for our shit. The problem isn’t us, it’s our parents, who stupidly had sex and didn’t get an abortion. Idiots. Wikipedia says this about White Privilege.

White Privilege is rooted in Marxist thinking. It’s a version of the anger against the bourgeoisie. To be bougie is a sin, the thinking goes. So, we grind through all the bougie people and stuff and shit out anything and anyone of any value. For the very reasonable price of only 90% of our income and the surrender of all privately held assets. No problem.

I should be overjoyed at paying 90% of my income to a dear leader because, white privilege. Obviously, I am oppressing black people simply because I had the misfortune to be born to upper-middle-class WASPS. Next is the minister who triggered these 1700 words.

Reverand Katie Mulligan

Allow me to introduce the Reverend Katie Mulligan. Katie gave the sermon last Sunday at my Dad’s church. I grew up in this church. There is so much I didn’t know or understand back then. These days, my beef with my Dad’s church has changed. Katie’s sermon tells me that rather than speak tradition to peer pressure they have decided to be with the cool kids. Katie seems to be someone who has decided that she wants to be one of the cool kids so she’s attached cool kid adjectives to her personal brand.  I was the kid bullied by the cool kids.

Why I Live at St. Giles

Since then I’ve been a member of various churches. I keep coming back to being Presbyterian. In part because I too love to argue. These days I am a member of St Giles.  First Pres Pitman and St. Giles are very different churches.  Keith’s sermon last Sunday:

White People are the Cause of It All

Katie chose to focus on white privilege. Whoa. So my entire major malfunction is my heritage as a WASP? It really is my Mom’s fault? I’m so relieved. And here I thought that it was some Freudian id thing.  It must be that Jung was the real crackpot. Kinda sucks that I wasted all that money and energy on therapy when it really was my parent’s fault.

My problem with Katie’s sermon is that it is anchored in Marxist beliefs. Marx is an enemy of Christ. Marx taught the proletariat to hate the bourgeoisie. Those who follow Marx need two things: a proletariat and a bourgeoisie. Where one of these does not exist they set about creating it. Ergo most of the tropes regarding privilege, disparity, isms, etc. They need peeeple who are oppressed so that they can champion for them. It cannot be that the peeeple are in fact, fine.

Marx’s enemy was the Czar of Russia. His period is the early 20th Century when Capitalist Industrialism was the envy of some and a reason to revolution for others. Things can be made fairer by making everything owned and controlled by the government. Didn’t, doesn’t work.

Zoshul Just This

I don’t want to get too deep into my dislike of all the social justice movements that point to Marx as their philosophical roots. Modern Protestant thinking anchors our faith in a personal relationship with Christ. So the path to social justice begins with each of our hearts. The method is deeply Jewish–a tithe of 10% given to the church who in turn uses it to pay the bills and meet communal needs. It is different from Marxist ideas of government where the tithe becomes a tax and the authority to choose how the tax is spent is given to the party instead of the church.

The religious point I want to make is that we won’t anger our way to an answer for all the bougie sins laid at our feet. There is an evergreen stew of resentment and sins invented to explain why they are so miserable and we are so evil. After a while, though, life as a shunned whore living on El Camino de las Almas Perdidas en el Valle de la Sombra de la Muerte sounds better than the empty promises of an abusive pimp like the social justice movement of the day.

Katie Says

Katie asks us to either feel guilty for an accident of birth caused by a few moments of horizontal bop perpetrated by our parents or angry that the roulette wheel of life spun and we got the black square. Either way, it is evergreen. There is nothing I can do that will ever be sufficient for Katie to accept my restitution or repentance. I will forever be the enemy to her simply because I had the misfortune to be born a WASP with parents who busted their ass so I could have a better life. I owe a bottomless debt to those less fortunate than me on the basis of my race and choice of gender identity.

Thanks, Katie, that makes me feel so much better. Do you know a good supplier of worms I can eat while I dig my own grave because of the White Guilt you accuse me of?

You cannot be a Marxist Christian. The two are antithetical. Marx pointed to the bougie, to the privileged, to explain why the proletariat was so miserable. His answer was to destroy the bougie and redistribute their wealth to the proletariat. Millions died as a result. Katie wants me to be happy about this, to pick up a protest sign and offer my body as a holy sacrifice to atone for my white privilege. I’ll get right on that after I go insult another brown person.

Hail Ceasar

Christ’ enemy was his own church and the Roman Empire. Where Marx offers a replacement God-King who would be fairer than the Czar Christ’ kingdom has each of us as its cornerstone. We are, individually, the resurrected kingdom, the new temple. Instead of anchoring a solution in the God-King and our self-worth defined by our place in the hierarchy Christ turns to us and asks each of us to do our part. Jesus was far more anarchist than imperialist. Marxism is just imperialism with a set of rules preferred by revolutionaries.

Katie, if you want us to fix this the answer is old and simple. Instead of looking to a pseudo-religious ideology that teaches hate for your way and worth, look again to Christ. The Beatitudes are a place to start. I’ll repeat my essentials as a suggested way: love kin, friends, neighbors and enemies alike, when in doubt, give grace and mercy first, surrender everything so that the only thing left is a desire to love Christ, be humble and quiet, as these are presented to you, do small acts of kindness of great love, and last, service and missions first.

I doubt that Katie and I will agree on much. Instead of being a light on a hill PCUSA chooses to placate its abusers in the name of diversity and inclusion. Katie, sorry, you chose to be angry at me and threaten to shun me because I happen to believe that Christ called me to something other than hating myself because I happened to land on the white square of the roulette wheel of life. I’ll pray for you.

Not One of the Cool Kids

My Jesus is absurd. He says stupid shit like, “I am the vine and you are the branches.” He asks me to love people who I’d like to punch in the face. Instead of offering me a free cell phone because I say I need it he wants me to serve the poor, the aged, and prisoners with no hope of return. Katie’s Jesus offers safe spaces featuring coloring books and snacks to insulate her from the trials of absurd living according to the way of a martryed carpenter. It indulges us in every whim. Don’t like dating guys? No problem, date women. Can’t decide what gender identity feels right? No problem, don’t decide. Born something other than white and life sucks? Poor thing, it’s not your fault. It’s those evil white people pissing on your future.

My Jesus told me to stop whining, to shut up and that I would work for Him. I don’t get safe spaces or all that is offered within them. I am not a cool kid. Some say that I am the reason they are so fucked up. It is because I happen to be born to WASP parents that I am obligated to brown people for sins I was born into. Where are those worms and my shovel?

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Race

Posted on by Alan Webb

First Posted 27-Feb-2015

I’m a Nascar fan. You say race to me and I’m thinking stock cars and oval race tracks. But, I’m not an idiot. I know that a synonym for race refers to the genealogical heritage of some folk and how that heritage affects their lives. Racism is tribalism writ large. Race is one way we select who is in, who is with us, and who is out, who is “other” and thus, worthy of exclusion and derision.
WAR & CONFLICT BOOK ERA: CIVIL WAR/BACKGROUND: SLAVERY & ABOLITIONISMThis needs to be one of my “not news” posts. It should not be news that discriminating against someone because of their skin color is a bad idea. God called us to love kin, neighbors and enemies. I don’t find an exception to that allowing us to declare that folk with a different skin tone from ours are to be shunned or treated as chattel. I’m repeating this because I feel like I need to say it again. Maybe I’m being stupid, thinking that if I say it enough more people will listen. It is a foolish way to argue–repeat something, louder and angrier each time, believing that the repetitions with more feeling will persuade the target of the verbal battery. It is how my son’s Mom & I used to argue. We were stubborn and stupid about it.

I should just let it go. I am not letting it go. For a couple reasons. One, a good friend of mine is deeply wounded on this topic. His misery, his bitter experience with being shunned because of his ethnicity, is something that colors the world shit-brown for him. He explains a lot of his misery based on it being caused by the accident of his birth to his parents. And here is where I should say he’s black. It’s the obvious punch line to this paragraph. But, believing misery is caused by a chance birth into an ethnicity isn’t a hangup that only African American’s have. So it’s not relevant to this essay whether my friend is black. What is relevant is that he has this habit of explaining his troubles by saying it is because of this ethnicity. He won’t let go of this. So I find myself wanting to say again that ethnicity and skin color say nothing about the character of us.

It’s not news except that ethnicity and skin color as characterizing attributes is something that gets repeated when it should not be a defining characteristic. Also not news, I hope, is that the labels “black” and “white” as markers of skin color are misnomers. Most of humanity is some shade of brown. Even I, ethnically “white”, am a shade of beige or light brown. Skin color as a measure of who is and isn’t in the tribe is a bad choice of discriminating characteristic. We are all brown. Some are darker brown than others. It’s a question of degree rather than a binary black/white choice. If anything, I and my fair skinned kin, are a minority. We are in charge because we tend to win wars. It’s been true for a while. 10,000 Scotts-Irish guys on a battlefield is not an opponent you want to face.

We don’t win honorably either. We defeated the Chinese by making them addicted to Opium. We hurt the Native Americans deeply with our new diseases. We cheat and win. We control most of Europe to this day. We may win ugly, but we win. Which . . . pisses some folk off. I get that. I know that the whole sordid affair of slavery was an ugly partnership between tribes in West Africa, my British ancestors, and my kin here in Richmond, VA.

It’s been nearly 50 years since the Civil Rights movement. The Emancipation Proclamation was 152 years ago as of this post. We’ve come a long way. Not saying we are done. Pockets of asshats exist. But the days of broad cultural assumption that we are divided along racial lines are gone. So, staying pissed off starts being a bit stupid. In any case, there are three trump cards that end the whole conversation on a good note. The first is that we need to continue the habit of remembering that whites are the minority, actually, and we should be grateful for our success and humbly serve as we are able out of that success. The second is the greatest commandment: Love God with all our hearts, minds and souls and second, love kin, neighbors and enemies alike. Third, the golden rule, treat others as we wish to be treated. Three simple principles to live by that can end racism where it reappears. Three simple things we can all do regardless of ethnic origin. I started with Nascar. Joey Logano won the Daytona 500 this year in a Ford.

Maybe his victory isn’t connected, maybe I’m being annoying in ending this way. So be it. Congratulations to Penske Racing and Joey Logano for a great win.

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