I split this blog post into two parts due to its length. Didn’t want you to have to cover too much ground in one sitting. Remember what Tony said in his post about our founding fathers. They established our form of government, the constitution and bill of rights as a foundation to grow on. Not as a fixed initiative that shouldn’t change as our world changes. They established the foundation based on what they experienced at that time without any knowledge or understanding of the future.
So let me continue:
Critical Race Theory / Woke Mentality – Wikipedia’s definition of Critical Race Theory (CRT) is defined as this – a cross disciplinary examination, by social and civil rights scholars and activists, to explore how laws, social and political movements, and media shape, and are shaped by social conceptions of race and ethnicity. Why does that concern people? I have no idea, maybe fear. I just finished reading “The New Jim Crow”. Very enlightening if you didn’t pay attention to the drug wars and mass incarceration of the 90’s like me. CRT has been discussed in higher education for years without the name. Oh wait, maybe it’s the whole woke mentality thing being shoved down our throats. No, it isn’t. Maybe it is about challenging our thinking on racism and racial justice. They call it Critical Race Theory because it is a reference to a thought process. It is not about criticizing or blaming, it’s about understanding.
I recently read an article about a poll that was taken asking folks if they should be teaching Arabic numerals should be taught in US schools (The link is below). Out of 3,624 respondents, 2020, or 56% said “no”. Keep in mind the digits 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 are Arabic numerals, developed in the 6th & 7th century. Our country is not as old as some others. What was pointed out was the prejudice among those who don’t fully understand the issue/question. Wouldn’t a better response to the question be, “I don’t really know. Tell me what Arabic numerals are before I can answer that.” The survey goes on to show prejudice on both sides of the isle.
So stop with the woke mentality bullshit. Maybe being woke, works for all of us. Maybe we should wake up to opening our minds to a different way of thinking. I fear that those who are concerned with CRT and a woke mentality are afraid of change or progress. Maybe the next time someone comes up with a new tool, process, vehicle or technology that makes our lives easier, we should say no. We like things as they are, we don’t need to change. Maybe we should bring back the Model-T, cable cars and horse & buggy. They all worked fine back then. We could have won the war either way. Why should we think differently and challenge ourselves to be better? Because that is what makes us better as a Country. Remember what I said in a previous blog contradicting what Henry Ford said about his tanks winning the war. It was our people that won the war, every different race of them. When we think harder and work together, WE ARE STRONGER!
I’m tired of hearing people say “when I was younger we did this”, “what happened to handling a situation like this”. Shit changes people, and we need to evolve with it. If we don’t continue to change and think differently, we will never grow stronger as a Nation. We can’t live in the past. We need to learn from our past, learn from our forefathers and look to the future!
So here is what I think
- Are you afraid that someone may say something that makes you question how you have been thinking/acting all these years
- Are you afraid that someone other than your same sex, race or beliefs will get something equal to what you have?
- Are you afraid of the truth, because it hurts?
- Are you afraid to realize that as great as this Country is, we have, and do make mistakes.
Grow the fuck up. How bad is your life going to be because someone learns what affect the poor decisions of this Country had on different groups of people throughout its history.
Back to that poker game again. While we were playing, and prior to our conversation about gun control, I posed a question to the group. “Can we all agree there is some inaccuracies, inconsistencies or even some fraud in every election?” “Yes” the group agreed. See it is possible to have people who think differently agree on somethings. Then came the big question. “Do we all agree that there is never enough inconsistencies and all the other occurrences to overturn an election?” “No we don’t”. How can you say Joe Biden garnered more black votes than Barack Obama?” I didn’t even know Barack was running in the last election. But now that you asked, it is possible because so many black people were disenfranchised by Donald trump and feared his rhetoric, that they voted for Joe Biden. “What about the pipe burst in Georgia, when they took all the ballots out in suitcases, and all of a sudden Joe Biden was ahead in votes”. I had to have them remind me about the water pipe break issue, because I had forgotten about it. I forgot about it because it was found untrue in the court of law, like all the other cases brought before the courts about voter fraud. Wait maybe we should not trust the courts now either.
The few players trying to defend the lie of a stolen election, tried to deflect the conversation to the recent raid by the FBI & Justice Department on Mar Lago. “How can the FBI & CIA decide now to raid Trumps home?” Well maybe because they had asked for months for him to return secret & top-secret documents back to the Country and he did not comply. Do you understand the danger he put this Country in as well as its undercover citizens around the world. And for those of you who have not held a secret or top-secret clearance, then there isn’t much for you to say. My co-author Tony and I were eating pizza the other day and both said, if we were still in the military and we took Secret & TS documents home, we would have been brought out in handcuffs. Those who think that keeping secret & TS documents in your private home is the same as sending an email across a non-secure server like Hilary Clinton did, please keep your thumb in place. If they are the same and Hilary should be locked up, then Donald trump should be hung. Just like he wanted to hang others for far less things.
Two years later Donald Trump wants the United States to declare him the victory and overturn the election. The minute you overturn a fair election in this Country, all future elections will end in the same manner. We will have turned ourselves into the likes of Kenya, Kazakhstan, Myanmar, Pakistan, Russia and many others.
Back to the poker game. The most profound thing said that night was never said but sent in a text a day or so later. Yup sometimes our discussions linger through the night and into the following days. It was sent in response to another person’s comment in refence to Jan 6th. Here is what was said. “The 3 tenants of psychological manipulation are”.
- Us vs. Them mentality
- Anyone against the leader is a liar and corrupt
- Anything but 100% loyalty is punishable
If people in this country don’t see the similarities in what has occurred in this country, and what occurred in the early 1940s with Hitler, you don’t read enough, and you certainly don’t understand history. I was watching a film on PBS the other night about the United States’ relationship with the holocaust. There was a point in time when the US was teetering on the brink of falling in line with the beliefs and propaganda of Adolf Hitler & Nazi Germany. There was a young American gentleman named Charles Agustus Lindbergh who professed the same virtues about Jewish people and other nationalities as those of Hitler. He was an American Nationalist. Lucky for our Country, Congress and those that governed this Country shut this individual down quickly, and the rest of World War II is history. Congress and the republican party today should do the same. You can believe in the greatness of this Country and not be blind or prejudice to the balance of the world as a whole.
I hope history doesn’t repeat itself!