\n\n\nI don\u2019t think the question of what really actually truly happened in Ferguson - at any stage - is really even all that important, the whole thing was just a pretext anyway.
\n
- = - = -
Benghazi. I swear this loops back in in three paragraphs in a productive way, stick with me. The official Republican complaint about Benghazi - what even was it? Something about not sending backup, or a coverup? Whatever.
But fundamentally it\u2019s a pretext. I mean some people sincerely, unkshakeably care about the pretext. But the actual issue is about the Arab Spring, the actual issue is \u201cWho Lost The Maghreb?\u201d. With the implied answer \u201cthe Democrats, by doing that dumb Carter thing where you only support foreign allies who are nice and polite and democratic and don\u2019t repress and torture and massacre their citizens, and then when the ones you abandon fall and the people who replace them - the people who had been being repressed and tortured and massacred - come to power and start doing shit that you hate, that is completely incompatible with the things you most emphatically and sincerely want, go \u2018Oh shit, right, that\u2019s why we were supporting that guy in the first place\u2019\u201d.
But the awkward thing, the reason they run with this pretext instead of saying it explicitly (like they did with the original \u201cWho Lost China\u201d), is that going Carter in the Ummah didn\u2019t start with Obama, this started with Bush the Younger and the neoconservatives, and a lot of it that happened under Obama\u2019s watch was under the influence of holdovers from the Bush era - Robert Gates and all that. And in any case unlike Carter, Obama had a second term in which to reverse course himself, and now the military is back running Egypt and Mubarak was just released scot-free.
- = - = -
Ferguson, Mike Brown, all that\u2019s a pretext. And a lot of people sincerely, unkshakeably care about the pretext, but the actual issue is that even as the civil rights movement of the 1950s-70s has been institutionalized as a sacred part of our national history, the actual gains made - \u201clet\u2019s flip the national switch away from repressing black people, and towards helping them\u201d - have been allowed to gradually erode. Because white people found that completely incompatible with the things they most emphatically and sincerely wanted, and remembered why they had the switch on repress in the first place.
And the awkward thing, that makes this difficult to address head-on, is that it was \u201cFirst Black President\u201d Bill Clinton that blessed the erosion. The Democrats had, since LBJ, been the party of \u201clet\u2019s keep the switch in the helping position\u201d. And between LBJ and Clinton, 1968 to 1992, 8 whole terms, the Democrats only won one term as President. Carter. With the whole Vietnam, Watergate, Nixon tailwind at his back.
And Clinton got elected, and more significantly got re-elected! By taking the Democrats\u2019 hand off the switch. Federal funding for 100,000 more cops. Welfare reform. (Subtextually, federal funding for how many fewer black babies?) School uniforms, which was rinkydink but was the idea was \u201cyes, we are willing to walk back \u201860s-style freedoms in order to further discipline urban black kids - you know, the gangbangers, the crack babies, the superpredators.\u201d
Sister Souljah - I used to wonder what that was even about, I\u2019m no rap genius but I at least recognize big names and I\u2019ve never even heard of her in any other context. Does anyone cite Sister Souljah as a musical influence? But I\u2019ve come to realize that was the point - deliberately picking a fight with someone who didn\u2019t actually matter (and thus bore no cost) - just to make a point, a branding point.
\u201cThe Democratic Party: Once Again Willing To Tell Uppity Blacks To Stuff It\u201d
\u201cFirst Black President\u201d Bill Clinton took the Democrats\u2019 hand off the switch and at least let other hands pull it back to \u201crepress\u201d. And under actual first black President Barack Obama, of the Democratic Party, who owes two elections to being black, and at least one to black votes entirely, putting it back hasn\u2019t even been on the agenda.
And I can see how you\u2019d get upset.
-=-=-
\u201cWhat we really need is for everyone - black, white, whatever - to respect each other.\u201d
Okay, that\u2019s correct, and that\u2019s impossible, because here\u2019s the thing. When people say they want \u201crespect\u201d, what they mean is they want other people to acknowledge their own conception of the world, where they\u2019re the protagonist, and their story is the main plotline, and everyone else is, I guess, NPCs? Or at least, at least for those other people to not explicitly challenge that conception, to allow them to maintain that fiction to themselves.
Which doesn\u2019t necessarily set you at odds, a good share of NPCs are allies, or questgivers, or shopkeepers, or background characters, and most people prefer the paragon path, and in the normal course of things you get along fine.
But only as long as there\u2019s nothing important at stake that can only be resolved by conflict. If that NPC is the only source for a good drop, and you\u2019re sure they\u2019re not going to be critical to any of your future quests\u2026
\u201cHe was murdered for jaywalking!\u201d Even accepting that framing, here\u2019s the thing. Physically being in the street is important. The inciting incident of the Hamburg Massacre, back during Reconstruction, was white guys angry about black guys standing in the road blocking traffic.
Because two objects can\u2019t occupy the same space at the same time. The fundamental example of something that can only be resolved by conflict.
You know, if you look in the right parts of the web, where white people complain about black people in complete, properly spelled, passive-aggressive sentences, one of the most commonly recurring stories is black guys walking, or having a conversation, in the middle of the road, and they can see I\u2019m waiting, and they don\u2019t get out of the way, don\u2019t even make an effort to let me through.
(There\u2019s a tumblr post with half a million notes on it. Right here.\n\ni know i give white people a lot of shit but u guys are really nice. like when the light turns green and there\u2019s a white pedestrian that\u2019s almost across the street u guys always do that jog thing. i know it\u2019s kind of insignificant but i appreciate it white people. u and ur half jog thing.
\n)
The flip side of that story of course is \u201cwhat the fuck this is a public road and I\u2019m as much the public as you are so why the hell would you think it\u2019s my duty to stop using it how I want so you can use it how you want, Mr. King Shit of the World?\u201d
(\u201cMr. King Shit of the World\u201d is the hostile way of saying \u201cprotagonist\u201d.)
And you know how much you fucking hate it, how much of a personal affront you take it when NPC pathfinding is so fucked up that they block a door and you can\u2019t get through? (Alternately, when collision detection is set up so that random NPCs can force you out of the way, maybe knock you out of a dialogue tree or screw up a quest?)
Gives you the unshakeable sense that this world was not properly designed for you, for the purpose of furthering your plotline.
And if these issues came up in the last update, you\u2019d want a patch to revert them. You\u2019d go on the devs\u2019 forums and bitch forever, it\u2019s like the devs don\u2019t even care about the players, and you\u2019d threaten to never support anything they did again, take your money and give it to some other devs, and devs, WHERE\u2019S THE FUCKING PATCH.
And the patch, of course, is white supremacy. (It also buffs your class so you\u2019re not grinding for fucking ever just to spend your loot on repairs and potions, and reduces your random encounter rate in safe zones.)
\u201cBut this isn\u2019t a game, this is REAL LIFE!\u201d
If you ever end a sentence with \u201cREAL LIFE\u201d in all caps you are being an idiot, I guarantee it. Yeah, the fact that the stakes of this game are real, that\u2019s gonna make you more willing to let things slide? That\u2019s not how people work. Not enough of them to hold a coalition together.
- = - = -
The activists are worked up! There\u2019s a new civil rights movement coming! We! Will! Fight!
The veneration of the civil rights movement of the 1950s-60s, that makes people think that\u2019s the only and inevitable way this can play out. Let\u2019s set aside the way those gains eroded with time (same as the movement of the 1860s-70s, as Reconstruction gave way to Redemption). You know what I\u2019m reminded of? The civil rights movement of the 1910s-20s.
You didn\u2019t hear about that one? The founding of the NAACP, Garveyism, W.E.B. DuBois, black troops returning from European service in WWI, sharecroppers moving north to work the factories, pumped up to reclaim the promise of Reconstruction. Meanwhile, a countrywide surge in leftist radicalism, and new wave of immigrants asserting their claim on America. You don\u2019t hear about it, because it didn\u2019t win. The Palmer Raids, the First Red Scare, the Red Summer of 1919, the Tulsa Riot, the founding of the Second KKK.
Well, let them try, it won\u2019t matter because trends suggest the, aah, \u201cCoalition of the Ascendant\u201d will gain overwhelming dominance in the intermediate future, right? Yeah, white Americans noticed that back then, too. That\u2019s why they cut off immigration and started pushing eugenics.
Not convinced things\u2019ll turn out like that this time around, but they could. Learn your history, kids, it keeps you from looking the fool.
- = - = -
I grew up in the Huxtable \u201880s and the End of History \u201890s, I kind of expected the two classic nations of America to merge, black into white, just as the white ethnics had the generations before.
Who knows what we\u2019d call the amalgam, maybe still \u201cwhite\u201d just to play up the ridiculousness of it all, maybe some hyphenated neologism to bridge the gap, like we played up \u201cAnglo-Saxon\u201d to meld the English and German populations that originally formed the white American nation, or coined \u201cJudeo-Christian\u201d later on.
But I\u2019m less and less certain of that. You look at the people saying interesting things about race these days, they\u2019re pushing other possibilities, each with their three-letter acronyms. The left-racebloggers pushing \u201cPoC\u201d, \u201cPersons of Color\u201d, the idea that there\u2019ll be white on one side and on the other this black-hispanic-asian-amerindian coalitional nation. The right-racebloggers \u201cNAM\u201d, \u201cNon-Asian Minorities\u201d, suggesting a white/asian against black/brown split.
And then there\u2019s always the possibility that things\u2019ll go the classic American route, where there\u2019s black on one side and everybody else eventually joins \u201cwhite\u201d, earns a spot specifically defining themselves against \u201cblack\u201d. Given a choice between the two, it\u2019s an awfully appealing option.
- = - = -
Race is the fundamental tragedy of American history. A tragedy being where everyone\u2019s understandably, sympathetically human, even (especially) in their failings and shortcomings and trespasses, and the inevitable consequence is suffering.
Happy 10th birthday, This Post!
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