Every culture is composed of humans, and all humans... Well, you know the rest. Some people are objectively horrible, but I do my best to not toss the babies out with the bathwater.
I am speaking of the acolytes of St. Kyle of Kenosha: these are the deplorables of which Hillary spoke. These are the ones who defend indefensible white ‘Merica so fiercely.
They fully DESERVE to be tossed with the bath water.
Edit: This definitely ended up being a tl;dr. But I felt compelled.
I hear what you are pointing at. The violence, theft, and erasure carried out in the name of white American power are real. Genocide, slavery, segregation, imperial appetite, and the quiet cruelties that followed them did not happen by accident. They were designed, justified, and defended. Anger toward that history makes sense. Refusal to sanitize it feels honest.
Where I hesitate is when the word culture collapses into a single moral verdict. White America has never been a single will moving in one direction. Alongside conquest lived abolition. Alongside lynch law lived labor movements, mutual aid, underground railroads, strikes, artists, and teachers who broke their own chains with bare hands and broken teeth. The same soil that produced cruelty also produced resistance to that cruelty, often from people who paid dearly for refusing to comply.
When we say an entire culture deserves demonization, we erase the children born into it with no vote cast, no whip held, no policy signed. We erase the poor, the dissidents, the ones who turned against inherited power and worked to dismantle it from the inside. We erase the long tradition of self-critique that is also part of white American culture, the insistence on conscience, the belief that a society can indict itself and change course.
There is a difference between naming a historical crime and assigning collective moral essence. One sharpens responsibility. The other dulls it by flattening complexity. Systems deserve condemnation. Myths deserve to be broken. Power deserves to be stripped of its disguises. People deserve to be seen as more than avatars of history.
If the goal is repair rather than endless war, then precision matters. Call out the structures. Teach the history without mercy. Demand accountability in the present. Leave room for the truth that cultures contain currents moving against themselves, and that those currents are often the very tools used to undo harm.
I stand with the anger that wants honesty. I step away from the kind that burns everything until nothing living remains to build with.
Someone please apologize to the lady I was arguing with in this thread on my behalf. I was a bit of an ass, she blocked me and I cannot recall or see her name. I didn't mean to minimalize her opinions, and I admire her fervor, although I stand on the substance of what I said.
Your sermons are the kind that make me want to sit in church.
This is sharp, unsparing, and deeply faithful in the way that actually costs something. The way you dismantle fear without baptizing it is rare — and needed.
This is the inevitable outcome when all things are reduced to transactions. When everything becomes a zero-sum game.; if someone gains a right someone else must lose one. If someone pulls themselves out of poverty, someone else must take their place. It's used to divide and conquer -- it always has. St. Kyle is only a symptom of a much larger problem. White Anxiety is an outgrowth of the terror that grips White America when it faces the near-inevitability that someday soon (if it hasn't already happened) they will be reduced form a majority to a mere plurality of America. And because they've made everything transactional, they are (perhaps rightly) terrified that once they'r enough longer a majority, that the bill will come due on the centuries of abuses they've committed against their less melanin challenged neighbors. This is the fear we saw in Charlottesville, in Minneapolis, in Los Angeles. And then on a more official level and more recent timeline) in Chicago, LA, Boston, Charlotte... keep the brown people at bay, remove them to otherwhere before they outnumber us and we have to answer for our sins.
Simple truth. 🙏 It’s so frustrating to watch history repeat itself and I’m reminded of a saying “if you always do what you’ve always done, you will always get what you’ve always gotten”. On behalf of humanity I don’t want ANY of us to get what we’ve always gotten! Here’s another, “hate cannot overcome hate, only love can do that”. It’s ok to be angry at injustice, to hate hurtful wrong behaviors, but my heart says hating the haters themselves cures nothing. And, God knows, my anger often borders on the wrong kind of hate. If I’m not mistaken, Jesus was the embodiment of Love which he came to reveal as well as to remind us what it really looks like. He didn’t just teach that God was loving but that he IS Love. And I ask myself, this time around, what can we do differently? What can I do differently?
"The Snark is strong with this one" . . .( and very well skilled in administering a much needed inoculation without too "much" sting. 😆😎). Well said, VMB. Well said indeed!
Very well done. I love that you can criticize a culture without demonizing it wholesale. Well presented.
It clearly DESERVES wholesale demonizing, though.
White fragility is ridiculous.
Exactly WHAT is so great about middle American culture, that it requires preservation?
Nothing.
Every culture is composed of humans, and all humans... Well, you know the rest. Some people are objectively horrible, but I do my best to not toss the babies out with the bathwater.
You’re talking about healthy balance. 🙏 God help us to go there.
They do, if we can calm ourselves enough to hear them.
I am speaking of the acolytes of St. Kyle of Kenosha: these are the deplorables of which Hillary spoke. These are the ones who defend indefensible white ‘Merica so fiercely.
They fully DESERVE to be tossed with the bath water.
Edit: This definitely ended up being a tl;dr. But I felt compelled.
I hear what you are pointing at. The violence, theft, and erasure carried out in the name of white American power are real. Genocide, slavery, segregation, imperial appetite, and the quiet cruelties that followed them did not happen by accident. They were designed, justified, and defended. Anger toward that history makes sense. Refusal to sanitize it feels honest.
Where I hesitate is when the word culture collapses into a single moral verdict. White America has never been a single will moving in one direction. Alongside conquest lived abolition. Alongside lynch law lived labor movements, mutual aid, underground railroads, strikes, artists, and teachers who broke their own chains with bare hands and broken teeth. The same soil that produced cruelty also produced resistance to that cruelty, often from people who paid dearly for refusing to comply.
When we say an entire culture deserves demonization, we erase the children born into it with no vote cast, no whip held, no policy signed. We erase the poor, the dissidents, the ones who turned against inherited power and worked to dismantle it from the inside. We erase the long tradition of self-critique that is also part of white American culture, the insistence on conscience, the belief that a society can indict itself and change course.
There is a difference between naming a historical crime and assigning collective moral essence. One sharpens responsibility. The other dulls it by flattening complexity. Systems deserve condemnation. Myths deserve to be broken. Power deserves to be stripped of its disguises. People deserve to be seen as more than avatars of history.
If the goal is repair rather than endless war, then precision matters. Call out the structures. Teach the history without mercy. Demand accountability in the present. Leave room for the truth that cultures contain currents moving against themselves, and that those currents are often the very tools used to undo harm.
I stand with the anger that wants honesty. I step away from the kind that burns everything until nothing living remains to build with.
Really obtuse of you to not understand the portion of the culture I am speaking about. But have it your way, Mr. Kumbaya.
I’m too tired to fight with those who persist in wanting to—in essence—insist that there “are good people on both sides”.
There aren’t.
You are not tired of fighting. You are tired of distinguishing.
When everything becomes one enemy, thinking feels like betrayal and nuance feels like surrender.
I am not offering comfort, or balance. I am saying that moral clarity without precision turns into the same blunt force it claims to oppose.
If that is unacceptable, we are done here.
Someone please apologize to the lady I was arguing with in this thread on my behalf. I was a bit of an ass, she blocked me and I cannot recall or see her name. I didn't mean to minimalize her opinions, and I admire her fervor, although I stand on the substance of what I said.
Your sermons are the kind that make me want to sit in church.
This is sharp, unsparing, and deeply faithful in the way that actually costs something. The way you dismantle fear without baptizing it is rare — and needed.
This is the inevitable outcome when all things are reduced to transactions. When everything becomes a zero-sum game.; if someone gains a right someone else must lose one. If someone pulls themselves out of poverty, someone else must take their place. It's used to divide and conquer -- it always has. St. Kyle is only a symptom of a much larger problem. White Anxiety is an outgrowth of the terror that grips White America when it faces the near-inevitability that someday soon (if it hasn't already happened) they will be reduced form a majority to a mere plurality of America. And because they've made everything transactional, they are (perhaps rightly) terrified that once they'r enough longer a majority, that the bill will come due on the centuries of abuses they've committed against their less melanin challenged neighbors. This is the fear we saw in Charlottesville, in Minneapolis, in Los Angeles. And then on a more official level and more recent timeline) in Chicago, LA, Boston, Charlotte... keep the brown people at bay, remove them to otherwhere before they outnumber us and we have to answer for our sins.
This moment lends itself to satire and you used it well.
Simple truth. 🙏 It’s so frustrating to watch history repeat itself and I’m reminded of a saying “if you always do what you’ve always done, you will always get what you’ve always gotten”. On behalf of humanity I don’t want ANY of us to get what we’ve always gotten! Here’s another, “hate cannot overcome hate, only love can do that”. It’s ok to be angry at injustice, to hate hurtful wrong behaviors, but my heart says hating the haters themselves cures nothing. And, God knows, my anger often borders on the wrong kind of hate. If I’m not mistaken, Jesus was the embodiment of Love which he came to reveal as well as to remind us what it really looks like. He didn’t just teach that God was loving but that he IS Love. And I ask myself, this time around, what can we do differently? What can I do differently?
Very well said. What we're seeing has nothing to do with Christianity and everything to do with fear.
"The Snark is strong with this one" . . .( and very well skilled in administering a much needed inoculation without too "much" sting. 😆😎). Well said, VMB. Well said indeed!