I would like to thank the very kind and generous folks who donated so far. There is much generosity in the world. I will be sending out my "thank you" notes at the end of the month. As I have said before, I like the ritual of doing those all in one or two days. It makes me smile.
We are just 30 dollars away from the goal for the December annual fundraiser. The monies, as you know, will go towards the video podcast next year and following through on some of the great opportunities that are being finalized for my online and other work.
Christmas holiday shopping is done. If you have any funds remaining--and have taken care of your other obligations, please throw some love in the donation bucket so that I/we can continue to grow the site and get our video podcast up and running next year.
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Right-wing humanzees are very entertaining. They fling political feces and expose themselves in public both for their own pleasure as well as that of their fellows who are flopping about in the same Right-wing trough urinal with them.
Because conservatism and racism are now one and fully the same thing in the post civil rights era (and especially the Age of Obama), the most radical and extreme of conservatives are also the most stridently white supremacist.
They are also pathological in that they continue with this behavior without reflecting or thinking about it. It is a habit and norm for them. Moreover, and I have discovered this in their responses to my own work, contemporary conservatism replicates and performs white supremacy even while denying that they are 1) racists and 2) simultaneously claiming that white people are the "real" "victims" of racism in the Age of Obama.
Tamir Rice was killed by the Cleveland police for the "crime" of being a black child playing in a park with a toy gun. To deny that basic fact is to be complicit with a monstrous evil, support an act of barbarism, and be in bed with the obscenity that is how America's police, as a matter of policy, violate the human rights of people of color and the poor.
The website the Free Republic--as a barometer for the Right-wing hate media, more generally--is defaming the memory of Tamir Rice, excuse-making for his cop killers, and celebrating the death of a child.
For some years, I was inclined to ignore the political scatology and coprophagia that occurred in the comment sections of the online Right-wing media. Now, I have finally realized that the opinions expressed there, in the Age of Donald Trump, and one where the Republican Party is the United States' largest white identity organization, are neither outliers or just the loudest voices among an already obnoxious "silent majority". No, the ilk of the Free Republic and like sites are the beating heart of the Republican Party.
The people who populate those spaces are not just harmless wannabe digital demagogues and online fiends. The conservatives who haunt the Right-wing sewer-comment sections of websites such as the Free Republic, Breitbart, Fox News, and elsewhere are police, fire fighters, teachers, soldiers, nurses, doctors, bus drivers, bank loan officers, human resources employees, daycare workers, landlords, real estate agents, professors, attorneys, and from all other walks of American life.
These white supremacists have the power to impact the life chances of people of color and those others they identify as somehow "less than" or as not "real Americans". And the most scary part of this dynamic is that if you confronted these bigots and human debris in person most of them would say they are not "racists", are in fact "colorblind", and may even be proud of how they have black and brown friends, lovers, spouses, and maybe even children.
As I did in an earlier post about white supremacists and the new Star Wars film, what follows are some comments (selected out of a total of approximately 200) about the killing of Tamir Rice (most were written in response to my recent essay at Salon) from the Right-wing, de facto, white supremacist website known as the Free Republic.
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1. My child would never have been dumb enough to pull a toy gun - or any gun - on cops with real guns.
2. Racism won’t end until we stop looking at people by race. Such as when they lecture us about the evils of white America.
3. A boy who looks like a man, not that silly photo that has been posted, and who points a realistic looking gun at strangers and pretends to shoot, deserves exactly what he got.
4. My children would never think of roughing up storekeepers, brandishing weapons, charging cops, rioting, committing mayhem, or any of the other things these idiots do. So I for one will never look at a Trayvon and see, frankly, anyone I know.
5. “Until White America looks at Tamir Rice and sees their own children, there will be no racial justice in the U.S.” Much of “White America” raises their children so they in no way resemble Tamir Rice. We pay law enforcement to keep Tamir Rice at arm’s length.
6. Until White America looks at Tamir Rice and sees their own children...I think that when America looks at Tamir Rice and sees their own children, we will have the economic activity and life expectancy of Bangladesh, or some other impoverished hell-hole.
7. Comply - Don't Die
When you have a whole (mostly) race who have no respect for authority of any type they are going to have issues when they come into contact with people in authority.
8. Thank you, and mine wouldn’t either. Maybe someone should tell black America to teach their children to behave in a civilized manner and not break the law.
9. I think most white do think blacks are worthy of empathy. I don’t believe that most blacks feel whites are worthy of empathy.
10. No reason most whites would see Tamir Rice in their own children. Around here teenagers do stupid teenager crap but generally aren’t dangerous or malicious. They aren’t holding up the party store or mugging our elderly neighbors. They certainly aren’t challenging the sheriff’s deputy assigned to our little town.
11. I agree and thanks for being honest, lucky for me the darker skinned folks in my family act like hard working Americans and shun ghetto rats, and so do I, there is no reason why I need to associate with individuals that are stupid enough to not stay away from the hood mentality, there is nothing great about it, it destroys individuals.
12. Whites don’t need cops to kill their children to understand, blacks kill white children enough as it is.
13. Tamir Rice was 12. He was also 5'7’’ 175#’s and walking around a playground in a high drug and crime area brandishing a realistic pellet gun. He was in the act of committing Agrievated Menacing by pointing a pistol in peoples faces. He then reached and puled his pistol when the police arrived. The evidence was incontrovertible. It was on video and he pulled his weapon. It is a tragedy, but his crack whore mother who lost custody of Tamir years ago will certainly gin up everything she can to fleece the citizens of Cleveland for as much money as she can get.
14. It's not race, it's culture.
Associating a certain culture with violence based on the history, attitudes and values inherent in that culture (including as expressed by members of that culture) is entirely rational.
Associating a person of a particular race with a certain culture based on high correlation of the two is rational, especially when said person is displaying the outward customs and traditions of that culture (clothing, etc.).
Therefore, this is not about racism. This is not assuming a black person is violent or dangerous because he/she is black.
This is culture. This is assuming the person is dangerous because he/she bears all the hallmarks of being a member of a culture in which criminals and criminal behavior is glorified, in which violence and thuggery are not only acceptable but lauded, in which defiance and hatred against persons of authority outside the culture is praised and promoted, in which ideals like self-responsibility and legal accountability are derided and exiled, and, most of all, in which life is simply not valued.
So you can cite as many "studies" that "prove" that "all white people" associate black people with monkeys or whatever you want. The truth is: if you talk the talk, rational people are going to assume you walk the walk.
If you look like a thug, talk like a thug, dress like a thug, and act like a thug, don't go crying home to the ACLU when the cops treat you like a thug.
When your culture values and praises thugs, fashions its customs and behavior after thugs, lifts thugs up as their heroes and idols, is governed and headed by thugs, and reviles things like law and order, virtue and honor... don't complain when everyone else thinks your culture is a bunch of thugs.
And to those who think their skin color somehow insulates them and their offspring from the above: culture is contagious, especially when that culture is glorified and lauded in media and entertainment.
Culture transcends race, and spreads across boundaries that race could never conquer. Just ask any white power skinhead with his pants sagging off his ass and teardrop tattoos on his cheek.
15. Probably saved numerous black lives by taking this stupid gang banger off the planet.
Pray America wakes
16. Until Black America quits raising little thugs
No change.
17. My father taught us to respect firearms. Despite the fact that I have six siblings, we never had an accident of any kind. Good parents teach their children how to behave in a civil society. Good children don’t wander around pointing pellet guns at adults in an attempt to terrorize them.
18. If this child had been a blond haired blue eyed little girl, with everything else being the same, no way would these people be trying to twist themselves into knots portraying this as anything but a complete and total outrage for all of society.
How much reason would a cop have to fear being shot by blonde, blue eyed little girl? How much reason would a cop have to fear being shot by a short black man? It's not racism, it's self preservation.
19. To many in the black community, personal responsibility is to them like holy water and crosses are to a vampire.
20. Black Americans, The most racist and entitled people on the planet. Cut the dole, Kill the thugs and most of this will go away.
Then start on the queers.
Roll me back to the 50's.
21. Nonsense. Tamir Rice was a nasty little thug practicing on strangers in the park. The 911 operator did not relay the fact that his gun was likely fake to the officers. Should she have taken the word of a 911 caller who might not know a real .45 from a toilet seat? And, risked the officers lives. Don’t be stupid. If she had done that and two officers got shot she would have been crucified.
He got what he deserved.
22. Past experience dictates future expectations. Hoplophobia has nothing to do with this. What it is about is a society that has been subjected to thuggery cimmitted by feral urban blacks for decades. Face it, if you saw a black behaving the way “little” Tamir was acting and he even motioned at pulling what remotly looked like a real gun, or a knife, or whatever, you would have plugged him, too. Right or wrong, that’s just the way it is. Simple fact is that if blacks don’t want people treating them like they are all criminals they should clean up their culture and stop pointing fingers at whitey.
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