THE GIFT OF FEAR AFTER CHARLOTTESVILLE

That fake history tweet Trump issued after Barcelona (about bullets and pig blood) is hardly the only bizarro crap the TrumpleThinSkin has been up to this week.

Trump appears to have had his personal lawyer take a pot shot at Black Lives Matter when the backlash started getting heavy after his third set of white racism born Charlottesville comments.  And, I was actually worried about BLM when I heard this. But then I read the story below: 

Trump's personal lawyer forwarded an e-mail to several news outlets on Tuesday, August 15th 2017 stating Black Lives Matter has been infiltrated by terrorists. 

"...The email’s author, Jerome Almon, runs several websites alleging government conspiracies and arguing that the F.B.I. has been infiltrated by Islamic terrorists. He once unsuccessfully sued the State Department for $900 million over claims of discrimination.

Mr. Almon’s email said that Black Lives Matter, a group that formed to protest the use of force by police against African-Americans, is being directed by terrorists. Mr. Almon blamed the group for deadly violence against police last year in Texas and Louisiana.

The email’s comparison of secessionists to the nation’s Founding Fathers echoes an early Confederate rallying cry, said Judith Giesberg, a Villanova University historian and editor of The Journal of the Civil War Era. Washington’s face appeared on Confederate money, she said, and secessionists were eager to place their rebellion in the context of the American Revolution.

“The first states to secede drew a straight line back to the Revolution,” she said in a telephone interview. “They said they were the inheritors of this revolutionary tradition that traces back to Washington.”

~NY TIMES

Read More: 
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/16/us/politics/trump-lawyer-email-race-charlottesville.html


A friend of a friend on social media said in response to the headline (and maybe not the story), 

"We'll be in gas chambers inside 4 years." 

Remember this story originally came out on August 15th, before anybody knew there would be any white backlash at all to his last set of Charlottesville comments, much less the collapse of at least four White House Master-Of-The-Universe Councils of Rich Folk Trump set up to run the country like a business.



I was already afraid prior to reading the body of article, prior to realizing his Black Lives Matter infiltration-lie was 10x more half-baked than most of his other fibs.

But my first thought about "we'll all be in gas chambers inside 4 years," despite already being afraid and not knowing the content of the article was, 

"That's ridiculous!" 

But I immediately recoiled from my own internal response. I was talking to myself.

"Wait. Not so fast."

I grew up on the east coast for the most part. The grammar school I went to was between 50% and predominantly Jewish. 

The pale kids were all white to me, very tribal, and sometimes very accurate in their reenactments of their parents racism. I was little though. Memories are faded. But I overheard "Jewish neighborhood" about my school's location so I'm pretty sure the schools I went to were predominantly Jewish.  

I tell you all this in order to explain that a lot of Jewish history has been washed over me during my formative years. And I've been wondering the same thing about the Jews in Hitler's Germany since I was 9 or 10 years old.

Why Didn't They Run?

I was told the answer several times without believing it. The Jewish people in Germany just didn't believe enough in mans inhumanity to man until it was too late.  

I thought I had learned to believe this answer by the time I hit my late teens. But maybe not. I don't think I really believe this answer until this week. 

We aren't even thinking about running. 

Are we?

There are so many black and brown people on social media that seem to think its okay to ignore what's going on in Washington D.C. So many seem to think that white supremacy becoming more overt has nothing to do with the political climate and THAT as nothing to do with Charlottesville, which some are saying is the largest white supremacy rally in decades. 

Some black and brown folks, especially the young, do not seem to understand that things truly could have -- still can-- if the OVERT white nationalists are not run out of the White House

Emboldened white supremacists can and will organize to kill us more often. The police have been doing it a little at a time already,  jumped up to do it even more often after 2008 in their anger at having a black president (my opinion. I don't think it's an accident white hate groups jumped when he became president).

And Trump has poured gas on that white resentment --with his own birther bullcrap and Alt-Right's help. And now he's in the White Nationalist White Supremacy House. 

This is not a "I don't really follow politics" moment in black history. Our lives literally depend on what's happening now and what can be constructed by these white nationalists/ white supremacists next. 

Some of us who are older might be having a bit of a PTSD reaction. And, I'm not saying I literally believe the gas chambers comment. Furthermore, I don't think the black woman that wrote this comment was doing more than expressing her fear as sarcasm. But I am trying to investigate my own thinking.

I've found that I am afraid. 

I admitted that to myself the other night. I'm not just angry. Sad. I cried. I didn't want to go to work and be anywhere my Breitbart reading supervisor. So I took a mental health day, called in sick.

What I'm doing for myself, other than avoiding her more than usual, is trying to be honest with myself. And part of that is trying to not intellectualize my feelings and my instincts away.  

I am trying very hard to not reject the gift of fear.

And I don't think anybody else should either. 

The Jews were not afraid enough, in the 1930s, until it was too late. That's what I'm reading between the lines.

However, beyond that broad generalization, I can't really figure out what they did "wrong" or if I would have done anything differently than they did.

Everything I've ever read about Hitler confuses me because the man was obviously an imbecile. White people have told me over the decades that the man was an evil genius. I don't see any logic in anything he said (probably because I've never existed as part of a dominant culture or dominant group.) 

And, I'm not using the words like "stupid" to describe Hitler as a put down or as a mild epithet. I'm saying that what I've read about that man suggests that he was an articulate but an obviously stupid person.

Obviously stupid.

Trump is an inarticulate, obviously stupid person who has hired The OG white supremacists that have renamed themselves "alt-Right" so white people who hate can join a white supremacy movement while still feeling too good for the neo-Nazis or the KKK.

"Alt-Right" is nothing more than re-branding. And that re-branding has been successful. I'm not going to help them hide by refusing to acknowledge their new name and by refusing it to put in my list with

KKK
neo-Nazi
Skinheads

Alt-Right

And I'm adding Traditionalist Worker Party to the deadly, overt, white supremacist list too. Like alt-Right (and under the umbrella of alt-Right) this group also gets the white supremacy minded to join them when they feel too good to be the KKK and nem.

Kuhn came when Alt-Right called, not neo-Nazis

Alt-Right got themselves into the White House and took over the country. The Supreme Court is likely skewed toward white supremacy for decades to come. Even if Trump should get tired and resign, the alt-Righters have Pence waiting in the wings, a man who is likely a mentally stable, more articulate version of Trump.

Now I'm asking myself if the right question is,

Why don't we run? 

A picture of Tina Turner popped up in my feed like it was magic as I was writing this, got me thinking she might be smarter than the rest of us put together --except that she got out early by going to Switzerland, where I'm pretty sure black folks aren't safe without tons and tons of money. But I DO know why we don't run, anyhow. 

We don't run because this sh*t is ours.

I know that because our blood soaked into the land and holds the ground together to this day. The capital in capitalism that is the foundation of this country came from our free labor. And we've paid in more than free labor and abuse too. Most black and brown folk have dozens if not hundreds of cousins we've never met, that were never born, because so very many of our ancestors were killed by the white supremacists that stole this nation from Native Americans via genocide.  

We ain't running. This is our country, too. Hell, it's our country more.

But Yvette Felarca is quite right. Alt-right is organizing to kill us. As soon as Alt-Right demonstrators found DeAndre Harris relatively alone during their "Unite The Right" rally in Charlottesville, they tried to kill him. And Harris' beating took on video, right next door to a police station.

Right next door. 

Kinda puts the country's biggest police union endorsing Trump in the same ole white supremacist light. Don't it?

I am afraid.

And when I don't feel afraid, don't "feel" my fear, I remind myself  of it. I bring it back to myself that I am afraid by repeating the words "I am afraid" in my head a few times. I accept the gift of fear.  I will work to be brave (which is to move forward despite fear). I will try to write something that might inspire others to act and support one another. 

But I am afraid. 

And you should be afraid too.

...like the black woman who told a group of us that she had racial epithets shouted at her while walking her dog near her home a few days ago. 

I'm trying to keep in prayer another black woman who had racial epithets shouted at her on the subway too because she is afraid.  And, I am also being honest enough to thank God that the white supremacy I endure in a controlled environment since I really don't use public transportation anymore.

I am afraid

I accept the gift of fear.

I accept the gift of agency too

In social science, agency is the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices. By contrast, structure is those factors of influence (such as social class, religion, gender, ethnicity, ability, customs, etc.) that determine or limit an agent and his or her decisions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agency_(sociology) 

People of color have to unite and vote these people out of power. We only need about 1/3 of whites to follow and help form a people of color led political party to crush the white supremacists.

We can do this. We can crush the Cheeto Satan and his Satanettes at the local, state, and federal level. We've already seen black voting groups do it a couple of times when prosecutors didn't prosecute cops that murder.

We can do this

We can accept the gift of fear and ultimately win.  


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