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Wednesday, August 23, 2017

What's going on in America

I want to be honest and state that it wasn't easy for me to write this post. To start I will always state that the idea of "white supremacy" is always worth opposing as it's considered very abhorrent to the nation that we want. However, I consider how much of a dying idea it has been and isn't really worth what happened in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Today my biggest concern isn't any resurgent white supremacist movement as it could be the groups whether we call them the "alt-left" or "antifa" who have pledged to oppose them. We're seeing extreme efforts to not trigger bad feelings in different groups for example ESPN pulled an announcer from a football game because of his name - an Asian man's name is similar to the name of a Confederate general in the Civil War. Even worse a mascot name of a California university resembled the name of a horse owned by this same Confederate general - OMG TRIGGERED.

Political correctness in this great nation is starting to become problematic and it's causing us to make some causations that aren't there. I may understand the protest of Confederate monumnets thanks to the popular idea that the Confederate States of America generally supports slavery. Changing names and holding against a man who in reality has no bone in the continuing observance of the Civil War is starting to go too far.

Another aspect of this is identity politics. Years ago Martin Luther King Jr made a nice speech about recognizing a person not for the color of his skin, but the content of his character. Unfortunately I'm seeing on social media posts about punching Nazis and even worse the person you punch may in fact not be a Nazi. Even worse still the people who pledge to fight racism instead think it's OK to castigate an entire race of people for crimes of centuries past.

With this in mind now I somewhat understand what set up Charlottesville. Unfortunately the white supremacists who attempted to rally in that Virginia town got their points made. And the "alt-left" and "antifa" movements are continuing their fight, what I have to figure out what is the end goal in using violent or disruptive tactics in a fight against racism.

Often when we see "antifa" in action - primarily through social media, FOX News, or even other alternative media - they're often wearing masks. They're fighting the good fight however they don't want to be seen. Another tactic they counter demonstrate, however, it's not because they disagree with an opposing point of view. On the contrary they find ways to demonize the other side.

To be honest I'm struggling to come up with a conclusion. So let me keep it simple demonizing an opposing viewpoint in a land with free speech is a recipe for disaster. Unfortunately if this has been something that has been going on for years Charlottesville has become the results.

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