***UPDATE*** The driver has been identified as James Alex Fields, 20 years old from Ohio.
I’m saddened but not surprised at all. Somehow I knew it would come to this. Since this morning watching AM Joy, I have been following the coverage of events out of Charlottesville, VA.
I saw the tweets on my TL last night of privileged white men carrying little torches but harboring major hate —
This rally wasn’t to officially start until Saturday, yet they wanted to give us a taste by surrounding a church full of pastors holding a prayer service on Friday night.
So I’m watching AM Joy and she just started her reporting on the ‘rally’ in Charlottesville by interviewing Rev. Traci Blackmon. She starts to relive her account of Friday night when someone just blithely comes along and physically snatches her off the air. During a national broadcast. I should’ve known things were going to go downhill from there.
After all that has taken place today, this is the thing I wish to address:
Ms. Bloom is not alone in her sentiments.
You want to know what happened? Do you really want the truth or want someone to tell you what you want to hear?
What has ‘happened’ to this country is the result of the same disease it had since before the Civil War for starters. We can keep pussyfooting around on this matter — folk can keep putting their collective heads in the sand or keep ignoring the elephant in the room.
But it’s not going anywhere. In fact, the more it’s ignored — the more we try to re-name it and re-brand it — the more some of us try to say that everyone does it — the more we try to capitulate to it by appeasing it under some economic banner — the bigger, badder and worse it gets.
Sure, everyone NOW may come out with statements of condemnation — only to go back into their respective cubbyholes once we’ve moved on to the next story (which will be by Monday, guaranteed). Some of these statements come from individuals who have no credibility what so ever, and has backdoored and even frontdoored-embraced the attitudes and sentiments that has led to this day.
Meanwhile, another family's life has changed forever. Another family will be forever woke to the brash harshness of what the worse this world has to offer. Another family will never see things in their lives quite the same again.
And that family will understand what people of color, muslims and jews, women and the gay community has known all along —
That you have to acknowledge IT
Face up to IT
and then actually do something about IT.
I will conclude by stating this: we Americans should never allow hate speech to be normalized, re-named or re-branded. I’m with Republican Richard Painter, former ethics chief of the George W. Bush White House — for starters, President Donald J. Trump needs to fire everyone of the alt-right white supremacist wing of his White House staff and cabinet.
And as Keith Olbermann has been saying from day one — Trump needs to resign.
Or be impeached. At this point, I don’t care.
For as long he and Pence and the whole canard stays in office, the more destabilizing this country will become.
Lastly, if these bigots represent 30% of the American population, then the other 70% had better wake the hell up, stand up and reclaim this country by showing these folk the damn door.
***UPDATE*** #44 has spoken:
Amen Mr. President. Soothing words at a trying time.