I am honestly so ****ing sick of this double standard racism.
Systemic racism is certainly real. As a 6th+ generation white male Southerner who grew up in the South in the 1950s-1960s I have seen it firsthand for my entire life. I remember "Colored" rest rooms and water fountains. I remember when my school was integrated (over the summer between 7th and 8th grades). I am a descendant of slave-owners and Indian-killers.
As a child I accepted the world that I lived in and did not question it, but when I grew up I looked around and recognized that the world was far more complex than I had realized - and that there were profoundly sinister elements and movements all around. Many people of my generation became cynical and just threw up their hands and thought "the world is just too ****ed up to even try to fix it" so that they could go on with their lives with the unpleasantness just walled off.
Refusing to give up my inherent optimism and my belief that positive change is possible, I am dismayed at what has happened to our country over the past 4 decades but I refuse to accept that it will continue the downward spiral forever. And it
IS very much political. The parties in the US were not always so polarized, even in the face of aberrations like Joseph McCarthy who had his heyday for a few years but was brought down by a Republican president's disgust with his behavior. But unfortunately
THAT party was seized by anti-social radicals in the late-1970s, and it has been a straight-line progression to the plutocracy and Luddite Renaissance that we are experiencing today.
My siblings are all still hard-core Republicans, and, living in the South, I can see that there is still a substantial population that refuses to accept that the Confederacy lost the Civil War. Which has mutated into another disconnect from reality in their delusion that Trump won the 2020 election. And to reflexively oppose anything that does not adhere to the Radical Right's party line.
Frankly, I have given up on those people. They will eventually die off but in the meantime their "Flight 93" mindset can and possibly will create a horrific "scorched earth" scenario at a time when our country is facing truly epic existential physical threats. I fear that there will be a spike in terrorist killings in response to the vaccination mandate for Federal employees. Or any other event that happens to trigger their fragile sensibilities. At least the ridiculous "Q" has evaporated.
Until the "hearts and minds" of American society grows up and faces the reality of the world, our country will continue to wallow in fear and despair. Listen to our second president:
“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
― John Adams