The more and more we see certain segments of Anglo America convulse, the more and more we may hear Blancmange’s Blind Vision as its anthem.
We all do know that anxiety-throttled whites and less than conscientious law enforcement officials understand the supremacy they conferred upon themselves is in its end phase, right? Now that planet receives instantaneous videos from clashes instead of easily disputed eyewitness statements, more of mainstream America is being jolted into awareness of its complicity in repression against other Americans.
Doesn’t that sort of knock for a loop our nationally promulgated belief in our own self-righteousness? Why, yes it does. Can’t have that tarnishing our silver-lining, can we?
Commonplace as these incidents were in indifferent precincts many Americans professing themselves decent never knew, though in reality probably ignored or wished remaining ignorant of, technology has broadened vision. The handheld device facilitates the 21st century version of scales popping off eyes.
More Americans now get to witness how segments of our marginalized society are habitually regarded. And it’s inescapable. Even reactionary screamers must reference it before claiming these hoaxes or conspiracies enacted by whatever terrors lurk under their beds or nest inside their closets at bedtime.
A good portion, no, an unjust portion of these sufferers of unnerved, insecure Anglo predominance have been stunted under lifelong, generational weights of false charges and false testimony. They then have truly paid arbitrarily harsh prices.
It must be quite disappointing to high numbers of polite Americans who’d lived so long outside this loop to discover that these practices, procedures, judgments are as SOP as fireworks on July Fourth. These the sort of sins visited on our citizens that were they committed overseas would raise our righteous dander. We’d have our troops marauding “over there” in order to bring, well, whatever it is we insist be delivered to foreign addresses by our rampaging personnel.
As shown by inexhaustible amounts of video, anxious Anglos crazed by their own fears rather than circumstances truly demanding lethal force replies create menace inside the echo chambers of their minds; their own imaginations. Someone whose complexion just skews wrong instantly becomes a threat. That’s right. In keen observers’ eyes, the most innocuous appearing, acting, pedestrian gets recognized/slotted/assessed then finds him or herself open to summary insult or brandished weapons.
In some parts of America the cliché “just going about your own business” may induce tensions in others. Of course in enough Anglos minds, any non-white’s presence and comportment should activate possible suspicion. Or summary insult while brandishing a weapon.
In these reactive minds there is no innocence, just reflexive distrust.
As for the police, the amount of video surfacing testifying to Officer Visigoth’s ingrained excesses must finally lead to the ends of old impunity and immunity. Undisciplined badge wearers, like gun nut Anglo citizens, are crazed in maintaining their unquenchable superiority over anyone not white and nearly every woman. True Americans need to be glad this is finally dying an overdue death.
These feelings have always seethed throughout America. That’s how good Barack Obama was. Not only did he manage navigating around the shoals of race, but he also conjured a good portion of the electorate already disposed against his complexion to see him as a full human being.
Much of white America did not belittle Obama as “a nigger in a suit.” In America one can claim that as progress.
The election of Donald Trump allowed those who’d pried open their eyes in 2008 and 2012 to close them again. Perhaps they wished to atone for eight years of what the rest of us saw as uncommonly good sense.
In 2016, the short-fingered vulgarian campaigned on resentment. He reminded that electoral segment who they were, who they had been before Obama. He reminded them of what they represented and needed resuming. Besides finding natural allies in Hillary Clinton haters, he deftly stoked “us versus them” sentiments unheard since Richard Nixon. But Der Trump lured with a lyre that summoned much deeper inner demons.
Nixon at his worst sought to drive wedges between classes for political gain. The real estate fraud looked to rattle America’s always fragile racial tectonic plates for his own grifting benefit.
Nixon was many things, several might even have been considered admirable. Not as outrageous statement to make now with the vile pig currently soiling the Oval Office. Transgressed as he did, vindictive as he was, Nixon’s sins occupied the political sphere.
No one should doubt that if the price right Der Trump would easily sell out the United States for personal profit. Who’s to say he already hasn’t?
The Queens mook astutely recognized a sizable portion of Americans remained genuinely dismayed by Obama’s success. The grifter-in-chief courted the saps assiduously.
Smart, modest, clearly capable as Obama was, Der Trump’s base never overcame that someone black inhabited all these inestimable qualities. The former president even headed a family having more in common with the Stones of The Donna Reed Show than the Evans from Good Times. Perhaps fearful Trump voters saw in our 44th president the vanguard of a non-Anglo wave whose ambitions couldn’t be any longer denied or delayed.
Not only were “those people” going to finally sit comfortably at the table, but also at its head. Potentially being lorded over by “them” must’ve caused even more sleepless nights for Anglos knowing their torpor increased the dust they breathed from being left behind.
While we should welcome hearing more diverse voices, plenty in Anglo America, especially those mired in its backwaters and hidebound regions find comfort in unchanging drone. “Same old same old” means they mustn’t ramp up their games; that they needn’t worry much, if at all, about being bumped off any perches.
Theirs isn’t much in the way of an aspirational society.
Superiority doesn’t always confer strength. Knowing the layers believed beneath the dominant class suitably suppressed can consequently sap ambition. Rather than maintain undisputed generational edges, supporters heeding Der Trump’s grievance dirge became lazy. Somehow the wealthy and exploitive powerbrokers above them had convinced less dynamic America indolence was their main virtue.