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The Protests Have Made Me Woke
Even if it disturbs my fellow Ricochetti, this must be said. I am Woke. To start with, I still cannot get over the exhilaration of discovering the courage to express my disapproval of police killing unarmed suspects in custody. I never believed I had it in me to put myself out there like that. I really feel good about myself.
When the protests too quickly turned to looting and arson, I was able to understand that replaceable stuff is nothing compared to a guy’s life. When the destruction became extensive, when I learned that lots of people were injured and some killed, when there were dozens of reports and videos of people being dragged out of vehicles and beaten or stomped into a coma on the sidewalk, I was consoled to learn that there were also people injured by tear gas and rubber bullets so I could again refocus on the police.
If it turns out that a lot of replaceable stuff in or near poorer neighborhoods is not replaced or rebuilt and many lives have been made worse, those people can still go to my social media pages and know I was with them all the way. How can you put a price on that?
But in keeping the peripheral riot damage in perspective, I also learned the secret of oneness with Black Lives Matter itself. It turns out that is not just about decrying this or that police incident and seeing it as part of large pattern that might not be obvious to statisticians. It is also the ability to make any larger urban social pathology invisible and irrelevant. Just as beatdowns or even the killing of shopkeepers by looters do not detract from the truth of the death of George Floyd, 7,000 murders of African-Americans by African-Americans can never merit our attention or even curiosity so long as police are responsible for the deaths of as many as a dozen unarmed African-Americans a year.
Lastly, I have learned to love the 50-year American policy traditions and culture regarding the urban poor. There are those who say that these programs not only failed but have left millions much worse off despite massive expenditures. Some may even claim see some hideous pathology in the riots caused in large part by these same policies and their related ideologies. But now I see that those programs actually reflect the same good intentions I now share and exude and that that is what matters after all. With all due modesty, I must say that I am really proud of me.
Published in General
Talk is cheap. I want to see you out on 16th St. helping to paint Black Lives Matter on the asphalt.
Please post selfie here.
OldB,
RIGHT ON BROTHER! I mean who gives a damn about results. Total failure no problem. It’s the good intentions that really count. I’m so proud of us both.
Regards,
Jim
You need to film yourself properly prostrating before the masses, rending your garments, and donning sack-cloth and ashes.
I neglected to include the appropriate link for purposes of directions.
You guys would love this speech that just popped up on my YouTube feed. It’s Ben Carson. I can’t tell from the description on the page when he gave this great speech because although it was just posted on May 28, 2020, it couldn’t have been recently because he’s talking to a crowd. (I’ve just realized that this is how we’ll know years from now which videos on YouTube were from the Great Pandemic of 2020. No audience means they were shot during the virus months. :-) ) At any rate, the first half alone is worth your listening. I wish every kid in the country would listen to the first half. (The part about debt at the end is not something I’d want kids to hear because they will get as discouraged by that as they were encouraged by the first half. :-) I want to get the kids going and doing exciting and ambitious things. Turn off the computer screen. Pick up a book. :-) But that’s because Ben Carson’s mother and I have a lot in common. :-) )
Concerning comment 5: @drbastiat needs to hear this speech too. Carson says the same thing our own Dr. Bastiat has said, that he doesn’t have enough faith to believe that evolution created this amazing world we live in. :-) :-) Believing in evolution is a much greater leap than believing in God. :-)
If you think being Woke is about action rather than words and intentions, then you are misinformed. It is about daring to imagine the impossible, ignoring the obvious and then congratulating oneself for doing so. Any idiot can do stuff.
You should at least change your Rico avatar to either a black box or a rainbow flag (it is supposedly “pride” month).
It appears that I have aways to go to fully comprehend wokeness. And that’s a good thing.
How about this?
“It is about daring to imagine the impossible, ignoring the obvious and then congratulating oneself for doing so. Any idiot can do stuff.”
I so glad Bathos that you imparted this wisdom to us. I understand now that I need desperately to correct some things in my life, and will take immediate corrective action.
White teddy bear, blonde hair, yellow shirt – this is a covert white power sign. I’m starting to doubt your sincerity to the cause.
Completely innocuous yet intense whiteness is a statement, nay, a hope, a goal.
Appears we have all again been outwoked by the Duchess of Malibu.
Then I think you should clarify exactly to what you have been woken.
<sound of weeping>
Isn’t her full title “Aurum Fodiens: The Duchess of Malibu” ??
OldB,
Why words are actions! You remember in Genesis when Gd spoke and the world was created. Well, a postmodern woke person doesn’t believe in Gd, especially not that icky Gd of the yucky Bible. You see a postmodern woke person thinks that they are Gd! If a postmodern woke person says those just so right words, the world is immediately transformed.
Anyone who tells them any different is a fascist.
Regards,
Jim
Heavy.
Rainbow month has now been replaced with Riot month.
Uh, oh. Gonna be some sad.
I hit the “Like” button on this post and felt as though I’d actually walked arm in arm with Rev. Martin Luther King through the water cannons & barking dogs, yeah me!
Doesn’t count unless you were down on one or both knees in solidarity when you hit “like” like I did when I wrote it.
Now that’s just cynical, we both know it was arthritis.
Is it ironic that this post, an unabashed celebration of Wokeness, is appearing on the 76th anniversary of D-Day when FDR unleashed Eisenhower’s all-white male goon squads to shatter the fragile Franco-German peace accord of 1940. This was followed by a destructive struggle to determine which colonialist white racist regimes would rule and oppress the rest of the world. #PaleAndAshamed
That brings up a question that’s been bothering me: Is it acceptable to be “Proud” of being anything other than Black or sexually amorphous? Is there such a thing as White Pride, or Straight Pride, or…?
Brilliant.
The word “pride” can only be used as a rejection of white language crimes against victim groups.
At some point the virtue signaling is no longer the tool.
I’m starting to have nightmares about hooded masked terrorists beheading or shooting the kneeling woke.