Getting it in early. I wrote this on Facebook, but I don’t want to hit post. So those of you who come here to read can enjoy it. It’s me, unfiltered.
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When I was a senior in high school, an African-American guy who was dating one of our students came to our homecoming pep rally. I went to an all-white high school, other than me and one Indian student from the actual country. I had to sneak him to my car and speed him away as several pick-up trucks full of angry white young men with sticks and guns chased us. They were coming for him, their confederate flag waving, hate in their eyes, pasty faces red with hatred.
When I came back home that night, one group of them chased me for two blocks. They shot the side of a building next to me with a hunting rifle. I don’t know if the shooter was an awful shot or if he just wanted to scare me. I didn’t go back to ask.
So yeah, what happened in Virginia isn’t new. Except now people die even more often to this sort of thing. It’s far more dangerous than weird foreign invaders, the fear of actually having healthcare, or the fact that women can get abortions or that trans people can use the restroom or whatever it is that the current administration thinks is our problem. Is it North Korea and their military that is built mostly from Megablox because they can’t afford Lego? I ask because I really can’t tell what the people in charge think, or if the people in charge think.
We are in the era where we don’t know, so we just let the President Tweet about things and bob our heads and buy shit on Amazon because we have prime shipping and chug iced Starbucks while Rome smolders in ashes around us.
I thought we were going to make it great again.
Oh, right, that was just another one of those things he liked to say. He’s good at that. Where I grew up, we called that your mouth writing a check your ass couldn’t cash. Of course he’s never been where I grew up. Poor people who work hard live there.
Sorry, but you don’t get to sit on the sideline. Not anymore. It was all the people on the sidelines, all the backseat drivers, that got us to where we are right now.
Get in the game.