Here’s A Dose Of Free Speech, You Frauds

Well, I lasted a couple of weeks.

I recently made a conscious decision to avoid writing about the political meltdown happening in the USA right now, led by a second-rate real estate hustler who magically finds himself in the White House – for the second time. I even blogged about it recently, my desire to steer clear of all this depressing shit for a while. But alas, here I am again.  I, like so many other Americans, have a really hard time staying silent while dark and authoritarian forces threaten the country and world. Or, maybe I’m just like a moth, always drawn to the light that eventually turns me to dust. Life is a mystery….

The recent murder of a 30-something white male by a 20-something white male has sparked outrage both real and fake in the United States — and the fake kind seems to be holding a sizeable edge right now.

The shooting itself was horrific, but sadly unsurprising. Gun murders happen all the time in America. There’s probably one happening right now. The U.S. ranks sixth in the world when it comes to gun homicides per capita, according to one analysis. Other research puts the U.S. either lower or higher, but it always ranks pretty near the top. That’s a pretty goddamn sad statistic for one of the wealthiest countries on the planet.

On the same day as the aforementioned murder, there was a school shooting in Colorado that barely registered in the national consciousness. This might have been a good time to revisit America’s gun violence epidemic, but no.

Our angry nation and its angry president were too busy trying to assign blame and put together false narratives to bother with the underlying problem – that there are way too many shootings in the USA, and the vast majority are committed by humans of the young and male variety.

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A young guy getting shot by another young guy is an hourly occurrence in the United States – every hour of every day of every year for decades. That seems to be a major problem we need to get our arms around.

Instead, the president and his fellow Republican toadies started cooking up a lot of outrage about the dangers of “leftist ideology” – particularly as it applies to the Democratic opposition party. You could just picture them behind closed doors, figuring out schemes to use this tragedy as an excuse to ramp up the authoritarianism that lies at the heart of their mission.

These fine folks started threatening anyone and anything that doesn’t fall in line with the oppressive America they envision. There have been calls to monitor, arrest and/or deport “radical left” individuals and groups that hold what they deem “extremist” political views (they’re the real extremists, but never mind).

One of the president’s henchmen threatened to pull licenses involving TV networks and broadcast companies that air content the current regime disagrees with. They also threatened to deep-six business deals involving these companies.

They’ve launched legal offensives against media outlets they don’t like, and restricted press credentials for reporters who cover the Pentagon (our military wing) unless those reporters agree to have their articles “approved for public release.”

One chickenshit media empire – The Walt Disney Company – gave the order to take a late-night talk show off the air because the show’s host had the audacity to criticize the president’s reaction following the recent murder. Disney finally put the show back on the air after massive public backlash.

As the host remarked upon his return, hundreds of Americans were threatened with losing jobs because our thin-skinned baby of a president “can’t take a joke.” Which is absolutely, 100 percent true.

You have to keep reminding yourself that last year, as a presidential candidate, the current president blathered on and on and on about how he was going to protect free speech and battle the scourge of anti-free speech “wokeness,” whatever the fuck that means. Well, he lied about that, just as he lies about everything.

My guess is that “wokeness” means any ideology that does not hold white “Christian” males in the highest esteem.

Funny thing, though. A white “Christian” male is the very person who allegedly committed the aforementioned murder.

Another white “Christian” male also allegedly committed the murders of a Democratic lawmaker and her husband in Minnesota over the summer – a tragedy that the current president didn’t make much of a fuss about, because Democrats are on the other team, and he doesn’t give a shit about the other team.

Here are photos of those two alleged killers:

While we’re on the subject, here’s a photo of the person who attempted to assassinate the current president last year:

And while we’re on the subject….Here are photos of the folks who carried out the most famous political assassinations of the 20^th century, involving the murders of President William McKinley, President John F. Kennedy, U.S. Senator Huey Long, U.S. Senator Robert Kennedy, and civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.:

And while we’re on the subject….Here are photos of the killers behind the five worst school/mass shootings this century. These include the Las Vegas music festival shooting (2017, 60 dead), the Orlando nightclub shooting (2016, 49 dead), the Virginia Tech shooting (2007, 32 dead), the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting (2012, 26 dead), and the Sutherland Springs Church shooting (2017, 26 dead):

Do you notice a pattern from the series of photos shown above? Does anything jump out at you?

Does it have to do with ideology?

No, not that. These guys came from many different ideological backgrounds.

Politics?

No, not that.

Race?

No.

Educational background?

No.

No, the one thing we can say for sure that they all have in common is that all are men. And all but one were raised as “Christians.” The other was raised as “Muslim.” Ten of them can safely be called “white.” So of the 13 murderers/attempted murderers listed above, 10 technically qualify as “white Christian males.”

But is the current regime going after “white Christian males?”

No, it is not.

Is anyone else?

No, they are not.

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Meanwhile, the current regime has ramped up its efforts to rewrite U.S. history by demanding that museums, national parks and other organizations take down images and content that puts America in a bad light.

As the Washington Post reported, the administration has “ordered the removal of signs and exhibits related to slavery at multiple national parks, according to four people familiar with the matter, including a historic photograph of a formerly enslaved man showing scars on his back.”

This has been a goal of theirs from the outset. They aim to censor and even destroy archives depicting our country’s very real history of slavery, genocide, racism, sexism, oppression and violence.

Just about all countries have such histories, by the way. But only the most oppressive and corrupt regimes try to whitewash them out of our schools, museums, libraries, etc.

It’s all straight out of the Hitler/Stalin/Mao/Putin/Kim Jong-un playbook. Punish your enemies, censor free speech, change the historical narrative, etc.

But here’s the thing: History is what it is. You can try to whitewash it, change it, put a coat of paint on it. But the historical record will always prevail in the end, long after the current regime is gone and forgotten and dead and buried.

So here’s a quick primer about two of the darker episodes of American history that the current regime and its tribe of fake patriots would rather you forget.

Genocide

Here is what the Holocaust Museum in Houston has to say about what happened to Native Americans after European colonists arrived:

“When European settlers arrived in the Americas, historians estimate there were over 10 million Native Americans living there. By 1900, their estimated population was under 300,000. Native Americans were subjected to many different forms of violence, all with the intention of destroying the community. In the late 1800s, blankets from smallpox patients were distributed to Native Americans in order to spread disease. There were several wars, and violence was encouraged; for example, European settlers were paid for each Penobscot person they killed. In the 19th century, 4,000 Cherokee people died on the Trail of Tears, a forced march from the southern U.S. to Oklahoma. In the 20th century, civil rights violations were common, and discrimination continues to this day.”

It so happens that I recently read a book from the 1970s, “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West,” by Dee Brown. I remember this book from my younger years, because it got a lot of publicity, and I always wanted to read it. It does an excellent job of chronicling the horrors that Native Americans faced when European settlers took over the continent — the lies, broken promises and brutality. I also worked with the daughter of the author at a newspaper in the 1990s, and we still stay in touch, but that’s another story. If you ever get a chance, read this book.

Slavery

Here’s what the Gilder Lehrman Institute has to say about what happened to African slaves at the hands of European colonists:

“Over the period of the Atlantic Slave Trade, from approximately 1526 to 1867, some 12.5 million captured men, women, and children were put on ships in Africa, and 10.7 million arrived in the Americas. The Atlantic Slave Trade was likely the most costly in human life of all long-distance global migrations.”

(Quick plug for another book I’m reading now — the Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Underground Railroad” by Colson Whitehead — an excellent tale about slaves seeking freedom during the antebellum South of the 1800s. The very kind of book our the current White House occupant would not read, if he could read).

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The United States has much to be proud of and thankful for. It has been a beacon of hope for millions of people from oppressed lands around the world, up to and including right now. It has created great wealth, and inspired innovation and creativity. It has passed laws protecting the most vulnerable. Its culture has changed the world.

The fact that it has also oppressed people based on their race, ethnicity, gender, income, education and political beliefs is both sad and pretty common the world over.

It’s a damn shame that a bunch of small-minded, racist frauds are trying to to take that history and bastardize it for their own selfish benefit.

They’ll fail, of course. These kinds of people always fail, throughout history.

In the meantime, let me just say this to our president and all his enablers, in the name of free speech:

Go fuck yourselves.

Note: The image at the top of the blog shows the current president with his good buddy Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex trafficker who died in jail under mysterious circumstances, and whose story the current regime wants to sweep under the rug because it might implicate people like the current president. The image also shows the famous “Scourged Back” photo of a slave who had been whipped – the very photo that the current regime wants removed.