avevale_intelligencer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
avevale_intelligencer) wrote2014-06-05 11:55 am
avevale_intelligencer) wrote2014-06-05 11:55 am
Politics
http://crooksandliars.com/2014/06/boss-caught-tape-black-workers-don-t-drink is an article about a factory supervisor in Memphis, Tennessee, who will not allow his African-American subordinates to use the drinking fountain or the microwave, and threatens them with hanging if they violate this ban.
This right here is how far we haven't come.
Nearly fifty years ago--nearly fifty fucking years--Dr Martin Luther King, Jr., spelt out what needed to happen. He got shot for his pains, became an icon and a martyr, and nearly fifty fucking years later this is still happening. And it's no good saying "oh it's just Memphis" because nowhere is just Memphis any more. We are a global community, and what happens in Memphis is happening everywhere and touches all of us.
Fifty years ago that factory supervisor was probably not even born.
This is why women are learning to hate and fear all men, because all men contribute to and benefit from rape culture and are therefore rapists. This is why Muslims are taught to hate and fear Christians. This is why transgender people live in fear, and no it is not a choice.
In nearly fifty fucking years, we have not progressed one fucking inch. Technologically, yes indeed, we have fabtastic techie toys and can speak to people halfway across the world or in orbit over it without even noticing the effort that's gone into making that connection. We can poison the water table for miles around so that some old guy can continue to use his eighty-year-old oil stove. We can fill the fields with crops whose genome belongs to five men in Zurich, and who have made sure that nobody will ever be able to grow any other sort, and we can douse those crops in carcinogenic pesticides in the certainty that it won't harm the crops at all. We have so much technology it's driving us all insane. But socially? We are back in the late fifties and heading backwards at a fast clip.
And the reason for that is that we are being driven back.
Not by aliens. Not by lizards from outer space. Not by the pitiful and inescapable limitations of our lizard-rat-monkey brains. Not by agents of a foreign power.
We are being driven back by the deliberate actions of some human beings who see social progress as evil and/or as a threat to their personal security and survival.
They are not conservative. They are not liberal. They are not political at all; they'll use any ideology. They are not Christian. They are not atheist. Religion is irrelevant to them, except as a tool. They are not anti-science or pro-science, not statist or libertarian, not pro-life or pro-choice, neither green nor purple. All they are, all they have ever been, is pro-themselves, and anti-the-rest-of-us.
They've always done it. Their goal has always been to advance progress where it was beneficial to them, and to stifle it everywhere else. They do it by monopolising the means of communication and abusing them to mould people's attitudes so that they act against their own and others' best interests, so that they teach their children, like that factory supervisor in Memphis, the attitudes that will nost effectively prevent social progress. But the forces they are holding back have increased exponentially in power and mass, and they have had to increase their own efforts to match it; and at last it is becoming possible to see the machinery straining. Whether it is now too late to break it, to free the force of all the marginalised people crying out to know why they are not yet seen as human...I don't know. I fear so.
This incident in Memphis, the recent murders of women, and a million other "isolated incidents" all over the world, are clear evidence of the nature of the problem. In nearly fifty years, we have not moved one inch towards a better world than Dr King saw around him in the sixties. Any progress we might have made has been, is being, or will be, rolled back. Not by an evil from outside, but by rich men who want to continue to get richer at other people's expense, and who know that an enlightened world will simply not allow that.
It's not just Memphis. It's here. It's in your back yard. It's all across Europe, where a significant portion of the population have been induced to forget that World War II ever happened, or why--and I'm ashamed to include Britain in that. And before anyone says "oh, people are just stupid" and starts congratulating themselves on being so far above the common herd, NO, PEOPLE ARE NOT FUCKING STUPID. People are bewildered, people are afraid, people are anxious, people are depressed and stressed-out and constantly exhausted, and people are being deliberately kept in that state the more easily to mislead and deceive them. So stop with the smug "everyone except me/us is an idiot" routine, before you even start. It doesn't play round here. To be frank, I'd be overjoyed if it didn't play anywhere.
This is why the Green Party fails to win votes. This is why people seriously ask why isn't there a Straight Pride march. This is why Trayvon Martin was shot. This is why TPP and TTIP are going to go through despite any opposition, and we will bow down to our new profit-driven corporate owners. This is why we have not moved one inch in nearly fifty years; because people with money and power do not want us to, and because if you have enough money and power you can, truly, stop the world, and even throw it into reverse.
This is why, barring a miracle, the human race is doomed.
Thank you for listening. Good night, and, as the man said, good luck.
This right here is how far we haven't come.
Nearly fifty years ago--nearly fifty fucking years--Dr Martin Luther King, Jr., spelt out what needed to happen. He got shot for his pains, became an icon and a martyr, and nearly fifty fucking years later this is still happening. And it's no good saying "oh it's just Memphis" because nowhere is just Memphis any more. We are a global community, and what happens in Memphis is happening everywhere and touches all of us.
Fifty years ago that factory supervisor was probably not even born.
This is why women are learning to hate and fear all men, because all men contribute to and benefit from rape culture and are therefore rapists. This is why Muslims are taught to hate and fear Christians. This is why transgender people live in fear, and no it is not a choice.
In nearly fifty fucking years, we have not progressed one fucking inch. Technologically, yes indeed, we have fabtastic techie toys and can speak to people halfway across the world or in orbit over it without even noticing the effort that's gone into making that connection. We can poison the water table for miles around so that some old guy can continue to use his eighty-year-old oil stove. We can fill the fields with crops whose genome belongs to five men in Zurich, and who have made sure that nobody will ever be able to grow any other sort, and we can douse those crops in carcinogenic pesticides in the certainty that it won't harm the crops at all. We have so much technology it's driving us all insane. But socially? We are back in the late fifties and heading backwards at a fast clip.
And the reason for that is that we are being driven back.
Not by aliens. Not by lizards from outer space. Not by the pitiful and inescapable limitations of our lizard-rat-monkey brains. Not by agents of a foreign power.
We are being driven back by the deliberate actions of some human beings who see social progress as evil and/or as a threat to their personal security and survival.
They are not conservative. They are not liberal. They are not political at all; they'll use any ideology. They are not Christian. They are not atheist. Religion is irrelevant to them, except as a tool. They are not anti-science or pro-science, not statist or libertarian, not pro-life or pro-choice, neither green nor purple. All they are, all they have ever been, is pro-themselves, and anti-the-rest-of-us.
They've always done it. Their goal has always been to advance progress where it was beneficial to them, and to stifle it everywhere else. They do it by monopolising the means of communication and abusing them to mould people's attitudes so that they act against their own and others' best interests, so that they teach their children, like that factory supervisor in Memphis, the attitudes that will nost effectively prevent social progress. But the forces they are holding back have increased exponentially in power and mass, and they have had to increase their own efforts to match it; and at last it is becoming possible to see the machinery straining. Whether it is now too late to break it, to free the force of all the marginalised people crying out to know why they are not yet seen as human...I don't know. I fear so.
This incident in Memphis, the recent murders of women, and a million other "isolated incidents" all over the world, are clear evidence of the nature of the problem. In nearly fifty years, we have not moved one inch towards a better world than Dr King saw around him in the sixties. Any progress we might have made has been, is being, or will be, rolled back. Not by an evil from outside, but by rich men who want to continue to get richer at other people's expense, and who know that an enlightened world will simply not allow that.
It's not just Memphis. It's here. It's in your back yard. It's all across Europe, where a significant portion of the population have been induced to forget that World War II ever happened, or why--and I'm ashamed to include Britain in that. And before anyone says "oh, people are just stupid" and starts congratulating themselves on being so far above the common herd, NO, PEOPLE ARE NOT FUCKING STUPID. People are bewildered, people are afraid, people are anxious, people are depressed and stressed-out and constantly exhausted, and people are being deliberately kept in that state the more easily to mislead and deceive them. So stop with the smug "everyone except me/us is an idiot" routine, before you even start. It doesn't play round here. To be frank, I'd be overjoyed if it didn't play anywhere.
This is why the Green Party fails to win votes. This is why people seriously ask why isn't there a Straight Pride march. This is why Trayvon Martin was shot. This is why TPP and TTIP are going to go through despite any opposition, and we will bow down to our new profit-driven corporate owners. This is why we have not moved one inch in nearly fifty years; because people with money and power do not want us to, and because if you have enough money and power you can, truly, stop the world, and even throw it into reverse.
This is why, barring a miracle, the human race is doomed.
Thank you for listening. Good night, and, as the man said, good luck.
no subject
And yet...
Fifty years ago we might not have the recorded proof of this guy's evil.
Fifty years ago, even if we did have recorded proof, a much higher fraction of the population would have not just shrugged, but actively agreed with him.
Sure, there are misogynists and homophobes and religious fanatics of all stripes who hate anyone not of their stripe (especially that classic, anti-Semites) and trans-bashers and on and on. There's more pushback than ever against them, and more people learning to be actively good than ever.
I can see how you might despair. I urge you not to; not only is there good in the world, there's more of it than ever. Just remember Silverlock, at the lowest point in Hell:
"Is there anyone here," he suddenly shouted, "such a fool as to believe that because there is good, there is no evil?"
"There is evil," their triumphant voices called back.
"Then is anyone here," Golias took them up, "so reckless as to claim that because there is evil, there is no good?"
They snagged their breaths on that one. There was a silence which seemed to suck up the air. Then they all spoke, as if under an irresistible compulsion.
"There is good."
*****
There *is* good. Sometimes it's hard to see, especially because Evil and Stupid and Hateful makes for more profitable news services. And yet, one of the best things to do with those reports is to laugh at them, knowing they are NOT going to win.
Here, have a distraction that you might not yet have seen. Realio, trulio, actual/factual Grammar Nazis
no subject
Did I miss something implied, like sarcasm or quotation marks, in/around "This is why women are learning to hate and fear all men, because all men contribute to and benefit from rape culture and are therefore rapists"?
no subject
I wouldn't try arguing the point if I were you. Or if I were me, come to that.
no subject