Saturday, August 1, 2020

I STARTED THERE AND ENDED UP SOMEWHERE


I've  been thinking about the protests  since  George Floyd  was murdered. The protests, the reactions to them, and time. I was fourteen, my middle sister was four when JFK was assassinated. My little sister wasn't even born yet. Frankly the urban riots of the civil rights and anti war era were almost off the radar in rural and almost small city Oregon. The most we knew about Watts was from my uncle, an LA cop. And he was driving to Oregon on vacation his family the day before the ghetto blew up.

By the time the Viet Nam war sort of ended one sister was finish high school and the other was heading for junior high. In spite of the watching of the news, the two papers we took, and the magazines neither one was very political and both were far more religious than I will ever be.

Jump forward the fifty or so years. We all look at the protests in a different way. For me, it's we have been down this road before. In a way the protests are trying to change beliefs and actions from the top down. It didn't work then and it doesn't work now.
Barack Obama was elected and suddenly the US was a post racial society. Just ask the talking heads. Many of whom were terribly shocked when the election of the current occupant was like getting hit in the face with a bucket of ice water.

Damn this entry is taking over. The progressives hopped up and down with glee when AOC was elected from a traditionally democratic precinct. And that changed what in the bigger scheme of things. Not much. I got a ton of e mails this spring from progressive dems in Oregon trying to drum up opposition to senator Merkley. A fairly liberal Oregon Democrat. He wasn't "progressive" enough.

Yo! A senator represents the whole state, or should. And here in thinly populated Oregon east of the Cascades? That song doesn't play very well. Although there is a fairly large Hispanic population and several Native American reservations this is the part of the country coveted by some of the really far right militia groups who would like to set up a whites only enclave.

This could go on for pages or I can pause for a bit. How I react to the protests is colored by the ones I've seen before. It's as if we remodeled part of house, looked at the whole thing and said the job was done. But didn't  touch the foundations. The internet makes it far too easy to only communicate with those who agree with us. Back in the day there was no internet but a lot of good old fashioned shoe leather, knocking on doors, and talking to people.

All I can do is write. I don't even comment on FB very much anymore unless I can add to the discussion and half the time what I say gets twisted into something I never meant in the first place. A reply may not be acknowledged or it starts and endless thread. You've probably been there.

All I can suggest is that the progressives stop talking to each other all the time and get out and listen to other folks. Not everyone who voted for the current occupant is a blithering idiot. Many of them are watching their small towns dry up and blow away. Too many jobs pay too little and in some parts of the country it costs almost as much to keep a job as the job pays.

There's a lot bouncing around in the old brain box and this entry is miles from what I was thinking about when I started. Hopefully some of this makes sense.

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