3 Chords & the Truth: Requiem aeternam Americae

Requiem aeternam dona ets, Domine,
et lux perpetua luceat ets.
Te decet hymnus, Deus, in Sion,
et tibi reddetur votum in Jerusalem.
Exaudi orationem meam,
ad te omnis caro veniet.
Requiem aeternam dona ets, Domine,
et lux perpetua luceat ets.

Kyrie eleison. 
Christe eleison.
Kyrie eleison.

Dies irae, dies illa
Solvet saeclum in favilla,
Teste David cum Sibylla.

Quantus tremor est futurus
Quando judex est venturus
Cuncta stricte discussurus.

Tuba mirum spargens sonum
Per sepulcra regionum
Coget omnes ante thronum.

MORS slopebit et natora
Cum resurget creatura
Judicanti responsura.

Liber scriptus proferetur
In quo totum continetur,
Unde mundus judicetur.

Judex ergo cum sedebit
Quidquid latet apparebit,
Nil inultum remanebit.

Quid sum miser tunc dicturus,
Quem patronum togaturus,
Cum vix justus sit securus?

Rex tremendae majestatis,
Qui salvandos salvas gratis,
Salve me, fons pietatis.
Recordare, Jesu pie,
Quod sum causa tuae viae,
Ne me perdas ilia die.

Quaerens me sedisti lassus,
Redemisti crucem passus,
Tamus labor non sit cassus.

Juste judex ultionis
Donum fac remissionis
Ante diem rationis.

lngemisco tamquam reus,
Culpa rubet vultus meus,
Supplicanti parce, Deus.

Qui Mariam absolvisti
Et latronem exaudisti,
Mihi quoque spem dedisti.

Preces meae non sum dignae,
Sed tu bonus fac benigne,
Ne perenni cremet igne.

Inter oves locurn praesta,
Et ab haedis me sequestra,
Statuens in parle dextra.

Confutatis maledictis
Flammis acribus addictis,
Voca me cum benedictis.

Oro supplex et acclinis,
Cor contritum quasi cinis,
Gere curam mei finis.

Lacrimosa dies ilia
Qua resurget ex favilla
Judicandus homo reus.
Huic ergo parce, Deus,
Pie Jesu Domine,
Dona els requiem.

President Trump

The smoke of Satan

If this isn't the bottom for Election 2016, I don't want to see what the bottom is. I mean that with every fiber of my body and soul.

Worse, The Bottom comes to us courtesy, I am sorry to say, of a Catholic priest -- an unethical, seemingly insane and wicked Catholic priest, but an alleged man of God nonetheless -- and his deeply ironically named, off-the-rails fanatical organization, Priests for Life. Of course, Priests for Life is completely in the tank for Donald Trump.

I know I am burying the lede. I have to work up to the lede, though I imagine you can guess what it is from the obscured Facebook screenshot. Trust me, you don't want this lede upfront.

NO, you don't. Steel yourself as I dawdle.

What we have, courtesy of Fr. Frank Pavone, isn't just sacrilege -- it's diabolical. Diabolism in the name of Trump.

God help us, that orange abomination is diabolical, literally, in his ability to inspire all those he touches to engage in naked, unapologetic wickedness. Like this.

Just today, I thought I had seen the bottom of this horrible election being dredged with the news story that Trump had a 12-year-old with cerebral palsy and his mother thrown out of a Florida rally -- with the rabble assaulting them all the while. 

But no.

The bottom now has been dredged in the name of Jesus Christ and of being "pro-life." Upon the altar. By a Catholic priest.
 

FROM TODAY'S article in The Washington Post:

Ahead of Tuesday’s presidential election, the Rev. Frank Pavone took an aborted fetus, laid it upon an altar Sunday and posted a live video on Facebook. Pavone, a Catholic priest who heads New York-based Priests for Life, said the fetus was entrusted to him by a pathologist for burial.

During an already heated and divisive campaign season, Pavone’s video has raised questions for some about what is appropriate antiabortion and political activism in the church. As of Monday afternoon, the video, which is 44 minutes long, had 236,000 views. In it, he holds up a poster of graphics of abortion procedures.

In Pavone’s Facebook appeal, he wrote, “we have to decide if we will allow this child killing to continue in America or not. Hillary Clinton and the Democratic platform says yes, let the child-killing continue (and you pay for it); Donald Trump and the Republican platform says no, the child should be protected.” 

A call placed to the spokesman for the Diocese of Amarillo in Texas, which is Pavone’s diocese, was not immediately returned Monday. The receptionist, however, said her phone has been ringing off the hook.

In a blog post for Patheos, Scott Eric Alt argued that what Pavone did was sacrilege, a violation of Catholic Church canon law, which states that the altar is “reserved for divine worship alone, to the exclusion of any secular usage.”

“Being pro-life is about respecting the dignity of the human person,” Alt wrote. “It is the antithesis of respect for the dignity of the human person to use a dead child as a political prop to lobby for your presidential candidate the day before an election.”

THERE.  There's your lede. In supposed defense of the right to life and the dignity of all humans, born and unborn, a Catholic priest who heads a "pro-life" organization desecrates the body of an aborted child upon the altar of God in cheap, vulgar political theater. This sacrilege -- this defiling of both a dead body and the sacred altar -- came in support of Trump, a presidential candidate who unconvincingly proclaims himself "pro-life" while advocating violence, racism, torture and state-sponsored murder of innocents abroad.

And let us not forget that Pavone's favored "pro-life" candidate is on tape bragging about numerous instances of sexual assault.

C.S. Lewis would have been hard-pressed to imagine such perfidy in service of Our Father Below for a sequel to The Screwtape Letters.

This . . . this is the smoke of Satan in the sanctuary, fetid incense burned in worship of Deep Cheeto. A dead, apparently saline-burned aborted child, splayed upon the altar as if at an Aztec temple. An offering to Quetzalcoatl?

No, Donald Trump.

Mein Gott im Himmel! Somehow, it seems appropriate to express horror in the original German when speaking of Trump and his "souled-out" sycophants.

I HAVEN'T felt this soul-sick -- physically ill, even -- since the worst days of the Catholic child-abuse scandals in 2002 and 2003. Then, I damned near left the church. Such has been the devilish vengeance this campaign from hell has unleashed upon the church -- upon what's left of the "pro-life" movement.

This has the feeling of the devil demanding his due from a movement that sold its soul to Republican politics long ago.

Feeling? One cannot tangibly prove such things, but it seems to be more like a lead-pipe cinch to me.

In this church where we have been asked to cross too many bridges too damned far, a line has to be drawn. A spiritual line has to be drawn, and rotten limbs have to be cut away for the sake of the Body of Christ. Frank Pavone doesn't need to merely have his faculties suspended; he needs to have them removed completely. He needs not to be able to present himself publicly as a Catholic priest.

Now.
 
And then let the state's criminal investigation begin.

Alles, was alt ist neu wieder

A young Donald Trump supporter in Sanford, Fla., (motto: "Arbeit Macht Frei") figures it's the Zionists keeping America down. And only Trump can Make America Jew-free Great Again.

Oh, there's also this.

"Follow Alex Jones at infowars.com. The Young Turks is not the best network to follow -- the truth is with David Duke and Alex Jones."

David Duke, of neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan infamy, is back in politics, by the way. He's running for U.S. Senate in Louisiana.

Yeah, I think we've seen this act before. Started badly, ended worse -- 60 million dead, all told.

And der Führer, Benito Mussolini and Hideki Tojo didn't even have a nuclear arsenal at their disposal.

Really, no matter how much a candidate disavows the support of Nazis and Kluxers -- and Trump grudgingly has . . . eventually . . . more or less -- is it really that difficult to grasp that there's something horribly wrong with any candidate the spiritual heirs to Hitler can heil?

An American eulogy

Read this letter, dated Jan. 20, 1993, from George H.W. Bush to Bill Clinton.

You Donald Trump supporters, especially. Read it, goddamn you!

Read this wonderful letter and behold what we have lost as Americans. Read it as the hourglass empties on that too-brief era when there was such a people as "Americans."

Read it. Read it and think on what we seek to throw away -- are throwing away -- for the sake of a horndog Cheeto with terrible hair and worse character.

Remember it and our squandered patrimony when the bullets start to fly.

CROOKED HILLARY'S GONNA TAKE YOUR GUNS . . . THEN HAUL YOU OFF TO A FEDERAL PRISON CAMP!

Just look at all the WikiLeaks emails! Why do you think she was hiding the Goldman Sachs speeches?

Listen, you slobs! If you vote for Killary Clinton, you're going to have black helicopters and federal gestapo troops coming to take away your guns and your rights!

You think this woman respects the Constitution? You think she wouldn't lower the federal boom on God-fearing Americans and throw 'em all in politically correct prison camps?

JUST LOOK AT THE EMAILS!!!!

If you don't want Hillary's storm troopers marching down Main Street -- if you don't want the U.S. Army turned against American citizens, you must vote for Donald Trump and the Christian, freedom-loving, limited-government, Mexican-rapist hatin', states-rights respecting Republicans. Just look at this exchange with a freedom-loving, right-thinking Republican during one of those Goldman Sachs speeches:

MR. (Lloyd) BLANKFEIN (CEO, President, 
Goldman Sachs): I have to say we Republicans -- 
we obviously reach out to both sets. To a person 
-- a person regarded as someone who may be 
expected to be more partisan and has spent so much 
time is is very, very well liked by the Republicans.

PARTICIPANT: First off I would like to
thank you for all the years. Of course, I'm on the
other side.

MS. CLINTON: The dark side?

PARTICIPANT: It's the dark side right
now, but otherwise the sun does come through. You
have to be an optimist. But you have to put a
great, great effort, and I commend you for it. But
I would like two things. No. 1, you just talked
about Sandy. And since you were First Lady and a
senator -- forget the Secretary. But what is wrong
with our politicians -- I served in the Corps of
Engineers. Whether it's in Iraq, Iran -- anyplace
outside the US you can build bridges overnight.
You could have gone into Sandy. You could have
gone into New Orleans.

The actual problem is the law from the
1800s. No military, which is the only force, not
the National Guard. They don't have crap. It's
the military. Like down in New Orleans. If we
would just change the dumb law -- because it hasn't
been changed because politicians have no say once
the president declares it martial law. Put the
military up. They would have cleaned up that
coast. You wouldn't have the frigging mess you
have today. But we can do it for everybody else in
the world, but we don't do it because the state
judges don't have no authority. The mayor don't
have no authority, because you're going to put a
military officer in charge. That's one question
why you haven't looked at --

MR. BLANKFEIN: They did that in New Orleans.

PARTICIPANT: Forget the -- the second thing you mentioned about Afghanistan. Most people don't realize the Russians were there before us for
ten years and whatever, and we supported Tannenbaum
to beat the hell out of them. A lot of our
problems is because we have a competition with the Russians. If we would -- the Russians by nature
hate the Chinese, but forget that.

If we were more or less kind of like forget that
superpower, superpower, and work with them
-- two superpowers equal a hell of a lot more
in the world. You wouldn't have an Iranian
problem, we wouldn't have the Syrian problem, and
why don't we just cut Israel loose? Give them the
frigging bomb and just blow the thing up. That's
my question to you.

MS. CLINTON: Those are interesting
questions for sure.

First, I think you're referring to the
posse comitatus, which has been actually in
existence -- if not from the end of the 18th
century, the very beginning, as you said, of the
19th century. And it is a law that really limits
what the military, the US military, can do on our
soil, and it has been supported all these years in
part because there is a great suspicion by many of
US government power -- and there is no more obvious
evidence of that than the US military.

However, we do call out the National
Guard, which is under the control, as you know, of
the governor and the adjutant general. But it is
clearly in the line of command as well from the
Pentagon. So although it took some difficulties
with Katrina we did get the National Guard out.

With Sandy we got the National Guard out. But
you're right, that if you were to want to have the
military, the actual US military involved in
disaster recovery, you would have to change the
law. And it's something that would be a big fight
in Congress because a lot of people would not vote
to change a law that would give any additional
authority to any president, Republican or
democratic, to order the US military to go anywhere
in the United States.

We kid about it, but I used to see it
all the time when I was a senator. There is this
great fear that the US military is going to show up
and take away your guns and confiscate your
property. I think it's --

MR. BLANKFEIN: Was the last time that
happened with Eisenhower?

MS. CLINTON: Yes. That was to enforce
a court order.

MR. BLANKFEIN: It was shocking,
jarring.

MS. CLINTON: It was. Wasn't it the
82nd? I mean, they flew through to desegregate the
central high school, and it was viewed as a very
provocative action.

PARTICIPANT: The fact is it proved
what was right. Not what the politicians think.
It's a case of sometimes the politicians, which
includes --

MS. CLINTON: The politicians for more
than 200 years have been united on this issue.
There was a posse comitatus law before that. But
the sensitivity about it was heightened and new
regulations were put in after the Civil War, but --

PARTICIPANT: No disrespect, but if you
were right you could not have had Illinois,
Oklahoma, California join you. You had governors
that were appointed there. Military law.

MS. CLINTON: Well, you can declare
martial law. You can declare martial law.

PARTICIPANT: Military was always --

MS. CLINTON: Well, I personally could
not favor turning control over to the United States
military as much as I respect the United States
military. I guess I'm on the other side of this
with you.

I think that the civilian rule has served us well,
and I don't want to do anything that upsets it even
though I have a very personal experience. You
remember when Castro opened the prisons and
sent all the criminals to the United States?

MR. BLANKFEIN: The --

MS. CLINTON: A lot of those prisoners
were ordered to go to a fort in Ft. Smith,
Arkansas, Ft. Chaffee, and my husband was governor
of Arkansas at the time. It was a military fort,
so the United States military ran it. So if you
were on the fort you were under US military
authority, but if you stepped off the fort you were
not. And the result was there was a riot where
prisoners were breaking through the gates, and the
US military would not stop them.

So my husband as governor had to call
out the state police. So you had the military
inside basically saying under the law we can't do
anything even to stop prisoners from Cuba. So it
is complicated, but it's complicated in part for a
reason, because we do not ever want to turn over to
our military the kind of civilian authority that
should be exercised by elected officials. So I
think that's the explanation.


Uhhhhhhhhh . . . .

FYDT

And let God's people say amen.

We're gonna need more than one basket

This guy, at the rally with his wife and three kids, in his "She's A Cunt, Vote For Trump" shirt. pic.twitter.com/NDQMz1uteG

— Sally Kohn (@sallykohn) October 11, 2016

Don't look now, but pornofascism™ is a real thing that we didn't know existed before, like, today.  And I think the deplorables are overloading Donald Trump's basket.

Another thought: "White trash" is a concept for which everybody has a little bit different definition, but we all know it when we see it. Brother, are we seeing it here.

This is where I'd usually say "God help us" or "Lord, have mercy," but I highly doubt we'd appreciate the divine assist. We're going to get exactly what we want, good and hard.

The end of the GOP, explained in 2:03

In 1968, a certain experimenter -- let's call him Dr. Nixonstein -- began his efforts toward building a bigger and better Republican Party.

Nixonstein had early success in his project, which came to be known as the Southern Strategy after the main target for exponential growth, as he cobbled together a new party from what, at the time, seemed to be promising components.

But 48 years later, something happened. Let's call it The Disillusionment of Nixonstein's Monster.

And for the shocking play-by-play from Bumf***, Wisconsin, we take you to BuzzFeed News correspondent McKay Coppins:

ELKHORN, Wisconsin — In a jarring illustration of the chaos now engulfing the Republican Party, supporters of Donald Trump clashed bitterly with GOP leaders at a rally here Saturday — booing elected officials, heckling Paul Ryan, and angrily demanding greater establishment support for their beleaguered presidential nominee. 

The confrontations took place at Fall Fest, an annual party fundraising event held in Ryan’s Wisconsin congressional district. Trump had been scheduled to appear at the event in a show of GOP unity, but Ryan abruptly disinvited him Friday night after the Washington Post published a leaked 11-year-old video of the businessman lewdly bragging about groping women. Over the next 24 hours, a parade of high-profile Republicans condemned Trump, and several retracted their endorsements altogether, calling on the candidate to drop out of the race. 

As the program proceeded Saturday afternoon with politicians giving pro forma pep talks about the importance of voting in November, the audience in attendance — split between mainstream Republicans and rowdy Trump fans — shouted at the stage, and at each other.

Just as Paul Ryan finished speaking in Elkhorn... pic.twitter.com/6HtAqf3bGQ

— McKay Coppins (@mckaycoppins) October 9, 2016

OH, MY. We return you now to Bumf***, Wisconsin, for this breaking-news update and McKay Coppins:

When, early in the event’s program, Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel tried to address the recently leaked video that has sent Trump’s campaign into a tailspin, the crowd erupted in angry protest. 

“Get over it!” one heckler yelled. 

“Trump! Trump! Trump!” others chanted. 

Appearing taken aback by the reaction, Schimel made a brief nod toward support for the nominee — “Donald Trump will appoint judges that will defend our Constitution” — and then quickly changed the subject. 

Other elected officials became more combative with the audience. When Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner talked about how voters had been coming to the Fall Fest for years to support Ryan and other local Republicans, hecklers shouted, “Not anymore!” and, “I’m for Donald Trump!” 

“Why don’t you listen to what I have to say instead of interrupting me?” Sensenbrenner snapped. Soon, the 73-year-old congressman was in a shouting match with the Trump supporters in the crowd. “Listen to me, please,” he kept repeating, before ordering the audience to “clean up your act." 

By the time it was Ryan’s turn to speak, the mood had grown indisputably hostile. He took the stage to scattered boos, and shouts of, “What about Donald Trump?” and, “Shame on you!” 

“Look, let me just start out by saying: There’s a bit of an elephant in the room,” Ryan told the crowd. “And it’s a troubling situation … but that is not what we are here to talk about today. You know what we do here at Fall Fest? We talk about our ideas, we talk about our solutions, we talk about our conservative principles.” 

Trump supporters greeted the message with a chorus of boos and abuse. 

“Trump for president!” 

“Mention Trump!” 

“You turned your back on him!”

NOTE: Extremely NSFW. That's why the Donald is in such a jam   TAKING ITS LEAD from its brand-new lord and savior, Donald Trump, it would appear that the now-rogue Nixonstein's monster knows exactly where to grab the political party that gave it life.

Indeed. Sounds like a hell of a reality-TV series, doesn't it?

Freedom of speech for me, but not for thee

Above is a thing that actually ran Wednesday in the college newspaper for which I wrote and edited more than three decades ago.

The headline: Free speech argument should not be used to justify hate speech. The headline soft-sold the column, actually.

Excuse me while I pick my jaw up off the floor. Obviously, The Daily Reveille at Louisiana State University ain't what it used to be.

Let me put it this way: I read Anjana Nair's column in the Reveille, but I'm having a hard time believing that a piece arguing against freedom of speech and the First Amendment -- and let's be clear, if you're against free speech, no matter how distasteful, you are against the First Amendment -- appeared in a newspaper that would not exist but for the linchpin of our Bill of Rights.

(Trust me. This is Louisiana we're talking about . . . and LSU. Without some serious constitutional badassery covering its 6, the Reveille likely wouldn't have made it past 1934. Actually, the Reveille almost didn't make it past 1934. Interesting story. Anjana Nair probably never heard about it.)

Milo Yiannopoulos

This . . . this because of Donald Trump, Republicans behaving badly and . . . and . . . Milo Yiannopoulos was coming to town! (Cue the panicked population of Tokyo fleeing from Godzilla.)

Apparently, Milo Whocaresopoulos is some sort of ragingly gay, alt-right media whore who specializes in Internet misbehavior and pissing progressives off. And he likes Trump.

And Trumpkins like him because all the right people really, really hate him. The latter group includes Anjana Nair.

So, allow me to throw some quotes at you from this opinion piece that I have a hard time believing actually ran in a newspaper at an institution allegedly devoted to unfettered inquiry and the pursuit of knowledge.

QUOTE:

"I once thought I loved free speech. As someone involved in media, the First Amendment was my best friend. That is, until I faced the reality that people, like they do to all good things in the world, abuse it and use it as justification for reckless and hateful behavior."

QUOTE:

"Walters says it is unreasonable to limit free speech just because someone is afraid of getting their feelings hurt. In the real world, he says, there are no safe spaces or trigger warnings. 

"Walters is partly right: To stop a message because it might offend someone is not a justification for censorship. What is justification, though, is the fact that the free expression of hateful ideas has led to an environment of tension between the groups who are perpetuating such speech and the groups who are targeted by it. This in turn leads to an atmosphere in which only the ones inflicting the harmful speech feel comfortable.

"Let’s be real: The only people who feel the need to defend their freedom of expression behind the First Amendment are those who are clearly misusing it as a platform to attack censorship in its entirety.

"Even Walters admits that there are limits to free speech, such as not being able to yell 'Fire!' in a movie theatre when there isn’t one. Why does that exception exist? Because it causes a sense of panic and fear when there’s no justified reason for it — just like hate speech."

QUOTE:

"When the First Amendment was written, it couldn’t have accounted for Twitter battles and social media showdowns influencing human opinion and behavior. It couldn’t have foreseen the existence of people like Yiannopoulos and Trump, who force us to define what abusive speech is." 

END QUOTE. (Thank God.)

Oh, mercy me. Pass the smelling salts; Generation Y has the vapors.

Really? Loutishness is a modern construct unknown to our forefathers?

REALLY???

Come now. Public reprobates, demagogic invective and "hate speech" hardly were unknown in 1789.

In fact, by Miss Nair's standards, both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams should have been locked up for being mean in public, what with all the "hate speech" flying around during the campaign of 1800:

Negative campaigning in the United States can be traced back to John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Back in 1776, the dynamic duo combined powers to help claim America's independence, and they had nothing but love and respect for one another. But by 1800, party politics had so distanced the pair that, for the first and last time in U.S. history, a president found himself running against his VP.

Things got ugly fast. Jefferson's camp accused President Adams of having a "hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman." In return, Adams' men called Vice President Jefferson "a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father." As the slurs piled on, Adams was labeled a fool, a hypocrite, a criminal, and a tyrant, while Jefferson was branded a weakling, an atheist, a libertine, and a coward. Even Martha Washington succumbed to the propaganda, telling a clergyman that Jefferson was "one of the most detestable of mankind."

AND THEN Adams' people got around to l'affaire Sally Hemmings.

It may be a novel concept to those who cannot remember a time when "social media" didn't exist, but hateful people always have been quite effective at hounding the "vulnerable." Perhaps a bit more slowly than today, but effectively nonetheless.

The only difference today is that there seems to be a market for professional cranks like Milo Whateveropoulos to get onstage somewhere and say out loud what my generation's halfwits used to scribble in men's room stalls. Yet that so threatens our precious snowflakes on college campuses that they're willing to upend our entire constitutional order to stamp out societal angst.

Yeah, that should work out really well in reducing tension on campus.

The only conclusion I can draw from this column being published in an actual newspaper on an actual college campus is that today's morally preening hand-wringers stand as complete reprobates next to yesteryear's utter libertines. I think the following Oscar Wilde quotation is apt when considering the Trumpkins and Milo Whositsopoulos:

"I may not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to make an ass of yourself.”

COME TO think of it, it applies pretty well to this Reveille column, too.

Back when country music was

I was of a mind to listen to some country music this evening. So I went back to 1972, and a classic Loretta Lynn album.

On vinyl.

I liked it when I was young, and thin, and had more hair, which wasn't gray, and it sounded exactly like country music when you put on a country LP.

Thus concludes this late-night rant by a nostalgic old man who's just sick of it all.

Cracker like me?

Zack Linly doesn't know the half of it!

Zack Linly is an African-American activist.

He also is a poet.

And a performer.

And a freelance writer.

And a community organizer.

So it's no great surprise that when a man spread that thin reconsiders the usefulness of engaging with whitey, he doesn't take the time to consider that he's just decided that George Wallace was right after all.

Gee, when you're 12 percent of the population, decide to quit engaging with anyone else, lump all white people into the same racist boat, then basically tell the whole lot to f*** off . . . I wonder where that strategy possibly might go wrong in this Age of Trump?

But if some hothead is going to be stupid, and then he decides to write down his stupidity, it would almost be wrong if some American newspaper somewhere didn't publish it for the sheer entertainment value, if nothing else. In Linly's case, it was The Washington Post's turn. To wit:

Could it be, and I’m just spit-balling here, but could it be that white folks are … completely full of it? 

This is why I submit that black people should simply disengage with white America in discussions about race altogether. Let them have their little Klan-esque chats in the Yahoo and USA Today comment sections. We need to stop arguing with them because, in the end, they aren’t invested like we are. They aren’t paying attention to these stories out of fear for their lives and the lives of their children and spouses; they are only tuned in out of black and brown contempt. This is trivial to them, a contest to see who can be the most smug, condescending and dismissive. When black people debate these issues, we do so passionately — not always articulately, and often without a whole lot of depth to our arguments — but we always come from a place of genuine frustration, outrage and fear. 

When most white people debate the very same issues from an opposing stance, they do so from a place of perpetual obtuseness and indifference. Their arguments always seem to boil down to “If it isn’t my experience, it couldn’t possibly be yours.” Even “well meaning” white folks tend to center themselves in the discussion (#NotAllWhitePeople #IDontSeeColor). Yes, there are plenty of white people who aren’t racist, who think shouting “Blue Lives Matter” is wrong, who truly do wish things would change. But the fact is, they figuratively and literally have no skin in the game. 

I understand that white people are mad. They’ve gone their whole lives being the default for social and cultural normalcy and never really had to think critically about race at all. 

Now a black first lady addresses the nation, and she talks about slavery. Now social media identifies and challenges their micro-aggressions. They’re getting the tint snatched off of their rose-colored glasses; that “Shining City on the Hill” they know as America is starting to lose some of its gloss. And they ain’t here for that — but we are. 

So we need to let them cry. Let them gripe about how white is the new black and they are now the true victims of racism because their black co-workers don’t invite them to lunch or some black guy on the train called them a cracker or because black people on the interwebs hurt feelings. (How nice it must be to have the option of simply logging off of your oppression.) We need to let them cry. And we need to learn how to just sit our intellectual selves back and enjoy it.

NO, I DON'T think black folks would enjoy it. Not at all.

The fact is, we can fight systemic racism without white validation. We can continue shutting down bridges and highways every time there’s a new Alton Sterling, Philando Castile or Korryn Gaines in the news and let white folks complain about the intrusion on their lives. We can continue moving our black dollars into black banks and keeping our money in our businesses and communities. We don’t need them to “get it” for us to keep fighting.

And likewise, white people who truly want to be allies can find their path to ally-ship without black validation and without us having to take time out of our days to educate them. They can find their own curriculum and figure out for themselves how they can do their part in fighting the good fight. And they can do it without the promise of black praise. And, I’m not about to keep checking to see if they’re doing that much. Because it’s not my job – and it’s not yours, either. 

Black people, it is long past time for us to start practicing self-care. And if that means completely disengaging with white America altogether, then so be it.

WELL, you certainly can try to fight systemic racism without white validation, but I don't know how far you're going to get. Keep telling white people to screw themselves while you scarcely treat white allies better than you do sworn enemies like David Duke, and I think -- and I'm just spit-balling here -- you're going to create even more enemies.

You're going to take people of good will and ultimately convince them that they are being targeted by blacks, and then that whole self-preservation thing kicks in.

Remember Bosnia? The United States already is well on the way to getting there in Trump's good time, and Mr. F*** Whitey proclaims that throwing gasoline on a smoldering fire looks like a solution to him.

Ensure that all the hated, innately racist white people come to see you not as fellow Americans -- or even brothers and sisters in Christ or merely part of the brotherhood of man -- and see what wonderful and immediate results come from "shutting down bridges and highways every time there’s a new Alton Sterling, Philando Castile or Korryn Gaines in the news and let white folks complain about the intrusion on their lives."

Let's take a brief moment for a brief history lesson from just my middle-aged lifetime.

IN 1963, it was the abject horror of the American public at TV pictures of fire hoses and police dogs turned on peaceful black protesters in Birmingham -- the horror of the predominantly white American public -- that made it politically possible for President Lyndon Johnson (white President Lyndon Johnson) to ram the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through Congress (the overwhelmingly white Congress) over the strenuous objections of powerful (and segregationist) Southern members.

A year after the Civil Rights Act's passage, it was the abject horror of the American public at TV pictures of segregationist vigilantes and Alabama state troopers attacking peaceful black protesters in Selma -- the horror of the still predominantly white American public -- that made it possible for President Lyndon Johnson (the still-white President Lyndon Johnson) to ram the Voting Rights Act of 1965 through Congress (the still overwhelmingly white Congress) over the once again strenuous objections of still powerful (and still segregationist) Southern members.

Muhammad

So, if Zack Linly would like to know how successful he and his might be after disengagement with -- and his near-blanket villification of -- honkies like lil' ol' south Louisiana-born me, that not-so-ancient history might be a reliable guide. He'd well know that if his study of African-American history had extended beyond "We were slaves" and "White people bad."

Here's my educated guess on how African-Americans might fare under the Linly Plan, which is nothing more than a less-articulate version of the Elijah Muhammad Plan.

Connor

Bull Connor would be just a warm-up; that's how well it would go. Yes, some white people are ugly nowadays. I am old enough to well remember a time when a lot more were a lot uglier. I would advise against daring white people to be that way once again.

Especially, as I said, when African-Americans are about 12 percent of the population, and white people are better armed.

Micro-agression that.

WHEN THE center does not hold, bad things happen. Given that Americans oftentimes aren't all that bright (or particularly well-versed in history), it's looking like were going to have to find that out the hard way.

Again.