Pointless Man

Proud American bigots will not own their bigotry. Even most KKK groups deny they are racist (though they clearly are). 'Racism' is a fighting word in the US. Try telling some Trumpeteers their approach to Latinos is racist, and see what happens. The US is full of active and systemic discrimination,  including very strong racism, but we don't want to acknowledge it. We don't want to talk about it. We don't want to change it, unless and until it is seen as directly harming rich, white people. Then, maybe we'll consider halting the war on drugs, or at least pot. Many of us don't want to admit historical tidbits like slavery, Japanese internment, the terrorist civil war that lasted 30 years after the Civil War (which the south won), race riots, Indian wars, or imperialism. Calling racist policies and acts what they so clearly are is perceived as an insult to those who craft them and carry them out. We definitely do not want to think about how redlining was st...

"'Can I get a witness to all this poverty?' There's no need to, brother. Everybody can see," Joe Strummer sang, but I think he was sadly mistaken.  As I used to argue in non-defense of the G. W. Bush administration, the rich and powerful are so generally and fully ensconced in their rarefied territory, they are mostly unaware of the underclasses. Thus, actions which, with greater understanding, might be seen as intentionally evil, are merely ignorant (though arguably still evil). This helps to explain Bush's approach to Katrina, black people, the poor, public schools, and those foreigners he tried to help free with two wars in their homes; Catherine the Great's inability to tell that her tours of supposed Russian towns involved the same actors, playing the same roles, and using the same set over and over; Marie Antionette's "Let them eat cake;" the casual cruelty of roving gangs in Fist of the North Star 1 ; and Republican efforts to someho...