Crazytown

No, not the shitty band that sings the song about butterflies; the shitty and ignorant but-her-emails klan that made a morally inept jackass Commander in Chief, who then stocked his staff by spinning the wheel of halfwits, all who must collectively twiddle Fox News' diddle so they promise to pollute feeble minds. Yeah, yeah 'but Hillary...' or something.

This place is crazytown. I don't even have the time to read/hear something, form an opinion and discuss before some other dogshit missile breezes by my face and I've either lost my train of thought or forgotten about the previous thing entirely. It's almost as if they do it on purpose?

Anyway, words are hard. Let's chat about a couple of them that make peoples' heads explode.

The 'R' Word

Imagine for a moment you were actually able to comprehend words coming out of someone else's mouth, capable of acknowledging (legitimate) facts (not alternative), and thinking two thoughts. The following is one of the deepest rabbit holes that exists, a topic that is incredibly multi-faceted (most of which I am not necessarily qualified to speak on) - but I'm going to attempt to give an easily digestible scenario that, at the very least, should allow a reasonably functioning adult to understand why this conversation needs to be had.

Reparations. Put down the brick you just shit, Dale, wrap it in the losing team's flag you still fly on your obnoxiously massive truck-that-inversely-correlates-to-the-size-of-your-penis, and shove it in your mouth.

"BUT SLAVERY ENDED 150 YEARS AGO."

Poverty is most often generational; and there are people alive today whose grandparents were owned like property.

Let's try some perspective, Dale. YOUR grandma didn't hug your mom enough during childhood so now she has a drinking problem and claims disability because of her 'fibromyalgia' (yes, I agree this is a legitimate disease - but it's also a disease that's an easy scapegoat when you're hungover 24/7, your body shuts down, and you can't work 40 hours a week); all of which has most likely affected your experience, what you base normalcy on, and has ultimately provided a shaky foundation on which you're supposed to now assemble your life.

The United States GOVERNMENT made it the white man's right to own black people as if they weren't human, rape them, beat them, and barely feed them for nearly 250 YEARS while they built this country - then 'free' them after having had no education, most unable to read, no means to acquire housing or belongings; AND STILL for another 60 YEARS be lawfully considered subhuman by segregation which continued to essentially prevent them from housing, and all other opportunities simply because of the color of their skin.

You, Dale, are 43, on welfare and work at Hardee's because your grammy was a cold-hearted bitch, and yet you can't seem to put the two brain cells you have together to understand how government sanctioned laws, behaviors and actions that horrendously abused an entire race of people for 300 YEARS (and then did absolutely zero by way of righting their wrongs) has affected their lives TO THIS DAY?!

Your ignorant grammy can use the N word and vomit blatantly racist thoughts in 2019 because "she came from a different time" - however - the entire race of people whose lineage suffered during that "different time" should "pull themselves up by the bootstraps" because it's supposedly been 65+ years since "racism ended"? THOSE ARE TWO THOUGHTS YOU CAN'T HAVE AT THE SAME TIME.

Which brings me to....

The 'P' Word

As I mentioned earlier; words are hard. Reading is hard. It's one of the major reasons we're all currently disheveled kernels of corn, floating in a toilet bowl of violently expelled diarrhea, with a pristine American flag adorning the lid.

But, let's just talk about Privilege for a hot sec. More specifically and importantly, the white variety.

PUT DOWN THE GUN.

I get it, Debra. Your lack of critical thinking skills gives you an elementary understanding of the word, which is no more than what Webster's dictionary provides you; and you don't feel very privileged in your double wide, situated next to a scrap yard, whilst your husband Dale sits in his stained armchair, jerkin it to Tucker Carlson, using his 3 teeth to inhale microwaved Salisbury steak and lamenting immigrants (i.e. rapists and drug dealers) for taking all of the...rapist and drug dealing jobs he's applied for?

But let me blow your mind. Most often, words are found next to other words. These generally form sentences, sometimes even paragraphs - and all of those letters that form words that form sentences give, what we in the biz call, 'context.' And by 'biz' I mean, the seemingly dwindling group of people that haven't lost their reading, comprehension, and conversational skills.

The word 'white' is a pertinent adjective when taking on the subject of privilege.

White privilege DOES NOT mean you live a carefree life, sans troubles, in a 3,000sq ft home with a housekeeper and personal chef who hand feeds you lobster and dry-aged steak while you bathe in a gold-plated bathtub.

What white privilege DOES mean, is that the troubles and possibly life-threatening situations you do experience are NOT because of the color of your skin. If you're a poor white person, you just have to navigate being poor (yes, a problem unto itself, but also, stop voting against your interests? Anyway...) Should you one day be able to "pull yourself up by the bootstraps", you're not also contending with being shot point blank reaching for your ID during a traffic stop, being shot while playing in the park (also here's a wild idea, maybe we don't a. glorify guns and b. sell toy guns that can easily be made to look exactly like real guns?), and you don't have to deal with a system that clearly still operates with racial bias, at the very least, to put it 'politely'.

Your precious grammy is apparently grandfathered into calling people n*****s, and you get called 'clever' when you're a child purportedly selling beer on the side of the road, instead of getting your larynx crushed while selling water to thirsty tourists. (Before you start, this isn't about legality - this is about the glaring difference in the way both, apparently illegal, situations were handled and reported.)

Lastly, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out, white privilege is also what affords me the opportunity to be a condescending asshole when speaking to ignorant fuckwits without fear of being called an "angry black woman", or being told to "go back to where I came from." I might be called shrill or emotional - but that's another blog for another time.