Many of you already know that I’m a huge admirer of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s intellect and writing. Today he hits the target again – and again and again.
Yep, it’s a long post. Here are just a couple of the highlights.
12m Americans believe violence is justified to restore Trump to power
(June 16, 2023)
by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
I’m going to start with a favorite quote from Dorothy Thompson, the first American journalist to be expelled from Nazi Germany in 1934: “Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict.” Seeking creative alternatives to violence is what intelligent, civilized, and compassionate people do.
But for some Americans—at least 12 million anyway—violence is their default setting for conflict resolution.
We have to be aware that these people probably can’t be dissuaded from their eagerness to violence. The gun is to them what a microphone is to a singer on amateur night: a way to amplify their voice to an audience they believe doesn’t hear them. To be fair, we do hear them gleefully spouting their drivel on social media, but we ignore what they have to say because, so often, it’s nonsense. Ten percent believe the government is run by Satan-worshipping pedophiles? Twenty percent believe the election was stolen? They proudly hold tight to opinions unsupported by evidence that has been repeatedly debunked. There’s no reasoning with them.
Which is exactly why the GOP pursue them so diligently. They will vote loyally no matter what you do or say, like cult members.
Suppression breeds violence. Usually, it’s those being suppressed that have no other path to freedom than to violently revolt against their oppressors. In this case, it’s the oppressors who want to resort to violence in order to maintain the status quo of being oppressors. Of minorities. Of women. Of non-Christains. Of LGBTQ+. To justify their violence fetish, they cast themselves in the role of being oppressed by a society hellbent on righting past wrongs and maturing past a morally and economically bankrupt philosophy of “Greed is good….”
LB: And, a bit further down, he gives us this:
...I’m not sure when GOP hardliners became that belligerent bozo in Westerns who whips up the drunks in a saloon to kill the sheriff and lynch the accused. I’m not sure when, but I am sure that’s who they are now….
Read it all at Kareem’s SubStack Blog
LYMI,
LaughingEagle