A Mish Mash of Thoughts That Might Piss You Off
Today, Decide You’re Done Being an Actual Blight on Humanity
I saw an article recently that included feedback from a black owned book store about white people who would come in asking specifically for certain trendy books about how to be anti-racist for the sole purpose of taking their Instagram and Facebook photos to show off how they were on the road to being anti-racist. If the bookstore owner or her employees recommended other books in the category from their favorites, they were dismissed in favor for the ones that were all the rage. One of the diseases of whiteness is this need to look good superficially and avoid actually listening and working to better ourselves as human beings. It’s sick, disgusting, and RACIST. The work doesn’t bring you glory. The work isn’t about making sure you look like you’re a good person publicly so you get to do shitty things to your neighbors, friends, and community members when you think no one is looking. Read all the books and feel free to share with your other white friends what you actually LEARNED from them, but resist the book cover selfies for clicks and heart reacts while doing fuckall to make this world a less miserable place. Read the books black book store owners recommend to you. No one is fooled except your other superficial shitty racist friends. It’s what you actually do for others when no one else is looking that actually matters.
There are two ways to respond to new information that digs at what you thought was your personal identity. You could either allow the new information to sit with you and cause you to change your behavior, or you can allow cognitive dissonance to take over instead. Cognitive dissonance is fueled by your ego saying “hey! I can’t see myself as a bad person and to admit x, y, z means I’m a bad person, so I’m going to do mental gymnastics instead or do superficial shit to prove I’m not a bad person, because self reflection hurts.” Stop this shit immediately. Admitting to yourself you’ve done harmful things to others doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. It DOES mean you’re a bad person if you refuse to self-reflect and continue to do those things. I admit it IS hard to sometimes identify when you’ve truly harmed someone or whether they’re just lashing out at you with projection and manipulation, but that’s part of what self-reflection is for. Sit down, be quiet, and self-reflect. Put your ego away. Learn who your authentic self is, and be THAT person.
One of the reasons I love Hillary Clinton so much is because she’s her authentic self. She said in the Hulu Documentary that she’s neither as good nor as bad as people say she is. She has always done what she wanted and said things when the microphones were in her face that people didn’t always like. I love her for it. As someone who also says things that others don’t always like and try to live my authentic self, I appreciate her so much. Some people have said to me that others have said “I just don’t like her” about me without any specific evidence. I have heard that so many times in 2016 about Hillary Clinton. I hope someday I’m able to tell her how inspiring she is for simply just being herself with no fakeness or apologies.
Most peoples’ opinions of Democratic politicians are deadass wrong and it’s really fucking irritating. Have you listened to the first season of Hillary’s Podcast? Have you heard her thoughtful questions? How prepared she is in these interviews? How she genuinely is moved and inspired by others and how she wants us to know about these wonderful people she has the privilege to know? If all your knowledge of her is based on social media commentary over the past several years, you’d think she was a completely different person than who she actually is. White people seem to love to form their opinions of others based on their own ideology and cognitive dissonance and not based on reality. Stop that shit immediately. It makes you sound stupid and bigoted, no matter whose side you claim to be on politically.
While we’re on the subject of Hillary’s Podcast, I just want to say how much I adore Stacey Abrams. Again, she is so much more then the shell of opinions people base on their political ideology and cognitive dissonance.
Why is everyone on Democrats’ social media pages complaining that a $600 stimulus check isn’t enough? For one, everyone knows that isn’t enough. For two, would you rather continue to get nothing? Because that is what Mitch McConnell would rather you get. He’s only agreeing to this at all because he’s afraid to lose those two Georgia seats. Let’s also talk about the fact there are other benefits in that bill literally saving people from becoming homeless such as the unemployment extension, but nobody wants to talk about those benefits. They just want to complain Democrats didn’t fight hard enough for more of a stimulus. Never mind they only control one half of one third of our government until January 20th, 2021.
Let me tell you a story from the not so distant past: In December of 2010, Congress was arguing over extending the unemployment deadline. Millions, including me and my family, were still suffering badly from the Recession. I was in Cosmetology School after spending a year job hunting with zero results. I had to borrow money from a friend to make my house payment that month.
I called then Senator George Voinovich’s office, begging them to extend the deadline. Their answer to me was that the Senator did not want to borrow more money from China and that was their BS reason for putting millions of lives at further risk of homelessness and poverty. I was so angry with him that day.
Get it? Angry with REPUBLICANS for their games not the DEMOCRATS for fighting for what they could get the Republicans to agree too.
I just don’t get why so many who claim to be on my side as a mentally ill, queer, poor person are dumb enough to believe anti-Democratic propaganda after four years of Trump and the Republicans trying to build a dictatorship and tearing our Constitution to shreds. Some of you don’t actually give a shit about the marginalized at all. As an aside, if any Democratic politician voted against this bill pretending to stand up for people like me, they’re not sending the message they think they’re sending. You’re not standing up for me by voting no on bills that at least gives us SOME help while the Republicans still own the Senate and the White House.
I was fooled during the 2020 campaign by local white people who were very loud about being Elizabeth Warren fans, claimed to hate Bernie Sanders, and then immediately turned to trash the entirety of the Democratic Party as being owned by corporations and calling them elitists who left poorly educated white people behind. I provided evidence to the contrary, of course and then lost more “friends.”
See, politics in Ohio is a complicated mess. White people still run top positions in my county and on the state level and they’re not doing a very good job here generating turnout in the cities. They have zero organizational skills and made major missteps during the 2020 campaign here. I friended a bunch of people I had spent several months campaigning with, believing we were all fighting for a common cause. Now some of these fauxgressive whites who are too racist to live in neighborhoods like mine think they have permission to not just criticize the local and state Dem party, but the Democratic Party as a whole. For a bunch of white women who claimed to hate Bernie Sanders, they sound just like him and the rest of the obstructionist Left. I ended up unfriending them because I have no room in my life to be gaslit by other white people who want to waste all their time on racist “pivot” Trump voters, rather than focus on generating voter turnout in our Ohio cities. When some white guy who calls himself a Democrat exile writes an article for the Plain Dealer saying we have to reach out and be inclusive to Trump voters, it makes me want to vomit. Yes, Marginalized of Ohio, we need to be INCLUSIVE of the KKK trash who voted for four more years of racist fascism. Get the fuck out of my face with that shit, Tony Doucet. I don’t want Tony or Lorraine Wilburn’s brand of racist fauxgressive politics taking over Ohio. As far as I’m concerned, they can be shipped off the same island we ship Trumpers off too.
These may seem like a bunch of disconnected thoughts, but they’re really all connected. Living your authentic self, doing whatever YOU want with your life, self-reflection, and deciding to actively make this world a better place is connected to politics. Right now, it’s cool as fuck to trash the party full of all the marginalized folks. I’m here to tell you trashing the Democratic Party is just as superficial and fake as your friends whose only anti-racism work is taking selfies in black owned book stores for their Instagram “influence”.
